A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Cottage Piano

COTTAGE PIANO (Fr. Piano droit; Ital. and Ger. also Fr. Pianino). An upright pianoforte usually about four feet high, invented early in this century, nearly at the same time as the Cabinet piano, but less thought of for some years, until the more convenient height and better action of the lower instrument, combined with cheaper construction, found appreciation, and brought about the displacement of the Cabinet and the once familiar Square. To Robert Wornum the younger, whose patent (No 3419) for an upright, with diagonal strings, was taken out in 1811, is due the invention and earliest manufacture of oblique and vertical cottage pianofortes in England. In the year 1815 Ignace Pleyel, founder of the house of Pleyel, Wolff, et Cie., employed Henri Pape, an ingenious mechanician, to organise the introduction of the construction of these instruments in Paris (Pape, Sur les Inventions, etc.; Paris, 1845), from which beginning arose the important manufacture of French cottage pianos. In Germany and America upright pianos have not made much way. [See Pianoforte, also Cabinet Piano, Oblique, and Piccolo.]

[ A. J. H. ]