As a piano builder Cristofori had few immediate successors in Italy, but word of his invention became known in Germany through a translation of Maffei’s account published in 1725. Before 1720 there had been independent attempts in France as well as in Germany to devise hammer mechanisms, although none was comparable to Cristofori’s in sophistication or practicality. In the 1730s Gottfried Silbermann, of Freiberg in eastern Germany, a builder of organs, harpsichords, and clavichords, began constructing pianos patterned on Cristofori’s. The surviving ones, probably from the 1740s, appear to have been directly copied from an instrument imported into Germany rather than derived from Maffei’s description, but the ones he made earlier (and of which Bach is said to have disapproved in 1736) may have owed their failure to an attempt to follow Maffei’s diagram exactly. By 1747 Silbermann had sold several of his pianos to King Frederick II the Great of Prussia, and one of these is reported to have met with Bach’s approval in 1747.

Subsequent German piano building did not follow the path charted by Silbermann. Instead, various German builders attempted to devise actions that were simpler than Cristofori’s, generally adapting them to the clavichord-shaped instruments now called “square” pianos. In the most characteristic German actions, the hammers point toward, rather than away from, the player, and, instead of being hinged to a rail passing over all the keys, they are attached individually to their respective keys. As the front of the key is depressed, the back rises, carrying the hammer with it. A projecting beak at the rear of the hammer shank catches on a fixed rail above the back of the keys, so that the hammers are flipped upward as the keys are stopped by a second rail set just above them. This action had no escapement, and (on the evidence of a letter of 1777 from Mozart to his father) many German instruments of the 1770s still lacked this highly important feature.

Johann Andreas Stein of Augsburg in southern Germany is generally credited with devising the first German action to include an escapement. As a replacement for the fixed rail that caught the projecting beaks at the rear of the hammer shanks, Stein provided an individually hinged and sprung catch for each key. As the back of the key reaches its highest point, this catch (the escapement) tilts backward on its hinge and releases the beak at the back of the hammer shank. The hammer is then free to fall back to rest position even when the key is still depressed. This action is often called “Viennese,” because it was used by all the important 18th- and early 19th-century piano makers in Vienna, including Stein’s daughter and son-in-law, Nannette and Johann Andreas Streicher; Anton Walter, Mozart’s favourite piano builder; and Conrad Graf, maker of Beethoven’s last piano. It was used in German-speaking countries until the late 19th century, when it was replaced by mechanisms derived from a Cristofori-based action developed in England.

Although the tone of a piano by Stein or Walter is not loud, it is very sweet, with a singing treble and a clear tenor and bass that blend superbly with the sound of stringed instruments. The touch is extremely light and shallow: the force required to depress a key is only one-fourth that required on a modern piano, and the key need only be depressed half as far. In their sensitivity to the finest differences in touch and their singing tone, the Viennese pianos suggest the responsiveness of a clavichord, although producing a louder sound.

Austrian and German pianos of the early 19th century often feature an array of pedals. Only one of Cristofori’s surviving pianos has any special effects: levers on the underside of the instrument permit the player to shift the action sideways so that the hammers strike only one of the two strings provided for each note. By the time Silbermann built his pianos for Frederick the Great, a second special effect had been introduced—a mechanism to lift the dampers from the strings so that they could vibrate freely whether or not the keys were depressed. (These two effects, the sideways sliding of the action—to produce a softer sound and different tone colour—and the lifting of the dampers—to produce a louder, more sustained sound and another variation in tone colour—are the only ones found on all modern grand pianos.) Silbermann’s pianos had hand levers for raising the treble and bass dampers separately and an additional hand lever for muting the strings. Stein’s pianos normally had two knee levers for raising the treble and bass dampers and a third knee lever that interposed a strip of cloth between the hammers and the strings to produce a velvety pianissimo. Later instruments might have five or more pedals that, for example, pressed a roll of parchment against the bass strings to produce a buzzing sound or rang small bells and banged on the underside of the soundboard in imitation of the cymbals and drums of the then-fashionable “Turkish” music.