Home > Baker's Student Encyclopedia of Music > Upright Piano

A piano with its strings arranged cross-wise (diagonally) along the vertical soundboard, as distinguished from a GRAND PIANO, in which the strings and the soundboard are horizontal. The hammers are made to recoil by a spring. The upright piano became popular in the 19th century partly for economy of space and partly because of the proliferation of amateur pianists in middle-class society in Europe and the U.S.