Happy Piano Birthday (Birthday/Anyone)

The piano, short for pianoforte (Italian for soft-loud), is a percussive musical instrument housed in a wood body, played when the pianist strikes one or many of 88 black & white keys. Hitting the chosen key activates a felt hammer that strikes and bounces back from tightly stretched strings inside. Invention of the piano is credited to Bartolomeo Crisofori (1655-1731) of Padua, harpsichord maker and official Keeper of the Instruments for one of the Medici Princes. "Happy Birthday," perhaps the most sung song in the English language, dates back melodically to 1893. Two sisters, Mildred Hill and Patty Smith Hill, included a classroom greeting "Good Morning To All" in a published book called "Song Stories for the Kindergarten." The lyrics now sung worldwide evolved over the next 40 years from the Hill sisters' original words to what everyone now knows as "Happy Birthday To You."