(Or should we not not try to avoid doubling up words?)
Winceworth the Pianoforte was sentient. Yeah, that was all it took: one day this little girl named Annabella Contessa Branciforte Montouth con Fragx played just the right combination of keys and voila! sentience. I mean, it was still a pianoforte. And it still had no independently moving parts. And it still had no means of communicating externally to those around it or, honestly, really even perceiving them apart from when someone sat down and tinkled away a little tune.
Some were better at playing, obviously, and over time (sixteen years or so, not that Winceworth the Pianoforte was really conscious of the passing of time nor even really aware that such a thing was), Winceworth the Pianoforte got pretty discerning about the quality of the music played upon itself.
So, OK, then about 20 or 40 years passed and a mad scientist type person got his or her hands on the pianoforte in order to play, one supposes, mad scientist type tunes. (Quite possibly the mad scientist type would have preferred an ominous pipe organ or perhaps a marimba, but those were tough to come by.) Over time (again, not something of which Winceworth the Pianoforte was really aware, but you know, for convenience sake) Winceworth the Pianoforte came to grow fond of the mad scientist type person’s intense pianoforte-playing sessions. “Wow, this being of which I know very little, having no sensory perceptions of any kind, sure does love to hammer away at my keys with a ferocious intensity. If only one day this being might discover some way to communicate with me, and I to it!” thought Winceworth the Pianoforte.
The mad scientist type person had no idea that its pianoforte was sentient. So its mad idea to use the pianoforte as a control mechanism for its world smashing robot was only slightly mad, compared to how mad it would have to be to put a sentient pianoforte in control of a world smashing robot. Still, that’s pretty mad, because really? Piano keys as a control mechanism? Crazy!
Later on the mad scientist type person came to regret its choice, after it became clear that the sentient pianoforte (everyone knew its name now: Winceworth the Pianoforte) was sentient and now in control of a giant world-smashng robot.
Pianoforte SMASH!