The Story of the Pianoforte

by C. A. Browne

In speaking of this, the chosen instrument of intimate home life, a prominent writer upon musical matters gives its "family tree" in a single, terse, paragraph. "Before the pianoforte", he assures us, "came the harpsichord; and before the harpsichord came the spinet; before the spinet came the virginal, and before the virginal came the clavichord and monochord; before these, the clavicytherium; before that, the citole; before that, the dulcimer and psaltery, and before them all, the Egyptian, Grecian and Roman harps and lyres innumerable".

The fact of the matter is that the fundamental principles of the pianoforte are almost as old as music itself. They are:

1. A stretched string - as a medium of tone production

2. A keyboard - as an agency for manipulating the strings

3. A blow - as the means of exciting the strings to vibratory action

Or, expressed a little differently, these three underlying ideas become percussion (hammer), vibration on sonorous box (sounding board) and finger touch through mechanical action (keyboard).

In most of the instruments which preceded the pianoforte the keys did not act on hammers striking the strings, but on jacks, with quills or other contrivances, which twanged the strings.

In a grand or in a square piano the instrument itself is laid down horizontally, whereas in an upright piano the instrument stands on end.

The remarkable improvement in the modern pianos over the old ones is due to the immense advance which has taken place in the drawing of music wire; for it is to the successful experimenters in cast steel wire that the modern concert pianist owes his mighty, crashing chords. Stringed instruments with keyboard and wire drawing seem to have appeared about the same time in Europe - somewhere around the middle of the fourteenth century. The earliest wire drawing mill is alleged to have been erected then, at Nuremberg. And only by patient, careful advancement in the art of making this music wire did the pretension on its strings varies from 12 tons to nearly 20. A famous maker constructs his concert grands to bear a strain of 60,000 pounds - nearly 27 tons. And the explanation of the system mentions a possible pull on the strings of 75,000 pounds, with reference to what the metal frame would bear. In some concert grands made within recent years by an English manufacturer a tension of nearly 30 tons has been attained.

Up until the year 1820 pianofortes, like spinets, harpsichords and clavichords, were entirely constructed of wood, and consequently weak at the upper or treble end. Father Bach complained of this defect in his day. But gradually the metal framing now in use was devised. It is this alone which preserves the instrument from being destroyed by the tremendous strain put upon it.

English grand pianos have the curved sides of solid wood, bent by steam, and afterwards veneered. But an American maker builds his grand pianos of layers of continuous maple and oak - like a jellycake - but of only veneer thickness. Sometimes as many as twenty layers are glued together, bent into the required shape in metal presses, and then veneered. To construct a good instrument requires about six months. The softly padded hammers of felt oft-times come from Paris and are very expensive, like all the rest of the mechanism.

The Keyboard

As early as the eleventh century the keyboard was applied to the organ, which is a wind instrument, the wind being supplied by the bellows. The picture of these early organs look very odd to us now because the keyboards were placed so high above the seat of the player that the elbows were considerably lower than the hands. No wonder that the thumb and little finger were seldom used in playing.

The application of the keyboard to stringed instruments came as a later development in connection with the monochord. The hurdy gurdy is an ancient instrument which represents the attempt of some long forgotten enthusiast to adopt a row of keys to the zither.

The damper is a piece of cloth which descends upon the strings after they have been struck, in order to check the vibrations and to prevent the sounds form running into each other and blurring the tone.

The damper pedal, which we miscall the loud pedal, was invented about 1780, and might better be called the undamper pedal. for by raising the dampers throughout it leaves the instrument undamped and prolongs the tone, even after the fingers have released the keys; and that is why great judgment is required for its proper use.

The soft pedal brings the little hammers nearer to the strings. this shortens the stroke and produces a softer tone.

The standard international pitch is A (second space, treble clef), with 435 vibrations in a second. This is, of course, the same note from which the violin student "tunes up".

It's Ancestors

It hardly seems possible that the pianoforte has not always been one of the most familiar objects of domestic life since the world began. But the position it now occupies in our homes, but the lute, and at another time by the harpsichord or spinet, or clavichord.

The lute was an instrument of the guitar type, and a great favorite in its day with cultivated amateurs. It had a clear, silvery tone, but its one great defect was the difficulty of keeping it in tune. Matheson says that if a lute player lived eighty years he had certainly spent sixty of them in tuning his instrument.

The monochord of the ancient Greeks was the primitive device which led, in the Middle Ages, to the invention of the clavichord. This monochord consisted of a long box of thin wood, with a single string stretched the length of it, over a sound board, and measured off into vibrating lengths by a movable bridge. Very early other strings were added, and finally a sort of keyboard. This developed afterwards, as has been said, into the clavichord of mediaeval times.

There has been preserved to us a quaint old letter, nearly four centuries old - for it was written in 1529. It is a reply from Pietro Bembo, and Italian poet, to a letter from his young daughter, Elena. She had written to him from the convent where she was being educated, to ask him if she might have lesson upon the monochord (it was really the clavichord). Imagine the young girl's disappointment when part of her father's letter read this way: "I reply", he wrote, "because of thy tender years thou canst not know of thyself - that playing is an art suited only for vain and frivolous women; whereas, I would that thou shoulds't be the most chaste and modest maiden alive."

After considerable more gentle reproof in this strain, he concludes by saying, "Therefore, content thyself with the pursuit of the sciences, and the practice of needlework". Poor Elena! She made the mistake of living four hundred years too soon! Had she only waited until 1929 - she might have played the piano from morning till night, and need never have bothered her head about knowing one end of a needle from the other.

The Clavichord

The word clavichord comes from the union of the two Latin words clavis, a key, and chorda, a string. In the clavichord a series of wires were stretched horizontally in an oblong box which was provided with a sounding board and a keyboard. It looked somewhat like our square pianos, and originally it was portable. But later on it was made to stand upon its own legs, so to speak. In playing on the clavichord, the wires were pressed or rubbed by means of small brass wedges, called tangents, connected with the keys, and a very delicate tone was obtained. Particular mention is made of the "sweet, gentle and decidedly pretty sound which it gave forth." Five hundred years ago it was the joy of musicians; and, with little variation, it held its own, right down to the end of the eighteenth century, a hundred years back. An old German writer speaks of it as "the comfort of the sufferer, and the sympathizing friend of cheerfulness". The great Sebastian Bach preferred it to all other stringed instruments of that kind, although his work for the harpsichord is of supreme importance. And he never really "took to" the pianoforte, which, even in his later years, was in its musical infancy and rather a new fangled affair that did not altogether suit a resolute old gentleman who had lived his entire life with its predecessors. But he had twenty children in all, and some of them lived to see great improvements in the instrument which had failed to appeal to their father. Galileo - the same philosopher who sturdily insisted that the earth did move, even after he had been twice persecuted for it by the monks of the Inquisition - Galileo states that the harpsichord was so named because it represented a "couched" (lying down) harp. It was practically a harp with a keyboard attachment; and if you will look inside, at the "works" of your pianoforte you will see that it is much the same, in a general way.

Harpsichords were shaped somewhat like our grand pianofortes, but were much smaller. This instrument was also termed a clavier; in France it was called a claveqin.

The Etude Magazine October 1909