CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE STORY OF THE PIANOFORTE.

The popular instrument of the nineteenth century has been the pianoforte, the result of an evolution having its beginning more than six centuries back. It is impossible in the present state of knowledge to trace all the steps through which this remarkable instrument has reached its present form. In the Assyrian sculptures discovered by Layard, there are instruments apparently composed of metal rods or plates, touched by hammers, upon the same general principle as the toy instrument with glass plates, or the xylophone composed of wooden rods resting upon bands of straw. In these the use of the hammer for producing the tone is obvious. In the Middle Ages there was an instrument called the psaltery, apparently some sort of a four-sided harp strung with metal strings. The evidence upon this point is rather indistinct. Still later there is the Arab santir (p. 114). This was a trapeze-shaped instrument, composed of a solid frame, sounding board and metal wires struck with hammers. This instrument still exists in Germany under the name of _Hackbrett_, or the dulcimer. As now made, each string consists of three wires tuned in unison. It is played by means of leather hammers held in the hand. The difficulty of adapting this instrument to the keyboard consisted in the fact that if the hammers were connected with the keys, they would be under the strings instead of above them, and this difficulty for a long time proved insurmountable.

Two forms of instruments were at length developed, composed of a wire-strung psaltery, played from a chromatic keyboard like that of the organ. The first of these was the one called in England Spinet, or in Italy _Espinnetto_, and in Germany the _Clavier_. The essential characteristic of this instrument was the manner of producing tones. Upon the ends of the keys were brass pieces called "tangents," of a triangular shape, of such form that when the key was pressed, the tangent pushed the wire and so produced the tone. As it remained in contact with the wire as long as the key was held down, there was nothing like what we now call a singing tone. The instruments were very small, in shape like a square piano, but of three or four octaves compass; the wires were of brass, and quite small. In several representations which have come down to us from the seventeenth century, the number of strings shown is smaller than the number of keys, from which some writers have inferred that it might have been possible to obtain more than one tone from the same string, through a process of stopping it with one tangent and striking it with another. This, however, is highly improbable; the discrepancies referred to are undoubtedly due to carelessness of the engraver. The clavier, or spinet, was a better instrument than the lute, which at length it superseded, having more tones and a greater harmonic capacity. Besides which it was a step toward something much better still. In England they made them with pieces of cloth drawn through between the wires, to deaden the already small tone still further. These were sometimes called virginals, and seem to have been used as practice pianos, where the noise of the full tone might have been objectionable. The oldest form of the clavier known to the writer was that shown in Fig. 69, which was so small that it might be carried under the arm, and when used was placed upon the table. They were sometimes ornamented in a very elaborate manner.

Contemporaneously with the spinet, and of almost equal antiquity, was an instrument in the form of a grand piano, called in Italy the clavicembalo, and in England the harpsichord. In Germany it was called the _flugel_ or wing, from its being shaped like the wings of a bird. These also, in the earlier times, were made very small, and were rested upon the table. The essential distinction between the cembalo and the spinet was in the manner of tone production. In the cembalo there was a wooden jack resting upon the end of the keys, and upon this jack a little plectrum made of raven's quill, which had to be frequently renewed. When the key was pressed, the jack rose and the plectrum snapped the wire. The tone was thin and delicate, but as the plectrum did not remain in contact with the string, the vibration continued longer than in the clavier. The cembalo was the favorite instrument in Italy during the seventeenth century, and in England it had a great currency under the name of harpsichord. Many attempts were made at increasing the resources of this instrument, one of the most curious being that of combining two harpsichords in one, having two actions, two sounding boards and sets of strings, and two keyboards related like those of the organ. This form seems to have been exclusively English. The form of the harpsichord is shown in Fig. 71.

Far back in the sixteenth century an attempt was made at a hammer mechanism to strike down upon the strings. For this purpose the strings were placed in a vertical position, the same as in our upright pianos of the present day. Mr. B.J. Lang, of Boston, has an upright spinet of this kind, which he bought in Nuremburg. It is a small and rude affair, having about four octaves compass and a very small scale.

The pianoforte proper was not invented until 1711, when a Florentine mechanic, named Cristofori, invented what he called a Fortepiano, from its capacity of being played loud or soft. The essential feature of the pianoforte mechanism is in the use of the hammer to produce the tone, and the necessary provision for doing this successfully is to secure an instantaneous escapement of the hammer from contact with the wire, as soon as the blow has been delivered, while at the same time the key remains pressed in order to hold the damper away from the strings and allow the tone to go on. These features were all contained in Cristofori's invention. The above diagram, Fig. 72, illustrates the mechanism employed. It is from Cristofori's published account of his invention, dated 1711; but there is in Florence a pianoforte of his manufacture still existing, dated 1726, in which the action is more perfect, as shown in Fig. 73.

The invention of Cristofori was taken up in Germany almost immediately, and a Dresden piano maker, Silbermann, became very celebrated. It was the pianofortes of his manufacture in the palace at Potsdam, which Frederick the Great made Bach try, one after another. The form of these instruments was the same as that of Mozart's piano, shown in Fig. 71. The square-formed piano began to be made about 1750, but the instrument involved no application of new principles, being merely a clavier with pianoforte mechanism. The new form, so much more compact and inexpensive, began to be popular, and was soon the standard form for private families, as that of the clavier had been before, and as the square piano, remained until as late as about 1870, when the inherent mechanical difficulties of the upright were for the first time satisfactorily overcome. Pepys, in his diary, tells of having purchased a virginal which pleased him very much. It cost five guineas--about $26.

The instruments were still small, and strung with small wires; nevertheless, there was a tendency toward increased compass, which, by the beginning of the nineteenth century, led the Broadwoods, of London, to attempt a grand piano with six octaves' compass. But they found that the wrest plank (in which the tuning strings are placed), was so weakened by the extension that the treble would not stand in tune. In order to strengthen the instrument, he introduced the iron tension bar. This, like nearly all of the English improvements of the piano during the first quarter of the nineteenth century, was in the direction of greater solidity, and better resisting power to the pull of the strings.

Upon the artistic side, Sebastian Érard in 1808 patented his grand action, which, with very slight improvements, still remains the model of what a piano action should be. Fig. 74 shows this action and its parts.

Between 1808, when the Érard action was perfected, and 1832 or 1834, when Thalberg and Liszt began to revolutionize the art of piano playing, the instrument was the subject of a great number of improvements in every direction. The damper mechanism was perfected between 1821 and 1827; the stringing had been made heavier, the hammers proportionately stronger, and the power of tone had become greater. Thus the instrument had become ready for the great pianists--Liszt having made his first appearance in Vienna in 1823, and within seven years after having become generally recognized as a phenomenal appearance in art. Meanwhile, great improvements were continually carried on for the purpose of rendering the instrument impervious to the forcible attacks made upon its stability by these new virtuosi. In the early appearances of Liszt it was necessary to have several pianos in reserve upon the stage, so that when a hammer or string broke, which very often happened, another instrument could be moved forward for the next piece.

The most important improvement in the solidity of the piano came from the iron frame, which was introduced tentatively, somewhere about 1821, in the form of what is now called a "hitch-pin plate," or half iron frame. About 1825 an American, Alpheus Babcock, of Philadelphia, patented a full iron frame, but it was imperfect, and nothing came of it. Conrad Meyer, of Philadelphia, in 1833, patented an iron frame and manufactured pianos with it, which are still in existence. In 1837, Jonas Chickering, of Boston, perfected the iron frame by including in the single casting the pin bridge and damper socket rail. This improvement still remains at the foundation of the piano making of the world. Previous to this invention some of the American piano makers had constructed their cases upon a solid wooden bottom plank _five inches thick_. In 1855 the firm of Steinway & Sons exhibited their first overstrung scale, in which the bass strings were spread out and carried over a part of the treble strings, thus affording them more latitude for vibration, without interfering, and bringing the bridges nearer to the center of the sounding board. The idea of overstringing was not new at this time, Lichtenberg, of St. Petersburg, having exhibited a grand piano with overstringing at the London exposition in 1851, and Theodore Boehm, the celebrated improver of the flute, having invented an overstrung system for square pianos as early as 1835. In 1853, also, Jonas Chickering combined an iron frame with an overstrung system in square pianos, the instrument having been completed and exhibited after his death. The Steinway system of overstringing, however, was more extended, and solved the acoustical difficulties of cross-vibrations more successfully by spreading the long strings, and this, therefore, is the system now generally followed. The superiority of this principle was immediately acknowledged, and it has since been applied to grands and uprights, and few makers in the world but follow it in their work. Many minor improvements have been introduced in America by Steinway & Sons and others, whereby the artistic qualities and the durability of the best American pianos are now generally acknowledged throughout the world. The solidity of construction is such that with a compass of seven and one-third octaves the tension of the strings amounts to about 50,000 pounds avoirdupois. The hammers are larger and heavier, the action more responsive, and the singing quality and sustaining power has reached remarkable perfection. Perhaps the most curious and important of all American improvements in this direction is the so-called "duplex scale" of Steinway & Sons, patented in 1872, in which a fraction of the string is made to vibrate sympathetically, thereby strengthening the super-octave harmonic, and imparting to the tone a brightness and sweetness not so well secured in any other way at present known.

If space permitted it would be interesting to follow the course by which the difficulties of the upright piano have at length been surmounted, and the tone of this form of instrument rendered nearly equal to that of the grand. This was first accomplished by Steinway & Sons between 1862 and 1878, by a succession of improvements having for their object, first, the solidity of the instrument, then its prompt action, together with as much of the tone quality of the grand as possible. Many other American builders have taken part in this development, whereby the American pianoforte to-day is the strongest, the fullest-toned and the most expensively constructed of any in the world. Still later, quite a number of more or less successful attempts have been made to increase the stability of the tuning of the pianoforte by a different system of stringing, the tension of the strings being regulated by means of a tuning pin of "set-screw" pattern, working through a collar of steel, instead of being thrust into a wooden wrest-plank, where it holds fast by friction alone, as has been the universal way previous to these inventions.