Overstringing

The strings in early pianos, like those in harpsichords or clavichords, ran parallel to one another, causing the grand pianos of the 18th and early 19th centuries to retain much of the graceful shape of the harpsichord. In the 1830s it was realized that the bass strings could be made longer and their tone improved if they were made to fan out over the treble strings. This idea was first applied to square pianos, but in 1855 Steinway & Sons built a grand piano with a complete cast-iron frame embodying this “overstrung” plan, in which the strings of the treble and the middle registers fan out over most of the soundboard and the bass strings cross over them, forming a separate fan at a higher level. Because the bass strings fan out, the tail of the modern grand piano is far wider than that of the earlier “straight-strung” instruments.

Modifications in the action

The gradual strengthening of the piano’s structure to permit the use of heavier strings eventually gave rise to hitherto unforeseen problems. The thicker strings could yield the louder sound of which they were capable only if they were struck by heavier hammers; any increase in the weight of the hammer, however, required a manyfold increase in the force required to depress the keys. This difficulty was present to a minor extent even in the 18th-century English grand-piano action, and the touch on these instruments was both deeper and heavier than on Viennese pianos. Moreover, the deeper touch meant that it took longer for a key to return to rest position so that a note could be restruck. Consequently, English pianos were not capable of the rapid repetition of Viennese instruments. This problem became quite severe as the hammers grew heavier and as musicians wished increasingly to use tremolo effects in imitation of orchestral music.

What was necessary was an action that would permit a note to be restruck before the key returned to rest position. The first successful action of this type was devised by the Frenchman Sébastien Érard, who as a young man had built a harpsichord with a particularly elaborate system of pedals and knee levers and in 1810 devised the system of pedals still in use on the harp. Érard’s first “repetition” or “double-escapement” action was patented in 1808, and an improved version that is the basis of the modern action was patented in 1821.

A further consequence of the use of thicker strings was that, if the sound of the instrument were not to become unduly harsh, the hammers had to be softer than those used on 18th-century instruments—light slips of wood covered with a few layers of thin leather. Felt-covered hammers were patented in 1826 by the Parisian builder Jean-Henri Pape, who also contributed a number of other ingenious and important improvements, but the use of felt instead of leather did not become universal until after 1855.

With the adoption of the one-piece cast-iron frame, overstringing, and felt hammers, the piano achieved its modern form in all but a few details. One was the invention in 1862 by Claude Montal of Paris of a pedal that kept the dampers off the strings only for notes already held down. Individual notes could thus be sustained without the overall blurring caused by raising all the dampers by the ordinary damper pedal. On three-pedal pianos, this device is included as the middle pedal, with the damper (“loud”) pedal at the right and the action-shifting (una corda, or “soft”) pedal at the left.

Modern piano actions

In 1636 Marin Mersenne, the author of the treatise Harmonie universelle, quoted a remark that the harpsichord of his time contained 1,500 different parts. The modern piano contains 12,000, most of which are found in the action. The modern grand piano action is a simplified version of Érard’s double-escapement action of 1821, and, although different manufacturers’ actions differ in detail, they all work in much the same way. When the key is depressed, its back end rises, lifting the wippen. The wippen raises a pivoted L-shaped jack that pushes the hammer upward by means of a small roller attached to the underside of the hammer shank. The hammer flies free when the back of the L-shaped jack touches the adjustable regulating button. At the same time, the upper end of the repetition lever—through which the upright arm of the jack passes—rises until it is stopped by the drop screw. When the hammer rebounds from the string, the roller falls back until it is stopped by the intermediate lever, enabling the tip of the jack to return to position beneath the roller, even if the key is still partially depressed. The jack is then ready to raise the hammer again should the player restrike the key before it returns to rest position. In the meantime, the hammer is prevented from bouncing back up toward the strings by the padded hammer check, and the damper is raised above the strings by a separate lever lifted by the extreme end of the key.

Player pianos

The history of automatically playing stringed keyboard instruments dates at least to the 16th century. The inventory of musical instruments owned by King Henry VIII at his death in 1547 included “an instrument that goethe with a whele without playing upon,” and three spinets equipped with a pinned barrel like that of a music box or barrel organ survive from the workshop of the Augsburg builder Samuel Bidermann (1540–1622). The most common type of player piano operates by means of a roll of punched paper that controls a pneumatic system for depressing the keys. Its heyday was the 1930s, and it was largely rendered obsolete by the increasing popularity of the phonograph and the radio. In the 1980s, electromagnetic player-piano actions equipped with laser sensors and computer controls were developed, allowing a pianist to record and immediately play back or edit his performance. Such sophisticated player pianos are especially useful in recording and teaching studios.