There must be practically on the part of every one who attends a
pianoforte recital some degree of curiosity regarding the instrument
itself. Therefore, it seems to me pertinent to institute at the very
outset an inquiry into what the pianoforte is and how it became what
it is--the most practical, most expressive and most universal of
musical instruments, the instrument of the concert hall and of the
intimate home circle. Knowledge of such things surely will enhance the
enjoyment of a pianoforte recital--should be, in fact, a prerequisite
to it.
The pianoforte is the most used and, for that very reason, perhaps,
the most abused of musical instruments. Even its real name generally
is denied it. Most people call it a piano, although _piano_ is a
musical term denoting a degree of sound, soft, gentle, low--the
opposite of _forte_, which means strong and loud. The combination of
the two terms in one word, pianoforte, signifies that the instrument
is capable of being played both softly and loudly--both _piano_ and
_forte_. It was this capacity that distinguished it from its immediate
precursors, the old-time harpsichords and clavichords. One of the
first requirements in learning how to understand music is to learn to
call things musical by their right names. To speak of a pianoforte as
a piano is one of our unjustifiable modern shortcuts of speech, a
characteristic specimen of linguistic laziness and evidence of utter
ignorance concerning the origin and character of the instrument.
If I were asked to express in a single phrase the importance of this
instrument in the musical life of to-day I would say that the
pianoforte is the orchestra of the home. Indeed, the title of the
familiar song "What Is Home Without a Mother?" might, without any
undue stretch of imagination, be changed to "What Is Home Without a
Pianoforte?"--although, if you are working hard at your music and
practicing scales and finger exercises several hours a day, it might
be wiser not to ask your neighbor's opinion on this point.
The King of Instruments.
"In households where there is no pianoforte we seem to breathe a
foreign atmosphere," says Oscar Bie, in his history of the instrument
and its players; and he adds with perfect truth that it has become
an essential part of our life, giving its form to our whole
musical culture and stamping its characteristics upon our whole
conception of music. Surely out of every ten musical persons,
layman or professional, at least nine almost invariably have
received their first introduction to music through the pianoforte
and have derived the greater part of their musical knowledge from it.
Even composers like Wagner and Meyerbeer, whose work is wholly
associated with opera, had their first lessons in music on the
pianoforte, and Meyerbeer achieved brilliant triumphs as a concert
pianist before he turned his attention to the operatic stage.
Of all musical instruments the pianoforte is the most intimate and at
the same time the most public--"the favorite of the lonely mourner and
of the solitary soul whose joy seeks expression" and the tie that
unites the circle of family and friends. Yet it also thrills the great
audience of the concert hall and rouses it to the highest pitch of
enthusiasm. It is the king of instruments, and the reason for its
supremacy is not far to seek. Weitzmann, the author of the first
comprehensive account of the pianoforte and its literature, speaks of
its ability "to lend living expression to all phases of emotion for
which language lacks words"; its full, resonant tone; its volume vying
with that of the orchestra; its command of every shade of sound from
the gentlest _pianissimo_ to the most powerful _forte_; and its
mechanism, which permits of the most rapid runs and passages, and at
the same time of sustained singing notes and phrases.
Music Under One's Fingers.
But this is not all. There is an overture by Weber entitled "The Ruler
of the Spirits." Well, he who commands the row of white and black keys
is ruler of the spirits of music. He has music, all that music can
give, within the grasp of his two hands, under his ten fingers. The
pianoforte can render anything in music. Besides music of its own, it
can reproduce the orchestra or the voice with even greater fidelity
than the finest engraving renders a painting; for only to the eyes of
one familiar with the painting does the engraving suggest the color
scheme of the original, whereas, through certain nuances of technique
that are more easily felt than described, the pianoforte virtuoso who
is playing an arrangement of an orchestra composition can make his
audience hear certain instruments of the orchestra--even such
characteristic effects as the far-carrying pizzicato, or the rumbling
of the double basses or their low growl; the hollow, reverberating
percussions of the tympani; sustained notes on the horns; the majestic
accents of trombones; the sharp shrill of piccolos; while some of the
most effective pianoforte pieces are arrangements of songs.
Moreover, there are pianoforte compositions like the Hungarian
rhapsodies of Liszt which, while conceived and carried out in the true
spirit of the instrument ("pianistic," as they say), yet suggest the
tone colors of the orchestra without permitting these to obtrude
themselves too much. This is one of the many services of Liszt, the
giant of virtuosos and a giant among composers, to his art. It has
been said that Liszt played the whole orchestra on the pianoforte. He
did even more. He developed the technique of the instrument to such a
point that the suggestion of many of the clang tints of the orchestra
has become part of its heritage. This dual capacity of the pianoforte,
the fact that it has a tone quality wholly peculiar to itself, so that
when, for example, we are playing Chopin we never think of the
orchestra, while at the same time it can take up into itself and
reproduce, or at least suggest, the tone colors of other instruments,
is one of its most remarkable characteristics.
Quite as remarkable and as interesting and important is the
circumstance that these tone tints are wholly dependent upon the
player. There is nothing peculiar to the make of the strings, the
sounding-board, the hammers, that tends to produce these effects. They
are due wholly to the player's subtle manipulation of the keys, so
that we get the added thrill of the virtuoso's personal magnetism. The
pianoforte owes much of its popularity, much of its supremacy, to the
fact that a player's interpretation of a composition cannot be marred
by any one but himself. It rests in his hands alone, whereas the
conductor of an orchestra is dependent upon a hundred players, some of
whom may have no more soul than so many wooden Indians. Even supposing
a conductor to be gifted with a highly poetic and musically sensitive
nature, it is impossible that so many men of varying degrees of
temperament as go to make up an orchestra, and none of them probably a
virtuoso of the highest rank, will be as sympathetically responsive to
his baton as a pianoforte is to the fingers of a musical poet like
Paderewski; for the fingers of a great virtuoso are the ambassadors of
his soul.
Melody and Accompaniment on One Instrument.
This personal, one-man control of the instrument has been of
inestimable value to the pianoforte in establishing itself in its
present unassailable position. Moreover, in controlling it the pianist
commands all the resources of music. With his two thumbs alone he can
accomplish what no player upon any other instrument in common use is
capable of doing with all ten fingers. He can sound together the
lowest and the highest notes in music, for all the notes of music as
we know it simply await the pressure of the fingers upon the keys of
the pianoforte. It is the one instrument capable of power as well as
of sweetness and grace which places the whole range of harmony and
counterpoint at the disposal of one player. A vocalist can sing an
air, but can you imagine a vocalist singing through an entire
programme without accompaniment? After half a dozen unaccompanied
songs the singing even of the greatest prima donna would become
monotonous for lack of harmony. The violin and violoncello, next to
the pianoforte the most frequently heard instruments in the concert
hall, labor under the same disadvantage as the singer. They are
dependent upon the accompaniment of others.
The pianist, on the other hand, has the inestimable advantage of being
able to play melody and accompaniment on one instrument at the same
time--all in one. While singing with some of his fingers the tender
melodic phrase of a Chopin nocturne, he completes with the others the
exquisite weave of harmony, and reveals the musical fabric to us in
all its beauty. Moreover, it is the pianist himself who does this, not
some one else at his signal, which the intermediary possibly may not
wholly understand. When Paderewski is at the pianoforte we hear
Paderewski--not some one else of a less sensitive temperament whom he
is directing with a baton. A poet is at the instrument and we hear the
poet. A poet may be at the conductor's desk--but in the orchestra that
is required for the interpretation of his musical conceptions poets
usually are conspicuous by their absence. Even great singers suffer
because their accompaniments are apt not to be as sensitive of
temperament as they are; and it is a fact that the grace and beauty of
Schubert's "Hark, Hark, the Lark" never have been so fully revealed to
me by a singer as by Paderewski's playing of Liszt's arrangement of
the song, because the pianist is able to shade the accompaniment to
the most delicate nuances of the melody. How delightful, too, it is to
go through the pianoforte score of a Wagner music-drama and, as you
play the wonderful music--all placed within the grasp of your ten
fingers--watch the scenic pictures and the action pass in imagination
before your eyes in your own music room without the defects
inseparable from every public performance, because the success of a
performance depends upon the co-operation of so many who do not
co-operate. Yes, the pianoforte is the king of instruments because it
is the most independent of instruments and because it makes him who
plays upon it independent.
Music's Debt to the Pianoforte.
It would be difficult to overestimate the debt that music owes to the
pianoforte. Including for the present under this one name the various
keyboard instruments from which it was developed, the sonata form had
its first tentative beginnings upon it and was wrought out to
perfection through it by a process of gradual evolution extending from
Domenico Scarlatti through Bach's son, Philipp Emanuel Bach, to
Beethoven. As a symphony simply is a sonata for orchestra, it follows
that through the sonata and thus through the pianoforte the form in
which the classical composers cast their greatest works was
established. Richard Strauss, in his revision of Berlioz's book on
orchestration, even goes so far as to assert that Beethoven, and after
him Schumann and Brahms, treated the orchestra pianistically; but the
discussion of this point is better deferred until we take up the
orchestra and orchestral music.
Here, however, it may be observed that in addition to its constant use
as an instrument for the concert hall and the home, and for the
delight of great audiences and the joy of the amateur player and his
familiar circle, many of the great composers, even when writing
orchestral works, have used the pianoforte for their first sketches,
testing their harmonies on it, and often, no doubt, while groping over
the keys in search of the psychical note, hit upon accidental
improvements and new harmonies. Even Wagner, who understood the
orchestra as none other ever has, employed the pianoforte in sketching
out his ideas. "I went to my Erard and wrote out the passage as
rapidly as if I had it by heart," he writes from Venice to Mathilde
Wesendonck, in relating to her the genesis of the great love duet in
"Tristan und Isolde," and I could quote other passages from my "Wagner
and his Isolde," which is based on the romantic passages in the lives
of the composer and the woman who inspired his great music-drama, to
show the frequency with which he made similar use of the universal
musical instrument.
The pianoforte has in many other ways been a boon to some of the most
famous composers. Many of them were pianists, and by public
performances of their own works materially accelerated the appreciation
of their music. Mozart was a youthful prodigy, and later a virtuoso
of the highest rank. Beethoven, before he was overtaken by deafness,
introduced his own pianoforte compositions to the public and was the
musical lion of the Viennese drawing-rooms. Mendelssohn was a pianist
of the same smooth, affable, gentlemanly type as his music. Chopin
was not a miscellaneous concert player--his nature was too shrinking;
but at the Salon Pleyel in Paris he gave recitals to the musical elite,
who in turn conveyed his ideas to the greater public. Schumann began
his musical career as a virtuoso, but strained the fourth finger of his
right hand in using a mechanical apparatus which he had devised for
facilitating the practice of finger exercises. His wife, Clara Wieck,
however, who was the most famous woman pianist of her time,
substituted her fingers for his. Liszt literally hewed out the way
for his works on the keyboard. Brahms was a pianist of solid,
scholarly attainments. In fact, dig where you will in musical soil,
you strike the roots of the pianoforte.
Its Lowly Origin.
It must not be supposed, however, that the instrument as we know it
attained to its present supremacy except through a long process of
evolution. One of the immediate precursors of the modern pianoforte
was the harpsichord, a name suggesting that the instrument was a harp
with a keyboard attachment, and such, in a general way, the pianoforte
is. But the harp is a very fully developed affair compared with the
mean little apparatus in which lay and was discovered many centuries
ago the first germ of the king among instruments. This was the
monochord, and it has required about nine centuries for the evolution
of an instrument consisting of a single string set in vibration by
means of a keyboard attachment into the modern pianoforte. But do not
be alarmed. I am not about to give a nine hundred years' history of
the pianoforte. Such detailed consideration would belong to a
technical work on the manufacture of the instrument and would be out
of place here. Something of its history should, however, be known to
every one who wants to understand music, but I shall endeavor to be as
brief and at the same time as clear as possible.
The monochord originally was used much as we use a tuning fork, to
determine true musical pitch. If you take a short piece of string, tie
one end of it fast, draw it taut and pluck it, its vibrations will
sound a note. If you grasp the string and draw it taut from nearer to
the point where it is tied, you shorten what is called the "node,"
increase the number of vibrations and produce a higher note. The
monochord in its simplest form consisted of a string drawn taut over
an oblong box and tuned to a given pitch by means of a peg. Under the
string and in contact with it was a bridge or fret that could be moved
by hand along a graduated scale marked on the bottom of the box. By
moving the bridge the node of the string could be shortened and the
notes marked at corresponding points on the graduated scale produced.
After a while, and in order to facilitate the study of the harmonious
relationship between different notes, three strings were added, each
with its bridge and graduated scale.
It was more or less of a nuisance, however, to continually shift
four bridges to as many different points under the four strings. As
an improvement upon this awkward arrangement some clever person
conceived about the beginning of the tenth century, the idea of
borrowing the keyboard from the organ and attaching it to the
monochord. To the rear end of each key was attached an upright piece
called a tangent. When the finger pressed upon a key the tangent
struck one of the strings, set it in vibration, and at the same time,
by contact, created a node which lasted as long as the key was kept
down and the tangent remained pressed against the string. To
increase the utility of the instrument by adding more strings and
more keys was the next obvious step, and gradually the monochord
ceased to be a mere technical apparatus for the determining of pitch
and became an instrument on which professionals and amateurs could
play with pleasure to themselves and others.
A Poet's Advice to His Musical Daughter.
There has been preserved to us from about the year 1529 a reply made
by the poet Pietro Bembo to his daughter Elena, who had written to him
from the convent where she was being educated asking if she could have
lessons upon the monochord, which seems to have been as popular in its
day as its fully developed successor, the modern pianoforte, is now.
"Touching thy request for permission to play upon the monochord,"
begins Bembo's quaint answer, "I reply that because of thy tender
years thou canst not know that playing is an art for vain and
frivolous women, whereas I would that thou shouldst be the most chaste
and modest maiden alive. Besides, if thou wert to play badly it would
cause thee little pleasure and no little shame. Yet in order to play
well thou must needs give up from ten to twelve years to the exercise,
without so much as thinking of aught else. How far this would benefit
thee thou canst see for thyself without my telling thee. But thy
schoolmates, if they desire thee to learn to play for their pleasure,
tell them thou dost not care to have them laugh at thy mortification.
Therefore, content thyself with the pursuit of the sciences and the
practice of needlework." These words of the poet Bembo to his daughter
Elena--are they so wholly lacking in application to our own day? And I
wonder--did or did not Elena learn to play the monochord? If not, it
was because she lived a few centuries too soon. She would have had her
own way to-day!
The Clavichord.
Monochord means "one string," and the application of the term to the
instrument after other strings had been added was a misnomer. The
monochord on which Elena, to the evident distress of her distinguished
parent, desired to play, really was a clavichord, which was derived
directly from the primitive monochord.
If you will raise the lid of your pianoforte you will find that the
strings become shorter from the bass up, the lowest note being
sounded by the longest, the highest note by the shortest string; for
the longer the string the slower the vibrations and the deeper the
sounds produced, and _vice versa_. This principle is so obvious that
it seems as if it must have been applied to the clavichord almost
immediately and a separate string provided for each key. But for many
years the strings of the clavichord continued all of equal length, and
three or four neighboring keys struck the same string, so that the
contact of the upright tangent with the string not only set the latter
in vibration but also served to form the node which produced the
desired note. Not until after the clavichord had been in use several
centuries, were its strings made of varying length and a separate
string assigned to each key. These new clavichords were called
_bundfrei_ (fret-free or tangent-free) because the node of each string
was determined by that string's length and not by the contact of the
tangent.
The clavichord retained the box shape of its prototype, the monochord.
Originally it was portable and was set upon a table; later, however,
was made, so to speak, to stand upon its own legs. In appearance it
resembled our square pianofortes. It gave forth a sweet, gentle and
decidedly pretty musical sound. It had a further admirable quality in
its capacity for sustaining a tone, since by keeping the tangent
pressed against the string the player was able to sustain the tone so
long as the string continued to vibrate. Moreover, by holding down the
key and at the same time making a gentle rocking motion with the
finger he was able to produce a tremolo effect which German musicians
called _Bebung_ (trembling), and the French _balancement_.
A defect of the clavichord was, however, its lack of power. This
defect led to experiments which resulted in the construction of a
keyboard instrument the strings of which, in response to the action of
the keys, were set in vibration by jacks tipped with crow-quills or
hard leather. The sound was much stronger than that of the clavichord.
But the jacks twanged the strings with uniform power, "permitting a
sharp outline, but no shading of the tones."
The Harpsichord.
If you chance to be listening to a Hungarian band at a restaurant you
may notice that one of the players has lying on a table before him an
instrument with many strings strung very much like those of the
pianoforte. It is played with two little mallets in the player's
hands, and produces the weird arpeggios and improvised runs
characteristic of Hungarian gypsy music. It is a very old instrument
called the cembalo. About the fifteenth century, it seems, some one
devised a keyboard attachment with quills for this instrument, tipped
the jacks with crow-quills, and called the result a clavicembalo (a
cembalo with keys). This was the origin of the harpsichord, the name
by which the clavicembalo soon became more generally known.
Harpsichords were shaped somewhat like our grand pianofortes, but were
much smaller. A spinet was a small harpsichord, and the virginal a
still smaller one. Sometimes, indeed, virginals were made no larger
than workboxes, the instrument being taken out of the box and placed
on a table before the player.
For the purposes of this book this very general survey of the
precursors of the pianoforte seems sufficient. The clavichord and the
instruments of the harpsichord (harpsichord, spinet, and virginal)
class flourished alongside of each other, but the best musicians gave
the preference to the clavichord because of its sweet tone and the
delicately tremulous effect that could be produced upon it by the
_balancement_. Experiments in pianoforte making were in progress
already in Bach's day, but he clung to the clavichord, as did his son,
Philipp Emanuel Bach. Mozart was the first of the great masters to
realize the value of the pianoforte and to aid materially in making it
popular by using it for his public performances. And yet even then the
clavichord, "that lonely, melancholy, unspeakably sweet instrument,"
was not abandoned without lingering regret by the older musicians, and
it still was to be found in occasional use as late as the beginning of
the last century. How thoroughly modern the pianoforte is will be
appreciated when it is said that a celebrated firm of English makers
founded in 1730 did not begin to manufacture pianofortes until 1780
and continued the production of clavichords until 1793.
Piano and Forte.
Neither on the clavichord nor on the harpsichord could the player vary
the strength of the tone which he produced, by the degree of force
with which he struck the keys. Swells and pedals worked by the knees
and the feet were devised to overcome this difficulty, but "touch"
as we understand it to-day was impossible with the instruments in
which the degree of sound to be produced was not under the control of
the player's fingers. The clavichord was _piano_, the harpsichord
was _forte_. Not until the invention of the hammer action, the
substitution of hammers for tangents and quill-jacks, was an
instrument possible in which whether the tone should be _piano_ or
_forte_ depended upon the degree of strength with which the player
struck the keys. This instrument was the first pianoforte. It was
invented and so named in 1711 by Bartolomeo Cristofori, of Florence,
and, although nearly two centuries have elapsed since then, the
action used by many pianoforte manufacturers of to-day is in its
essentials the same as that devised by this clever Italian. The
invention frequently is ascribed to Gottfried Silbermann, a German
(1683-1753). But the real situation is that Cristofori was the
inventor, while Silbermann was the first successful manufacturer of
the new instruments, from a business point of view. Time and
improvements were required before they made their way, and how slow
many professional musicians were in giving up the beloved clavichord
for the pianoforte already has been pointed out. But the latter was
bound to triumph in the end.
I shall not attempt to give a technical description of the mechanism
of the pianoforte. But I should like to answer a few questions which
may have suggested themselves to players who may not have cared to
take their instruments apart and examine them, or have not been
present when their tuners have taken off the lid and exposed the
strings and mechanism to view. The strings of the pianoforte are of
steel wire, and their tension varies from twelve tons to nearly
twenty. Those of the deepest bass are covered with copper wire. Eight
or ten tones of the bass are produced by the vibration of these
copper-wound strings. Above these, for about an octave and a half, the
strings are in pairs, so that, the hammer striking them, there are two
unison strings to a tone, simultaneously, and producing approximately
twice as powerful a tone as if only one string had been set in
vibration. The five remaining octaves have three strings to a tone.
All Depends on the Player.
When the fingers strike the keys the hammers strike the strings, the
force of the stroke depending upon the force exerted by the player,
this being the distinguishing merit of the pianoforte as compared with
its precursors. Under the strings are a row of dampers, and as soon as
a finger releases a key the corresponding damper springs into place
against the vibrating strings, stops the vibrations, and the tone
ceases. Thus the tone can be dampened immediately by raising the
finger or prolonged by keeping the finger pressed down on the key.
This is the device which enables the pianist to play _staccato_ or
_legato_. The damper pedal, or loud pedal, checks the action of all
the dampers and prolongs the tones even after the fingers have
released the keys. The soft pedal brings the hammers nearer the
strings, shortens the stroke and produces a softer tone. The
simultaneous use of both pedals is a modern virtuoso effect and a
very charming one, for the damper pedal prolongs the gentle tones
produced by the use of the soft pedal. I believe Paderewski was the
first of the great pianists who have visited this country, to employ
this effect systematically, and that he was among the first composers
to formally indicate the simultaneous employment of both pedals in
passages in his compositions. There is a third pedal called the
sustaining pedal, but I do not think it has proved as valuable an
invention as was anticipated.
Within recent years there have been introduced mechanical pianofortes,
which I may designate as pianolas, after the most popular instrument
of their class. In my opinion, these instruments are destined to play
an important part in the diffusion of musical knowledge, and it is
senseless to underestimate this. There are thousands of people who
have neither the time nor the dexterity to master the technique of the
pianoforte, who nevertheless are people of genuine musical feeling,
and who are enabled through the pianola to cultivate their taste for
music. The device renders the music accurately; whether expressively
or not depends, as with the pianoforte itself, upon the taste of the
person who manipulates it.
Decorations That Do Not Beautify.
The pianoforte often is spoken of as an instrument of ugly appearance.
This it emphatically is not. If the straight side of the grand is
placed against the wall the side toward the room presents a graceful,
sweeping curve, while the upright effectively breaks the straight
line of the wall against which it stands. If the pianoforte is ugly,
it is due to the so-called "ornaments" that are placed upon it--the
knicknacks, framed pictures and other senseless things. To my mind,
there is but one thing which it is permissible to place upon a
pianoforte, a slender vase with a single flower, preferably a
rose--the living symbol of the soul that waits to be awakened within
the instrument.
Sheet music or bound books of music on top of a pianoforte are an
abomination. If scattered about they look disorderly; if neatly
arranged in portfolios, even worse, for they create the precise,
orderly appearance of paths and mounds in a cemetery. Often, indeed,
the pianoforte is a graveyard of musical hopes. Because of that,
however, it need not be made to look like one.
Equally objectionable is the elaborately decorated or "period"
pianoforte designed for rooms decorated in the style of some
historical art period. A pianoforte has no business in a "period"
room. If the person is rich enough to afford "period" rooms, he also
can afford a music room, and the simpler this is, within the bounds of
good taste, and the less there is in it besides the instrument itself,
the better. The more proficient the pianist the less he cares for
decoration and the more satisfied he is with the pianoforte turned out
in the ordinary course of business by the high-class manufacturer.
No--decorated pianofortes are for those who are too rich to be
musical.