765721

Experimental Pianofortes and the Music Written for ThemAuthor(s): Rosamond HardingSource: Proceedings of the Musical Association, 57th Sess. (1930 - 1931), pp. 57-71Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/765721 .

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17 FEBRUARY, 1931.

PROF. E. J. DENT, M.A. PRESIDENT,

IN THE CHAIR.

EXPERIMENTAL PIANOFORTES AND THE MUSIC WRITTEN FOR THEM.

BY Miss ROSAMOND HARDING.

DURING the earlier years of the nineteenth century a pianoforte recital without an orchestral accompaniment to at least one of the works, was a rarity and the concerto form was almost always used in all the greater performances. It was not, in fact, until 1837 that Moscheles ventured to introduce pianoforte-evenings without this addition. The great pianists wrote concertos or divertissements for their instrument and in order that these works could be performed by the amateur in his home, where there could be no orchestra, all the tuttis were printed in short score and with the appropriate dynamic marks. Thus a pianist often found himself playing music originally designed for strings, brass or wood wind. In consequence of the desire on the part of these amateurs for two and four hand reduction of operatic and symphonic works, numerous devices were added to the pianoforte for the purpose of giving the illusion of an orchestra. These may be grouped under the following headings :-

(I) Devices for sustaining the sounds after the note had been struck.

(2) Octave couplers. (3) Characteristic stops such as (a) echo pedal, (b) bassoon

stop, (c) Janissary music. (4) " Repetition " actions to make it possible to imitate

quickly repeated notes of the violins in trills and cadences.

Curious pseudo-orchestral music was written for pianofortes with these attachments. In fact the instrument seems to have been looked upon by the public and also by a number of composers as a kind of chamber orchestra.

6 Vol. 57



58 Experimental Pianofortes.

There is no doubt that the pianoforte owes its invention to the deep interest taken by " amateurs " and " professors " in the orchestra. The root idea lying behind the earlier experimental harpsichords and pianofortes was to create a keyboard instrument with the expressiveness of the bowed stringed instruments and the capabilities of a harpsichord. It is necessary for me to begin by saying something about experimental harpsichords in order to show how naturally experimental pianofortes developed from them.

Considered from one point of view Cristofori's pianofortes are experimental harpsichords on which it was possible to imitate the delicate gradations of sound characteristic of the violoncello and other stringed instruments played with the bow, in place of the old stiff changes from a patch of forte to a patch of piano or pi piano without any gradations. Scipione Maffei, who announced Cristofori's great invention in 1711 to his own time and to succeeding generations, shows us clearly what the idea behind the invention really was. [I will make no apology for reading to you Rimbault's translation.] Maffei writes :-

" It is known to everyone who delights in music that one of the principal means by which the skilful in that art derive the pleasure of especially delighting those who listen, is the piano and the forte in the theme and its response, or in the gradual diminution of tone, little by little, and then returning suddenly to the full power of the instrument; which artifice is frequently used and with marvellous effect, in the great concerts at Rome, . .. Now, of this diversity and alteration of tone, in which instruments played by the bow especially excel, the harpsichord is entirely deprived, and it would have been thought a vain endeavour to propose to make it so that it should participate in this power. Nevertheless, so bold an invention has been no less happily conceived than executed in Florence, by Signor Bartolomeo Cristofali (sic) of Padua ... The produc- tion of greater or less sound depends on the degree of power with which the player presses on the keys, by regulating which, not only the piano and forte are heard, but also the gradations and diversity of power, as in a violoncello."

The great concerts referred to were probably the splendid and majestic academia, held at Cardinal Ottoboni's every Monday evening and directed by no less a personage than the composer and violinist Arcangelo Corelli.

May I remind you once again that the root idea lying behind the invention of experimental harpsichords and



Experimental Pianofortes. 59

pianofortes including even the invention of the pianoforte itself was the desire to create a keyboard instrument combining the expressiveness of the bowed stringed instruments with the capabilities of the harpsichord.

[To illustrate the effects of dynamic expression referred to by Maffei a slide was shown of a Gavotta for the Cimbalo col piano e forte by Lodovico Giustini di Pistoia (Florence, 1732). The speaker stated that this was probably the earliest music written for the pianoforte.]

But the composers of' keyboard music were not only interested in the possibilities of dynamic expression but also in the tone colour and characteristics of the orchestra instruments themselves. This is illustrated by an occasiona conscious imitation, in the music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, of a horn, trumpet, drum and bagpipes and other instruments.

Both the harpsichord and early pianoforte suffered from a grave defect when compared with the bowed stringed or wind instruments, since the tone faded rapidly away after the note had been struck. This defect may partially account for the fact that so many harpsichords and pianofortes were fitted with an organ attachment.

Bedford informs us that in London at his time (I7oo), the young ladies used to attend divine service expressly for the purpose of hearing their harpsichord pieces played upon the organ " where the concords could be more fully heard and the sound held on as long as the artist pleased without repeating the stroke."

In order to overcome this deficiency of not being able to sustain the tone many attempts were made to devise a mechanism for bowing the harpsichord strings, in imitation of a consort of viols. The earliest attempt to construct this type of harpsichord seems to have been made by Hans Hayden of Nuremberg in i6oo, but as this instrument has already been described by Mr. James, I shall pass on to some other experimental harpsichords.

In 1742 le Voir constructed a clave;in in which he incorporated a violoncello and a viola. Both of these instruments were provided with several bridges over which the strings were passed to be secured to their tuning pegs. These strings were divided into two portions each giving out a note appropriate to its vibrating length. By this means there were only twenty-five strings although there were fifty notes. A mechanism for bowing the strings was



6o Experimental Pianofortes.

arranged so that it could be worked by treadles. [A slide of this instrument was shown.]

Within the body of another clavegin by the same maker there were two violins, a viola and a large violoncello, whilst in le Gay's clavegin of the year 1762, the performer had a choice of tone colour-ranging from a theorbo or guitar to a consort of viols.

In 173o a preacher at Znain in Moravia named Procubus Divis (or Divisch) constructed a keyboard instrument in which there were 790 strings, and 130 changes of registration. He also added a means for enabling the performer to give himself an electric shock.

The first pianoforte of this type was built by Thomas Kunz of Prague in 1796. It was in the form of what is now called a " grand pianoforte" and had an organ attachment consisting of 360 pipes. There were 230 strings and 150 changes of registration. Six years later Zink, of Hesse- Homberg caused a piano-harmonica to be constructed which is said to have comprised fourteen instruments. There were three manuals: the upper one sounded a "Franklin" glass harmonica, the middle one a pianoforte, whilst the lowest manual secured the action of several wind instruments in concert.

But perhaps the most remarkable is V6ller's Apollomion built in the form of a grand pianoforte with an organ attachment and with an automaton in the form of a boy of eight years who blew a flute. This automaton is said to have been so lifelike that it even removed the flute from its mouth during the pauses. Schnell and Tschenky brought out their Anemokord or "Wind-clavier" in 179o. They hoped to imitate the tones of the aeolian harp by subjecting the strings to currents of air, but the slowness with which some of the strings responded to this stimulus obliged them to add a ring bow mechanism to initiate their vibrations. Schnell was appointed to the post of Court Instrument Maker to the Duchess of Artois and Marie Antoinette herself is said to have listened enraptured to his playing on this instrument.

On the outbreak of the revolution he narrowly escaped the guillotine. At the last moment, when the rebels had come to capture him he was rescued by his wife and enabled to make his escape in safety to Ludwigsburg.



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Music, when Sweet Voices die, Vibrates in the memory.

From a painting by Sir William Orchardson, R.A.

The Pianoforte is by Van der Hoef of Amsterdam and may be seen at the Bethnal Green Museum.

There are six pedals, from left to right as follows :-Bassoon, Drum, Piano, Bells, Una Corda, Forte.

(See page 67.)



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Piano, Piano, Una Corda, Bassoon. Height 255 cm.

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The five pedals are :-Forte, - , Bassoon, Una Corda and Drum. Height 231 cm.

Berlin. Hochschule fiir Musik. No. 1275.



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Giraffe Pianoforte by Christopher Erlich of Bamberg.

Pedals, left to right :-Bassoon, Forte, Piano, Piano and Turkish music. Height 239 cm.

Berlin. Hochschule fiir Musik. No. 1274.




You will have observed that the instruments enumerated above fall into three distinct classes:

(i) Stringed keyboard instruments with a ring bow mechamsm.

(2) Harpsichords and pianofortes with a multiplicity of stops.

(3) An instrument where the sounds are prolonged by the action of currents of air directed against the strings.

In the first the intention is to imitate the tone and expressiveness of the stringed band. In the second the desire is to produce a complete chamber orchestra, whilst in the third the orchestral effect of a sustained tone is produced. These extraordinary experiments did not cease at the end of the century as might have been expected. On the contrary they seem to have acted as a stimulus to numerous imitators. Mott's well-known sostenuto pianoforte of 1817 is but a descendant of Hans Hayden's Geigenwerk and was itself followed by many other attempts of the same kind. Even the Anemokord was imitated and numerous patents both English and foreign were obtained for pianofortes in which the sound of strings was sustained through the agency of a current of air directed against them. One of the more curious means of sustaining the sounds seems to have been a nineteenth century invention. It appears to have been first used by Isaac Hawkins, famous for his " Portable Grand Pianoforte." This is the Poitorise stop. It consists of a repeating hammer that strikes the strings so rapidly that the sound appears to be continuous. This invention was applied over and over again and seems to have been suggested by the old Bebung.

I cannot in this short time give you a list of all the strange instruments that were invented to counterfeit the orchestra but I will mention a few more that resemble more closely the nightmares of musical instrument makers than the sober patient work of mechanics with a taste for pianofortes.

In 1822 Abbe Gregor Trentin invented his Violicembalo, an instrument in the form of a grand pianoforte with the compass of six octaves. It was mounted with catgut strings which could be raised either singly or together by the action of the keys to meet a cylindrical bow composed of horse hair and revolved by a treadle. Trentin came forward with yet another device for prolonging the tones in 1824, this was the Metagofano, a two-octave attachment to be fitted to the upper part of the case of a pianoforte for the purpose




of doubling the strength and duration of the sounds. This mechanism was operated by means of a pedal. About the year 1828 Poulleau of Moscow invented the Orchestrino, a a keyboard instrument which could be played upon in the same manner as a pianoforte. The performer could produce from it the tones of the violin, viola, viol d'amore, violoncello, double bass, organ, etc. This was not his first attempt as in i8oi he had invented the Clavecin harmonique in connection with Huber. In the same year Gamma of Nantes brought forward the

wArMpou E#'ovov or Harmonious Bow. When it was played as an ordinary pianoforte it could supply the place of four stringed instruments. It could also imitate the timbre of the violoncello and the double bass so as to render the illusion complete. The writer who describes this instrument suggests that "to the musician desirous to obtain orchestral effects in order to try a dramatic composition it will prove an invaluable com- panion." He continues to say that though he is unable to speak of the internal structure, yet in his opinion " considered merely as a piece of furniture for the decora- tion of the drawing-room it is of the most handsome and finished kind."

Another means of obtaining orchestral effects consisted in the addition to the pianoforte of octave couplers. Experiments in this directiou have been made up to the present day. Their defect is heaviness of touch as it is usually necessary to have two actions. But these pianofortes, however interesting they may be to us now, never seem to have become popular. No doubt they were costly and difficult to keep in order. And I propose to turn to another type of instrument that became extremely popular in the first quarter of the nineteenth century.

The early pianoforte was not at first recognised as a species distinct from the harpsichord and consequently we find it described as a Gravicembalo col piano e forte or Clavecin 4 maillets or as a Harpsichord with hammers.

It is not too far fetched to say that the organ is really a mechanical wind orchestra and that the harpsichord is a string adaptation of the organ. The pianoforte was looked upon as a hammer version of the harpsichord upon which it was possible to obtain refinements in dynamic expression.

The early pianoforte therefore had stops. Some early pianoforte instruction books give direction for their proper use. There is also music written expressly for the pianoforte




with stops or pedals in which their use is indicated by signs. The following is a list of the earliest stops:- The Forte raised the dampers and left the strings free to

vibrate. The Piano stop consisted of strips of leather which were

interposed between the hammers and the strings to the extent of about half an inch.

The Pianissimo consisted of the same mechanism but the strips of leather were drawn out to about an inch.

The Una Corda in its earliest form caused the keyboard and action to glide so that the hammer struck one, two or three strings.

The Harp stop consisted of a fringe of silk or woollen material which fell amongst the strings and dried up the tone whilst the Lute or Sordino sometimes bears a striking resemblance to the "buff stop" on the harpsichord and is occasionally called by that name. But usually it consists of a strip of wood covered with leather which is brought up against all the strings from either above or below. This stop when used in connection with a set of pear-wood hammers counterfeits admirably the clavichord tone. I must explain that some of the oldest German pianofortes were provided with two hammers for every note, one hammer being of pear-wood without any covering whilst the other one was provided with a leather pad. There was also a stop for imitating the tone of the Cembalo. One form was rather like the piano stop. It consisted of strips of leather which were interposed between the hammers and the strings. But at the end of the upper side of these strips were glued pieces of bone or ivory. The sound of these when knocked up against the strings produced the cembalo tone. In this form it was patented by Bury of London (No. 1637) in 1788, but an example by a German maker can be seen at the Landesgewerbe Museum at Stuttgart.

The other form of this stop consisted in lowering strips of ivory and brass on to the strings. Silberman used this form. It can be seen in his pianoforte at the Stadt Schloss at Potsdam.

Anyone who has visited the remarkable collection of pianofortes at Berlin, the Neues Grassi Museum at Leipzig and those in the Landesgewerbe Museum at Stuttgart, will have been amazed by the stark tall instruments with their array of eight pedals. Their astonishment would no doubt increase when they discovered that one of the pedals produced the sound of a drum and triangle whilst another caused the




lower part of the instrument to sound like a bassoon. I must explain that the drum pedal usually consists of a large padded hammer that is made to strike the underside of the sound board in a Grand pianoforte and behind the sound board in an upright. [A diagram of the drum pedal applied to a grand pianoforte was shown.]

The bassoon stop consists of a strip of wood covered with parchment or specially stiffened paper. When pressed against the strings a nasal bassoon-like tone ensues. This stop usually only affects the bass portion of the instrument, that is to say from the lowest note up to middle C, but occasionally it operates as far as the E above.

The Turkish musical instruments--drum, triangle and cymbals--were added to the pianoforte as a result of the prevalent Turkish taste that affected everything from playing cards, children's toys, music and even literature during the latter half of the eighteenth century. A lingering trace of this may still be seen at a village fair in our oldest merry-go-rounds, where in front of the organ are to be seen soldierly automata beating drums and triangle and clashing cymbals. During the wars between Russia and Turkey many of the Russian nobles who had served in the army and who had heard the Turkish music desired to possess their own Turkish band.

On the occasion of the grand fete to celebrate her conclusive treaty with the Turks, the Empress Catherine of Russia decided to provide a band of Janissary music to entertain her guests at the feast. After an unsatisfactory attempt to form such a band it was recalled that the Empress had a certain chamber musician named Schmirpfel in her service, who had been to Constantinople. Schmirpfel's Turkish troupe was composed of twelve to fifteen musicians and was considered to be an exact imitation of the Janissary *band. It consisted as follows: 2, 3 or 4 Turkish hautboys, 2 large Turkish hautboys, both very piercing in tone; I transverse flute (very shrill), 2 small kettledrums, I bass drum, i pair of ordinary cymbals, I pair very large cymbals, 2 triangles. All the music was played either in unison or in octaves.

After this the band of expert hautboyists attached to the Imperial Guard decided to form themselves into a Turkish band in order to divert their officers during mess. One after the other the regiments throughout Europe added the Turkish instruments and often hired negroes, whom they dressed fantastically, to play upon these instruments.




Turkish music was introduced into church organs, barrel organs and even later into the harmonium. It is not, therefore, surprising to find it introduced into the pianoforte for the Turkish music gave a realistic effect, so dearly loved at that time, to marches and all descriptive music where soldiers were represented and it was also a useful addition in the performance of dance music.

The rise of the programme symphony in the eighteenth century also exercised an indirect effect on pianoforte con- struction. For composers began to write similar works for their instruments and this necessitated the addition of extra pedals and stops.

The Compte de Lac6p?de, in his book, entitled "Po6tique de la Musique," writes that "a symphony usually consists of three pieces . . . the composer ought to consider them as three grand acts of a theatrical piece and imagine himself to be working at a tragedy, a comedy or a Pastoral."1

Thus it was that composers both for the orchestra and for the pianoforte began to write a kind of theatrical music. This music was a kind of monkey ancestor to the so-called Romantic music of a slightly later date. Very often the programme is printed over the music as a guide to its proper understanding.

Battles, pastoral scenes, storms and descriptive music of all kinds ranging from a tiger hunt to a thanksgiving at St. Paul's or public christening on the Neva at St. Petersburg came to be written. The war-like period from 1789 to 1815 called forth many war-like pieces.

Crude realism plays a considerable part in all these works. In some of the older music the " Wolf " keys of the organ or the harpsichord had been used to enhance dramatic effect. So realistic had composers become that Leopold Mozart had ordered whistling through the fingers inserted into the mouth in a Pastoral representing a rural wedding.

Even great composers fell a victim to the prevalent taste. For Beethoven himself wrote a Battle Symphony for a gigantic clockwork panharmonicon or orchestra built by Maelzel in 1808. [As this instrument is lost a slide of an earlier one dated 1805 by the same maker, was shown.]

But the craze for descriptive music seems to have been largely due to Daniel Steibelt who wrote some extraordinary examples of it. His "Battle of Nerwinden " includes military signals and tunes and the ringing of alarm bells; whilst his "Conflagration of Moscow " is no less curious.

1See Niecks, " Programme Music." (London, p. xoz.)




In this piece the explosion of the Kremlin is represented musically and there is a section entitled Adagio, " Vows for the preservation of Alexander the Emperor, on the Air of 'God Save the King.' "

On the whole this quasi-romantic music falls into three main divisions :-

(i) The Commemorative piece; (2) The Military movement; (3) The Pastoral.

Like certain of the old landscape pictures it was composed according to a more or less set formula.

The Commemorative pieces may represent either a funeral of some celebrity or a public thanksgiving and include sections representing divine service and military music.

The Military movements may be anything from a march to a musical description of some battle. In the battles there must be the firing of cannon, beating of drums, cries of the wounded and rejoicing of the victors. Composers were also very fond of writing Turkish marches and those composed by Mozart and Beethoven are well known. Even the dignified and learned Leopold Mozart also wrote a Turkish piece and other descriptive music of this type, and he was much vexed upon receiving an anonymous letter requesting him to cease composing "absurdities such as Chinese and Turkish music, sledge drives and peasant weddings."

The Pastoral is perhaps the least unpleasant type of programme music as the opportunities for realism are happily less. Usually the music opens cheerfully and represents a gathering of merry peasants. Presently an alarming thunderstorm breaks and the terrified peasants run for cover. The storm clears off, the sun shines once more-no one is any the worse and the music ends with a thanksgiving after the storm.

[A slide illustrating a Pastoral by Auguste Bertini (a pupil of Clementi) for six hands on one pianoforte was shown at the point where the revels are interrupted by a storm in between the flashes of which is heard a distant drum.]

This music is highly dramatic in character and the various pedals served the purpose of orchestrating it, one might almost say of acting it.

The musical instrument maker had to do all he could to assist the pianist to bring out the dramatic interest of the music. The writers of pianoforte instruction books also did their best to inform the pianist how to attain the desired




effects. There were consequently prescriptions for mixing the stops or pedals in the right proportions in order to produce the necessary effect. For instance muffled drums were imitated by using the piano pedal in conjunction with the forte pedal. This combination was also useful for the thunderstorm. A special pedal that produced the harmonic octave of the note struck was invented for the purpose of giving the illusion of an echo, for the echo was often introduced into the Pastoral. [A slide illustrating this pedal (from Cromwell's Pat. No. 10937, 1845) as applied to an upright pianoforte was shown.] For Military and Turkish music the bassoon and drum pedals were almost a necessity. [A slide illustrating the use of the drum pedal in a March for six hands with four performers on one Piano Forte (or five hands and an octave flute) by Auguste Bertini was shown.] The problem of imitating the firing of cannon was simply if rather startlingly solved by a young lady of Boston whose name, unfortunately, has not been preserved. She possessed a square pianoforte with a pedal for opening the short flap of the lid in order to produce a swell. When the young lady desired to fire her cannon she merely raised the lid and allowed it to fall with a crash.

There can be no doubt that the audience liked to be thrilled and, despite the stern disapproval of great men, such as Hummel and Czerny who condemned the bassoon, drum, bells and triangle as "childish toys of which a solid player would disdain to avail himself," the orchestral pianofortes continued to be made and music continued to be written for them.

Curious though these pianofortes seem to us now, it is of importance to remember that they were made in great numbers and their presence in the home of an Austrian, German, Netherlander or Frenchman would have occasioned no astonishment during the earlier half of the nineteenth century. [Seven slides were shown. (i) and (2) Sir William Orchardson's pictures of pianofortes by Van der Hoef of Amsterdam and Taschta of Vienna (both pianofortes are at the Bethnal Green Museum); and Upright Piano- fortes by (3) Westerman, (4) Erlich, (5) Schlimbach, (6) Seiffert, (7) Wacht.] See Illustrations.

There is a grand pianoforte of this type with Turkish music in the Landesgewerbe Museum at Stuttgart which was formerly in the possession of Dr. Johann Kanka, an Advocate of Prague. According to his statement this instrument was frequently played upon by his client, L. van Beethoven.




In a drawing by Louis Dupre, of Rossini, reproduced in Vol. 3 [Plate XLIX, p. 450] of the new edition of " Grove's Dictionary" (1927), the composer is seen standing against a square pianoforte with at least six pedals.

It is also of some interest to note that Napoleon owned a pianoforte by Erard frdres made in i8oi with five pedals:-

(1) Una Corda; (2) Bassoon; (3) Forte; (4) -Piano; (5) Turkish music.

I should like before concluding to mention another type of experimental pianoforte. Paul-Joseph Sormani of Paris invented the Piano Basque in 1841. It was a pianoforte which appears to have consisted entirely of tambourines whose beaters were worked from a keyboard. This may have been due to the influence of Steibelt who used to tour with his wife, a good tambourine player. In fact he wrote a considerable number of pieces for the pianoforte with an accompaniment for the tambourine and other composers followed his lead. [A slide was shown illustrating Steibelt's "Waltz XXIII " for tambourine and pianoforte. The speaker pointed to his signs for the piano (una corda) and forte pedals and stated that they were used in a modified form by Hummel and Sir Henry Bishop.]

A pianoforte with chromatic kettledrums was patented by Nunns and Fischer of New York, in 1847. This instrument, which had been called the Melodicon with drums consisted in combining a series of kettledrums with an ordinary pianoforte, so that the strings and drums should sound simultaneously.

The finger keys were connected with a series of rods which either passed through a longitudinal opening in the back of the case or through a series of holes specially bored to receive them, and worked another hammer action under- neath the pianoforte. This second set of hammers played upon the drums which were in tune with the pianoforte strings. A damping arrangement was provided to stop the vibrations of the drums after the finger left the key.

A possible solution of the problem of why kettledrums were introduced into the pianoforte may be found in the fact that many persons still looked upon the pianoforte as a makeshift orchestra upon which reductions of orchestral works could be played. Berlioz had been experimenting with kettledrums and it will be remembered that he uses




eight pairs-sixteen drums--in his "Requiem" which was first performed in 1837. He writes thus:-

" In order to obtain a certain number of chords in three, four and five parts, more or less doubled, and moreover a striking effect of very close rolls, I have employed in my grand Requiem Mass eight pairs of drums, tuned in different ways, and ten drum players."

It is a little difficult to understand how Messrs. Nunns and Fischer succeeded in fitting drums to all the bass notes in their instrument since, as Berlioz remarks, " the difficulty of getting parchment sufficiently large to cover a vessel bigger than the great bass kettledrum is perhaps the reason which prevents our obtaining sounds lower than F."

I have now endeavoured to bring to your notice some of the more remarkable pianofortes made during the latter part of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, instruments often wonderfully ingenious and held in great esteem in their time, but now obsolete and appearing grotesque and even ludicrous to the critic of to-day. Much might be said regarding the fashions and the musical taste of the period when they were in vogue, but that is a subject too large to be dealt with this afternoon.

DISCUSSION. THE CHAIRMAN: We have listened to an unusually interesting paper. It has been not only instructive but amusing. We have often heard of these 'freak' instruments with six pedals, and writers on music delight to make fun of them and think that it is so astonishing when they find a pianoforte with six pedals and that one of the pedals rings a bell. It never occurs to them that these pianofortes were wide- spread in Europe a hundred years ago and that special music was composed for them. Miss Harding has been able to show that all these experiments progressed in a direct line, that there was a definite artistic intention about them. Taken singly they may seem eccentric, but if you take them together, as she has done, and study the patents in their chronological order, you will find there is very considerable method in their madness.

What I think is the most important is her pointing out that the pianoforte in Beethoven's day was considered to be a chamber orchestra. It began, as she has told us, by being a harpsichord with piano and forte. It had hard hammers which were intended to produce the harpsichord tone. It was not intended for a moment to produce the kind of tone




which is produced by a modern concert pianoforte. The pianoforte as a chamber orchestra corresponds not only with the romantic and descriptive music of the period but also with the actual development of the orchestra itself. For instance, you can see the kind of orchestra Beethoven's Ninth Symphony demanded; this janissary and military music coming into the symphony, the enlargement of the classical orchestra and at the same time the very beginning of what we now call pianoforte arrangement.

I need hardly remind so learned a body that up till about i8oo pianoforte arrangements of orchestral music hardly existed, and any young lady who learnt the pianoforte for the amusement of her domestic circle was expected to be able to play from a simple score such as the scores of the opera songs. The pianoforte arrangement was partly a concession to the weaker vessels, but it was very largely the result of a desire to represent as far as possible the orchestral effects on the pianoforte. We think those pianoforte arrangements of those days very simple, but nowadays you will see a great many pianoforte arrangements of opera symphonies which are practically unplayable; they are simply compressions of the score, because the amateur wants to know what the instruments are doing without the trouble of learning to read a real score.

I see other members here who are more learned in these matters than I am, and I hope I may call upon Captain Broadwood to open the discussion.

Capt. BROADWOOD: I do heartily agree with you when you commend Miss Harding's intelligence and skill in digging out these extremely interesting pieces of information.

The difficulty is that the mechanic is not naturally a scribe and there is probably a great deal of quite interesting instrumental achievement which we shall never hear anything about. There are legends in the Broadwood Piano firm of all kinds of queer instruments such as a Five-decker Piano, rather after the style of the one which Emanuel Moor brought out about five years ago. But when you try to get to the exact facts, it is extremely difficult to collect any.

The Lecturer is right, I am sure, in saying that it is the expense and difficulty of keeping these instruments in order which has largely caused them to fall out of the scheme of evolution of the musical instrument.

As I ventured to say after Mr. Philip James's lecture on the Earlier Keyboard Instruments, it is very




interesting to watch the evolution of instruments. In the same way as animals, plants and perhaps human beings they evolve, rise to favour, then gradually fall out of use either by being too complicated or not complicated enough. We seem now to have settled down fairly well to the present form of the grand piano, which, as Professor Dent says, has indeed been evolved. No one could have imagined the tone of the present grand piano. They were seeking to make the harpsichord tone and gradually-by accident, as it were--the present magnificent tone of the grand piano has been arrived at.

In the book which Miss Harding will bring out, I understand she has an illustration of a Chopin piano, which as a matter of fact I have played on myself. That was the best piano there was in the time of Chopin, which is com- paratively a few years ago. The difference in the quality and volume of tone of that piano and the present day grand is absolutely amazing; if there are any pianoforte makers left in ten years' time it will be interesting to see what they will have evolved.

Mr. PHILIP JAMES: I enjoyed Miss Harding's paper enormously. It does form an extremely valuable addition to our very scanty knowledge of these pianos.

There is one thing perhaps I might add, if she will allow me. In her slides she showed pianos in pictures painted by Sir William Orchardson. Those two pianos actually belonged to him and can be examined by anybody who wishes to see them in the Museum at Bethnal Green. They are in good working order.

May I raise one other point ? We know that there was an instrument, the Organ-harpsichord, and we know that there was a Pedal-clavichord. We know also that there were Organ-pianos, Miss Harding did just refer to them. But I do feel they must have been a good deal commoner than we imagine owing to the number of advertisements we find of them. I wanted to ask if she had actually examined one.

Miss HARDING: There is one in excellent condition in Berlin and another in anything but good working order. Actually I have not seen very many of them. I am afraid the way they work is rather too complicated to be explained without a diagram,

THE CHAIRMAN: It only remains for me to express our thanks to Miss Harding for her brilliant paper, and I propose a very hearty vote of thanks to her. (Applause.)



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