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The Making of a Steinway
opened, and, amid a shower of sparks, a stream of molten iron
bright as the sun himself flowed forth.
*
Winold Reiss, the artist, who was with us, could not contain
himself. "What a color, what brilliancy!" he gasped. It oc-
curred to me that the scene in that foundry was symbolic of
the piano itself. The marvelous color and the intense brilliancy
of the flowing iron which overwhelmed the painter called to
mind those same qualities in tone which have so often over-
whelmed the world's master musicians.
A Race of Titans
In the rim-bending department I found a race of Titans.
And well do they need those swelling muscles.
The rim or case of a grand piano consists of a number of
thin boards about fifteen inches wide and eighteen feet long,
or even longer, depending upon the size of the instrument, which
have been carefully glued together, layer upon layer. This
laminated plank, which has been built up to about an inch in
thickness, is bent by a gang of six of these Herculean workmen
around a form to the shape of the rim of a grand piano. It is
locked in the press and left to dry.
The next day the glue is dry, and the plank, which has per-
manently taken the form of the rim, is taken out of the bending
press and put away for a long period of seasoning.
The inner rim, to which the sounding board and plate are
fastened, is bent and seasoned in the same way as the outer rim.
Then they go to a cabinet-maker, who glues them together,
and thus constructs the case. When at length it is finished he
pastes on it with becoming pride a label bearing his name.
It is now no longer well-seasoned timber, but is a Stein-
way—though in embryo. It is given the factory number under
which it will travel through the Steinway works, and another
number under which it will go out into the great world to win
for itself glory and renown.
In the key-making department I saw a long row of w r ork-
men finishing the keys. I watched the man nearest to me and
was struck by his zeal. He filed one of the ivory keys, and he
rubbed it, and he scraped it, and he examined it, and he felt it
with his thumb, and then filed it, and scraped it and rubbed it
and polished it again.
I am fully persuaded that to that man the key (which has
no more to do with the tonal qualities of a piano than the rind
has with the flavor of a melon) represented the most important
and impressive part of the entire instrument. The earnestness
of the moulder was sublime, but the ardor of the key-maker
almost approached the ridiculous—yet I respected him for it.
Marriage of Metal to Wood
The plate, after it has been cast and removed from the
mould, is lacquered and bronzed, and bronzed and lacquered
until it glitters like burnished gold. Then it is sent, together
with the case, keys, actions, and sounding board, to another
group of buildings where the piano is completed, and varnished
and dried, and varnished and rubbed, and varnished and polished
until the outside is as perfect as the inside.
With what patience the metal plate is fitted to the wooden
case! The bottom of the tuning pin section of the plate is
covered with graphite and is lowered into the case. When it
is raised it leaves behind a few black marks where the graphite
has come off, thus showing the points of contact.
A workman scrapes away at the wood for some time, black-
ens the plate again, and again lowers it into the case. A little
more black now appears, but the bed of the case is still mostly
white wood. He continues this operation, raising the plate,
scraping the wood, lowering the plate, raising it again, scraping
again, until it would seem that human patience would be ex-
hausted. In time the desired black, showing perfect contact,
will extend all over the case, and the plate and the case will
be made one.
This homogeneity insures the necessary resistance to the
pull of the strings and assures permanency of the full, round
tone.
If so much care is taken to fit in the plate properly, think
what a world of pains is required when the time comes to set
in the sounding" board! For a piano is a sounding board. True,
it has a mechanical contrivance for vibrating it, a frame and
a plate for supporting it, and a case for protecting it.
The Heart of a Steinway
But in the last analysis the heart of the instrument is this
sounding board—cunningly constructed of many strips of wood
so skilfully matched as to grain and texture that they have
become, to all intents and purposes, one broad, smooth, slightly
convexed piece of lumber.
When a note is struck the hammer is thrown against the
string, which is set in vibration. The vibration runs along the
string to the bridge, down the bridge to the sounding board,
which is set in motion, thus giving forth the note. Now, in a
Steinway grand, a wonderful thing happens.
The vibration does not stop with the sounding board, but
because the sounding board has been united to the rim with
the same exactness and precision as the plate was united to the
case, the sounding board and the rim have become one vibrat-
ing body.
And it may be truly said that the whole piano sings.
Now it will be plain why the astute Steinways do their
own casting, and why they place so high a value on their light
plates. They know that an excess of non-vibrating metal would
smother, as it were, the ringing quality of their instruments.
But to go back to the sounding board. It is to the piano w r hat
the box is to the violin. If you could have seen the workmen
matching the wood for the sounding boards you perhaps would
have suspected that you had found the answer to the problem—
"What is the secret of the Steinway supremacy?"
History Repeats Itself
In rooms flooded with sunshine they worked, not as I have
seen men work in other factories, for the maximum production,
but slowly, intently, and, I might almost say, majestically. They
were quiet, deliberate fellows, mostly gray-haired and spec-
tacled, and each one of them seemed conscious of the fact that
he was engaged in making sounding-boards for Steinway. It
seemed to me that once more history was repeating itself and
that before my eyes were being re-enacted, though in a larger
way, it is true, the scenes that long ago took place in that
immortal violin workshop in the ancient city of Cremona.
Higher Mathematics in Piano Construction
When at last the sounding-board has been constructed, it is
marked with the Steinway scientific scale.
And, pray, what is this scientific scale?
Frankly, I have not the shadow of an idea. The principle
was explained to me by probably the foremost authority in the
world on piano construction, and yet it proved quite beyond my
comprehension.
All that I could gather was that for generations Steinway
experts have been working on an abstruse problem in the mathe-
matics of music, and that the present arrangement and length
of the strings, as found in their instrument, is their solution of
the problem. They believe that they have now achieved the
most perfect scales that have ever been known.
The steel wire used for the piano strings comes in one-
pound coils. Each and every pound is placed in a machine and
tested for tensile strength.
"Have you during the last year had to reject any of the
wire ?" I asked.
"Not a single coil."
"How about the year before last?"
"Not a coil."
"The year before that?"
"Not a coil."
"And yet you keep on patiently testing each and every
pound?"
"Of course. Some time there will be a coil which will not
be quite up to the standard, and you don't suppose we would
permit an inch of such wire to go into a Steinway?"
I felt reasonably sure that I was getting close to the dis-
covery of the secret.
(Continued on following ptu/c)