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AUGUST 23, 1919
THE
11
MUSIC TRADE REVIEW
OurTEOINICAL DEPARTMENT
CONDUCTED BY WILXIAM BRAID WHITE
after the death of his great father, and he was
referring to the primitive piano of the day with
its defective action. Yet his criticism remains
perfectly
applicable to the most costly piano
of two per second the energy set free by any
such blow has not by any means subsided when of the present day. The action of the modern
the second blow is struck. Undoubtedly if the piano has not the tremolo power of the clavi-
speed is no more than two per second there chord, and though it immensely overpowers all
will be a perceptible hiatus, but an hiatus in its ancestors in strength of tone its color range
intensity, not in actual sound. The successive is still admittedly small and this mainly because
sound excitations will overlap, even at this low of the relative stiffness of the hammer blow.
speed, but there will be a perceptible waviness The next great advance in piano construction
in the effect, owing to the length of the interval must be in the direction of approaching the
between any two blows. Double this speed and tremolo power of the clavichord, not by a re-
the ear will scarcely perceive any interval. In- turn to the tangent with its direct blocking
against the string, but by the development of
crease it further and the illusion of continued
mechanism which will give a more rapid repe-
tone will become quite perfect in its effect, pro-
tition on a shorter angular motion of the key.
vided, however, in all cases that the intensity of
That such a reform will involve some loss in
each blow, after the first, be very low.
the present capacity of the piano action to with-
The Problem Stated
In other words, the problem is to secure a stand hard knocks is not at all improbable, but
form of action which shall inflict blows at a this should not be a cause for regret on the part
rapidity not less than five per second, at the of any true music lover. I am not sure that
least, and thence, if possible, up to ten per sec- it is yet possible to do more than sketch very
ond, without physical difficulty on the part of roughly the elements of the mechanical problem
the performer on the overriding condition that involved, but for my present purposes this will
such blows shall be producible at extremely low be quite sufficient.
The Escapement
intensity.
Whoever is acquainted with the action of
Now, extremely low intensity means, in prac-
tice, extpemely short angular motions of the the modern piano knows that the essential fea-
keys. In other words, it means that the ac- ture common to all types of such mechanism
tion we need must enable us to produce a very lies in the escapement or trip mechanism which
rapid repetition on a very short key-dip. Prac- is interposed between the hammer and the key.
tically this is what the problem comes to. This depends for its operation on the fact that
Morris Steinert had this principle firmly in the action of the key on the hammer is essen-
mind when he worked out his Steinertone ac- tially percussion. The hammer is, in fact,
tion, which never had a fair trial, but which, I "thrown" at the string by an action as near as
am convinced, was grounded upon a correct ap- possible direct, which is tripped close enough
to the string to ensure that the hammer shall
preciation of the principles involved.
make the actual contact free from the block-
We thus come around to what I said in these
ing effect of finger pressure on the key. This
columns on August 9—"We must attack the
combination of direct percussion with trip and
problem of sustaining tone from the side of the
rebound provides at once the greatest strength
action, primarily, at least."
and the greatest weakness of the piano. It
The "Bebung"
furnishes power limited only to the muscular
The clavichordists of the sixteenth and sev- strength of the pianist and under complete
enteenth centuries obtained the effect called dynamic control, stroke by stroke, but it also
"tremolo" by the Italians, "balancement" by the effectively prevents any control over the tone
French and "bebung" by the Germans, by a after the contact between hammer and string
movement of the ball of the finger on the de- has once been made. It also prevents the at-
pressed key, with contact maintained through- tainment of a sustained tone, because it does
out the operation between finger and key. This not allow a tremolo as against a series of defi-
"trembling" of the finger on the down-held key nitely separated strokes.
gave the clavichordist power to obtain a sus-
What we have to do is to work away from
tained tone. As is said by Carl Philip Emanuel
this
limitation, even if we have to sacrifice some-
Rach in the introduction to his "Essay on the
True Art of Playing the Clavier" (quoted by Tay- thing in the way of percussive power.
The "Pushing" Lever?
lor in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musi-
It would seem quite evident that the first
cians), "I believe, nevertheless, that a good
clavier possesses—with the exception that its step must be to substitute some sort of push-
tone is weaker—all the beauties of the former ing or pulling movement for the definite per-
(the piano) and in addition the 'bebung' or cussion of the present action. There is nothing
power of sustaining the tone, inasmuch as after in the present requirements of the art of piano
playing which should make any special diffi-
striking each note I can give a fresh pressure."
culty here. The key would not have to be al-
Carl Philip Emanuel Bach wrote during the
(Continued on page 12)
middle years of the eighteenth century, shortly
THE POSSIBILITY OF PRODUCING SUSTAINED TONE—II
In the course of the discussions which have
taken place in these columns concerning the
practical possibilities of producing a sustained
tone in the piano I have directed attention to
the fact that if the fundamental basis of the in-
strument, the stretched string excited by a blow,
is to be preserved the only avenue of experi-
ment and research open to us lies in the direc-
tion of the action. The obviousness of this con-
clusion need not be pressed. The practical ques-
tion for us then is "what can be done, if any-
thing, to make the action more nearly capable
of producing a sustained vibration of the
string?"
When a stretched string is thrown into vibra-
tion by any kind of excitation not completely
continuous, that is to say, by any agent not
electromagnetic, its action is relatively very
short-lived.
In his remarkable book, "The
Science of Musical Sounds," Doctor Dayton
Miller has shown that the amplitude of vibra-
tion of a string on a piano drops extremely
rapidly and that within something like .03 of a
second after the hammer blow has fallen the
amplitude is only about .01 of its original width.
In a word, the string of the piano comes into
vibration only to sink to rest within a time
measurable in seconds. Such power as the
piano possesses to prolong its tones depends
mainly upon the sound board.
It is therefore fairly evident that if an ef-
fect substantially that of sustained tone is to be
had, at the will of the performer, and under
his control, some way must be found to in-
flict on the string blows delivered in such rapid
succession as to continually re-excite the string
before the audible effect of each previous blow
shall have died down. To a large extent, of
course, such a scheme must involve illusion, for
no finger technique can be imagined so rapid
as to re-excite the string continually without
allowing any hiatus. But just as the ear ac-
cepts as continuous vibrations whose order and
rate of succession can be completely determined
by non-aural means, so also the illusion of con-
tinuous excitation of tone can be attained so
soon as the number of blows which can be in-
flicted upon the string is sufficient to satisfy
the requirements of the ear.
The Ear's Illusion
Nor are these requirements very severe. A
continuous sound is accepted as existing as soon
as the frequency of the successive pulses ex-
ceeds twenty per second. But when we excite
the string of a piano with blows at a rate, say,
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