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DEPARTMENT
William BreddWlute,7ec/imcatEditor
The Place of the Piano Action in the
Future Development of the Instrument
Repetition the Core of the Entire Problem Which Confronts Those Who Are Studying
New Developments in This Direction—The Steinert Experiment
H I L E working on the remaining chap-
ters of a forthcoming book, in which
I hope to set forth all that is actually
known and can be rationally deduced about
the scientific facts underlying tone production
in the pianoforte and about the application of
these facts to the processes of manufacture, I
have been compelled to think very seriously
about that important and rather neglected fac-
tor which is bound up with the construction
and design of the action. No one who has not
actually tried to do it can imagine the genuine
difficulty of approaching the action from any
really national point d'appui. The mechanism
which has been in process of development during
the last two hundred years has remained quite
stationary as to principle and nearly so as to
construction for now a century. It is hard to
realize, though it is strictly true, that the piano-
forte action as seen in the best grand pianos,
wherever built, is essentially the mechanism
perfected in 1821 by Sebastien Erard. True,
the construction has been simplified, the parts
have been virtually standardized and machin-
ery of great accuracy has made the production
both rapid and mechanically correct. Yet, in
all this, there has been no improvement in the
principles and very little in their mechanical
application. The grand action still rests upon
the repetition lever, and all pianoforte playing
in turn rests upon the skill shown by the ob-
scure mechanics in the shops who regulate
and adjust this lever and its accessory parts.
W
Musician and Action
Now this would be quite satisfactory if we
could be sure that nothing else is, or can be,
needed to create perfection.
Unfortunately,
however, we well know that the action as it
stands to-day is by no means adequate to the
functions which pianists ol the advanced
schools would impose upon it. One only has
to study the methods devised by eminent
teachers like Matthay to see that this is so.
Pianists indeed do not usually know anything
about the mechanism of the action and com-
monly fall into the most ridiculous errors con-
cerning it; but one thing they do know, and
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that is what they want to get from the act of
touch. And if we analyze this desire we find
that it may be expressed in mechanical terms
by the one word "repetition." The pianist
wants to be able to repeat a stroke once made
on the key so that he may go from the loud-
est to the softest sound within the shortest
possible interval of time. In fact, he wants a
mechanism more rapid than his fingers, with
their present training, can control completely.
Given this mechanism, the finger technique will
follow in due course.
Repetition in reality is the core of the whole
action problem. The ideal action would be
that one with which the pianist, at the expense
of a minimum of physical effort, could obtain
a maximum rapidity of repetition under all pos-
sible conditions, that is to say, even under con-
ditions involving the immediate following of
maximum by minimum velocity of key. The
pianist would like to be able to repeat faster,
which means to repeat without having to allow
the key to rise so far as it now must rise to
obtain repetition, and he would like this repe-
tition to take place under conditions permit-
ting him to utilize a smaller quantity of physi-
cal energy for each stroke.
Steinert
It can readily be seen that if the principles
of piano playing were changed and if the pian-
ist were attempting to obtain over the string
a control more direct than he now exercises,
he would wish to have an action which would
give him means of holding the hammer against
the string, that is to say, he would wish for
an action which would virtually allow him to
beat the string directly with the hammer, just
as if he held the latter in his hand at the end
of a long stick, as the player of the gipsy
cembalo does to this day. One can easily see,
unfamiliar as the 'notion is, that a technique
might be developed which, given the adequate
mechanism for realizing it, would produce a
quite different kind of piano playing. Indeed,
the late Morris Steinert of New Haven and
Boston, who made a lifelong study of the an-
cestors of the piano and brought together a
remarkable collection of ancient keyboard in-
struments, of which every one was in playing
condition at the time of his death, did actually
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make the attempt to produce an action which
should give the player direct control over the
hammer. He attempted, in other words, to de-
vise a mechanism whereby the pianist, depress-
ing the key, should touch the string through
the hammer while the latter was still in en-
gagement with the train of levers controlled
by the key. This meant of course that the
finger technique had to be quite different, but
those musicians who took the trouble to test
the Steinert invention were almost unanimous
in saying that it presented to them new ideas
and new possibilities of tone production.
Unfortunately, however, the "Steinertone" did
not succeed in making that impression upon
the public which its ingenious inventor had
hoped for. Inertia is a social force which has
not yet been adequately measured. When it
has been measured we shall perhaps be able to
understand why the piano industry has been
able to flourish for a hundred years in the
face of an irreducible minimum of technical
achievement during that time. Still, what Stein-
ert did accomplish was quite interesting enough"
to cause one to think very seriously about the
possibility of following up his work and carry-
ing it still farther.
His Own Words
Steinert's own words in this matter are very
interesting. In his "Reminiscences" he says:
"All tone productions during the last one hun-
dred and fifty years have been obtained by
means of hammers, and it was the hammer that
I finally chose to utilize as a means of tone
production and which I determined should
serve me in enlarging its limitations. I there-
fore constructed a mechanism which resembles
greatly the natural formation of the human
hand and arm, which could influence the ham-
mer and control its strokes when meeting the
string, the same as the violinist holds and con-
trols his bow, and through this vibratory me-
tion touches the strings and draws out tones
which are closely related to those obtained by
means of the tangent of the clavichord.
"When I had developed this mechanism to
a certain state of perfection I discovered that
the tonal capacity or the vibrating power of
a soundboard . . . was far superior . . . to the
curved belly soundboard found in the . . . violin
tribe. This discovery still further convinced
(Continued on page 33)
William Braid White
Associate, American Society of Mechanical
Engineers; Chairman, Wood Industries
Division, A. S. M. E.; Member, American
Physical Society; Member, National Piano
Technicians' Association.
Consulting Engineer to
the Piano Industry
Tonally end Mechanically Correct Scales
Tonal and Technical Surreys of Product
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