IV
The pianoforte sonatas of Beethoven hold an undisputed place in the literature for that instrument. Whatever the future of music may be, they can hardly be dethroned. They must always, it would seem, represent the broadest, deepest and highest dimensions to which the sonata can develop. Music which has since been written under the name of sonata has been and will be compared with the sonatas of Beethoven, has been and will be found wanting either in form, in content or in the union of the two, by comparison with those of the great master of Bonn. In the matter of musical value they may be equalled, in many matters concerning the treatment of the pianoforte they have been excelled; but as sonatas they will probably hold their high place for ever, scarcely approached.
Improvements in the structure of the instrument itself have something to do with their massiveness. The growth of the pianoforte to serviceable maturity was a slow process, and not until Beethoven was well advanced in years was he able to secure one which could carry the burden that his powerful imagination would put upon it.
In the year 1711 Bartolomeo Cristofori, a Florentine, made the first piano, that is to say, an instrument the strings of which were struck by hammers operated by means of a keyboard. That the volume of sound so produced would be soft or loud in accordance with the pressure brought to bear on the keys by the player gave the instrument its name—Piano(soft)-forte(loud). The harpsichord, it will be remembered, did not offer the player such a chance for expression and for the gradation of sound. The clavichord was inferior to the new instrument in volume and resonance. However, sixty years of experiment and invention were required to bring the pianoforte to the point at which it began wholly to displace its predecessors in the favor of composers and virtuosi.
Of the many difficulties which manufacturers had to overcome, only a few need be mentioned. The most serious was the problem of making a frame strong enough to resist the tension of the heavier wire strings. This was met by tension bars, by metal braces, and finally by the invention of a cast-iron frame, not, however, until after Beethoven had ceased writing for the pianoforte. The problem of the action was complicated by the necessity for the hammers to fall back instantly from the strings as soon as they had struck them. This falling back is known as the escapement, and it was chiefly by devices of escapement that two great pianoforte actions came to be differentiated from each other by the end of the eighteenth century. These actions are known as the Viennese and the English.
With the former are associated the names of Stein and Streicher. It was a light action and the tone of the Viennese pianos was correspondingly light and fine. It had little volume and in melodies was sweet and clear but not full. It was for such pianos that Haydn and Mozart wrote their sonatas. Both men first acquired their keyboard technique on the harpsichord, and later both naturally adopted a piano the light action of which demanded approximately the same sort of touch as that which they had already mastered. A style of music developed from the nature of the instrument which was little different from harpsichord music. Effects of fleetness and delicacy marked it.
In 1777 Mozart had visited the Stein factories, then in Augsburg, and had been much pleased by a device with which Stein’s pianos were equipped: a lever, worked by the knee, which lifted the dampers from all the strings at once, allowing them a fuller and richer vibration in loud passages than was necessary in softer ones. This genouillière soon gave way to the pedal which had been invented for the same purpose by the English manufacturers. Pedal effects distinguish pianoforte music from harpsichord music perhaps more than any other feature. These are chiefly effects of sonority, of combining in one relatively sustained mass of sound notes which lie far apart on the keyboard, outside the span of the hand. These notes, of course, cannot be struck together, but, when struck one after the other, can be blended and sustained by means of the pedal. There must be supposed in the pianoforte a tone which unaided will vibrate longer after its string has been struck than the dry, short tone of the harpsichord. Such a sustained, rich tone the Viennese pianos did not have. They suggested but few possibilities in pedal effects to Haydn and Mozart. For them the close spacing of harpsichord music was natural. They ventured little in wide combinations, in sonorous masses of sound.
Beethoven’s Broadwood Pianoforte.
From a drawing made on the day after his funeral.
The English action, on the other hand, was more resilient and more powerful, the tone of the English pianos correspondingly fuller and richer. The instruments at once suggested a range of effects quite different from the harpsichord. Thus Clementi begins as early as 1770 to build up a new keyboard technique, demanding strength as well as fleetness and lightness, using octaves, double notes, heavy chords and wider and wider spacing. This becomes the new idea of playing the piano. Mozart is judged by contemporaries who have heard Clementi and his pupils, to have little technique, i.e. in the new style. He is still a cembalist. Composers have a new power within their control, the power to stir now by mere volume of sound, to do more than please or amuse, to impress by power and breadth of style. The piano becomes second in volume, in quick changing variety and multiplicity of effects only to the orchestra. Sonatas approach the symphony in depth and meaning. The ideas of the new style are spread over Europe by Clementi and his disciples. The great maker of pianofortes in Paris, Sebastian Érard, copies the English action.
Beethoven grew up with the new idea of pianoforte music. The pianoforte presented to him in Bonn by Graf Waldstein was probably of the light-toned Viennese make; but as early as 1796 he came in touch with English pianos on a concert trip to Berlin and other cities. In 1803 he came into possession of an Érard, through the generosity of one of his Viennese patrons, Prince Lichnowsky. It never wholly pleased him. His wish was for one of the heavy sonorous English pianos. In 1817 it was fulfilled. Thomas Broadwood sent him an exceptionally powerful and fine one from his establishment in London, in token of admiration. The Érard was given away, the last colossal sonatas were composed. Even after this piano had outworn its usefulness Beethoven kept it by him. Even after he received a piano especially made for him by a Viennese maker named Graf, strung with four strings to a note in consideration of his deafness, he retained his Broadwood. Both were side by side in his room at the Schwarzspanierhaus when he died.