Pedal-clavichord. Consisting of two manual clavichords, with two strings to each note, of (8 ft. and) 4 ft. tone, and a pedal-clavichord with four strings to each note, two 16 ft. and two 8 ft. Inscribed “Johann David Herstenberg, Organ-builder at Geringswald, made us, 1760.” De Wit collection.
We know of a hundred attempts to improve the sound of the clavier, and make it more expressive. Here, too, the eighteenth century is the experimental preparation for the happy successes of the nineteenth. Now the string-choruses were tuned in octaves, now pedals were added for low notes, now the sound-boards were strengthened, now the lower strings were made of copper, and the higher of steel; and throughout a rich experience was acquired as to the best way of constructing the separate parts. Leather plectrums appear everywhere in order to make the tone softer and less metallic. The clavier, in fact, was made to imitate all possible orchestral instruments, and even such natural phenomena as thunder and lightning, by means of register-stops. Or, the forte and piano stops were combined, ever more artistically, into as many as two hundred and fifty permutations, so that an endless number of shades was possible.
The solution of the problem was the modern hammer-clavier or pianoforte, in which the strings are no longer plucked but struck with hammers, so that every nuance of touch depends on the fingers. The story of the pianoforte is the usual Story of Inventions. While people were labouring to solve the problem by theoretical calculation, it had long lain solved in an unsuspected fashion before them, and those who were slowly working at the practical realisation were personally forgotten, until a positively sufficient experience made the new invention popular. The beginnings of the pianoforte are therefore, as usual, obscure. The striking of the strings with hammers had long been the method employed in the dulcimer. At the beginning of the last century an artist named Pantaleon Hebenstreit was much talked of, who played the dulcimer so perfectly, that everyone was astounded at the new sound-effects. It is possible that his success gave the impulse: in any case, in the year 1711 there emerges in Italy an instrument called the pianoforte—because it could be played piano as well as forte—elaborated by a certain Bartolommeo Cristofori, who was soon forgotten. This instrument is clearly pictured in writings recently recovered as a hammer-clavier; Cristofori, as curator to Ferdinand de’ Medici, had a splendid collection of Belgian, French, and Italian Flügel-instruments to look after, the study of which, without doubt, aided him in his invention. His pianoforte, which at first shows a still more primitive technique, gradually draws sensibly nearer to the modern system; yet, on account of its unaccustomed tone and touch, it was unable to gain any appreciable results in the following decades. Cristofori could not have dreamt that an Italian society of our time would build a monument to him as inventor of the world-charming pianoforte, in the national sanctuary, the Santa Croce of Florence.
Whether Hebenstreit built on Cristofori, Cristofori on the French, or the French on the Germans, is unknown. Possibly the pianoforte was invented thrice over, in Italy, France, and Germany. In France appears Marius in the year 1716 as the inventor; in Germany it would seem that a certain Schröter, incited by the success of Hebenstreit, invented it in 1717; at least he himself says so in a writing first published in Freiberg in 1763, ten years after the death of the instrument-maker, Silbermann. But Silbermann had in any case the merit of having, at a more fortunate time than Cristofori, worked so hard at the perfecting of the pianoforte, that from him its increasing spread and the gradual displacement of the clavicymbal and clavichord may be dated. Yet this very Gottlieb Silbermann had constructed a “cimbal d’amour,” which by a cleverly devised mechanism heightened the tone of the clavichord—so “lonesome, melancholy, and inexpressibly sweet.” But his later renown rests on his exquisitely manipulated pianoforte. He had a good master in this difficult work—John Sebastian Bach. When he brought his first model to Bach the latter found it too weak in the treble and too hard to play. Silbermann was first vexed, then stimulated by this censure. He then sold no more, and went on making improvements in it until the old Bach, as Agricola[94] says, gave him unmixed commendation.
If we play Bach to-day on our extremely refined pianofortes, we are inclined to imagine that his fine effects are solely due to the perfection of the instrument. And this opinion is not wholly false. Though in the cembalo there sounded in his ear something of the accustomed solemnity of the organ, there is yet in his music a cry for a subtle and expressive instrument which he as little possessed as Beethoven possessed an orchestra suited to his ideas. In every great tone-creator lives a superabundance of imaginative form which the instruments of the time cannot embody, and to which the instruments instantly strive to become equal. Because Berlioz was, the modern orchestra is. Because Bach was, the pianoforte is, which knows how to express with justice the subtleties of his soul-music. I think for example of the never-to-be-forgotten theme of the C sharp minor prelude in the first volume of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier. The clavichord could only give this theme in a thin lament; the spinet in a rigid and unmanageable form. But what features does not the motive show as the piece runs on! Now it has the slow-breathing rhythm of a noble aspiration, now the opening eyes of an expectant Cecilia, now the heavy oppression of a martyr soul, now the holy rage of a last noble complaint, now the sweet weariness of Christian humility. And with these various tints the piece builds itself up into a broad picture, which leads from renunciations through pain to renunciations; with these tints every line, every note of the theme is given an active life, as it pursues its course. Composition like this demanded an instrument which should be capable of a new expression in every touch. All that Bach dreamed of, the pianoforte gave, awakening the gentle soul of the clavichord to an unthought-of fulness of existence, and changing the mechanical force of the clavicymbal to a sudden consciousness of personality. The voices of a fugue-passage would now be personally separated from each other; every line in the great lacework could be brought out at the moment according to the feelings of the performer. What, under the sacred laws of Bach’s music, slumbered in the depth of the breast, found in the new instrument its unreserved interpretation.
[95]It seems at first sight almost tragic that Bach himself can never have realised these effects, which are so familiar to us in connection with his music as it is nowadays interpreted on the pianoforte. But perhaps it is the wisdom of Fate to ordain that the cup of the artist should ever be dashed by a certain bitterness, the conscious falling short of attainment as it appears in complete idea before his mind.
“Bundfrei” Clavichord (i.e. with a separate string to each key), by Chr. G. Hubert,
Bayreuth, 1772. De Wit collection.