Between 1808, when the Érard action was perfected, and 1832 or 1834, when Thalberg and Liszt began to revolutionize the art of piano playing, the instrument was the subject of a great number of improvements in every direction. The damper mechanism was perfected between 1821 and 1827; the stringing had been made heavier, the hammers proportionately stronger, and the power of tone had become greater. Thus the instrument had become ready for the great pianists—Liszt having made his first appearance in Vienna in 1823, and within seven years after having become generally recognized as a phenomenal appearance in art. Meanwhile, great improvements were continually carried on for the purpose of rendering the instrument impervious to the forcible attacks made upon its stability by these new virtuosi. In the early appearances of Liszt it was necessary to have several pianos in reserve upon the stage, so that when a hammer or string broke, which very often happened, another instrument could be moved forward for the next piece.
The most important improvement in the solidity of the piano came from the iron frame, which was introduced tentatively, somewhere about 1821, in the form of what is now called a "hitch-pin plate," or half iron frame. About 1825 an American, Alpheus Babcock, of Philadelphia, patented a full iron frame, but it was imperfect, and nothing came of it. Conrad Meyer, of Philadelphia, in 1833, patented an iron frame and manufactured pianos with it, which are still in existence. In 1837, Jonas Chickering, of Boston, perfected the iron frame by including in the single casting the pin bridge and damper socket rail. This improvement still remains at the foundation of the piano making of the world. Previous to this invention some of the American piano makers had constructed their cases upon a solid wooden bottom plank five inches thick. In 1855 the firm of Steinway & Sons exhibited their first overstrung scale, in which the bass strings were spread out and carried over a part of the treble strings, thus affording them more latitude for vibration, without interfering, and bringing the bridges nearer to the center of the sounding board. The idea of overstringing was not new at this time, Lichtenberg, of St. Petersburg, having exhibited a grand piano with overstringing at the London exposition in 1851, and Theodore Boehm, the celebrated improver of the flute, having invented an overstrung system for square pianos as early as 1835. In 1853, also, Jonas Chickering combined an iron frame with an overstrung system in square pianos, the instrument having been completed and exhibited after his death. The Steinway system of overstringing, however, was more extended, and solved the acoustical difficulties of cross-vibrations more successfully by spreading the long strings, and this, therefore, is the system now generally followed. The superiority of this principle was immediately acknowledged, and it has since been applied to grands and uprights, and few makers in the world but follow it in their work. Many minor improvements have been introduced in America by Steinway & Sons and others, whereby the artistic qualities and the durability of the best American pianos are now generally acknowledged throughout the world. The solidity of construction is such that with a compass of seven and one-third octaves the tension of the strings amounts to about 50,000 pounds avoirdupois. The hammers are larger and heavier, the action more responsive, and the singing quality and sustaining power has reached remarkable perfection. Perhaps the most curious and important of all American improvements in this direction is the so-called "duplex scale" of Steinway & Sons, patented in 1872, in which a fraction of the string is made to vibrate sympathetically, thereby strengthening the super-octave harmonic, and imparting to the tone a brightness and sweetness not so well secured in any other way at present known.
If space permitted it would be interesting to follow the course by which the difficulties of the upright piano have at length been surmounted, and the tone of this form of instrument rendered nearly equal to that of the grand. This was first accomplished by Steinway & Sons between 1862 and 1878, by a succession of improvements having for their object, first, the solidity of the instrument, then its prompt action, together with as much of the tone quality of the grand as possible. Many other American builders have taken part in this development, whereby the American pianoforte to-day is the strongest, the fullest-toned and the most expensively constructed of any in the world. Still later, quite a number of more or less successful attempts have been made to increase the stability of the tuning of the pianoforte by a different system of stringing, the tension of the strings being regulated by means of a tuning pin of "set-screw" pattern, working through a collar of steel, instead of being thrust into a wooden wrest-plank, where it holds fast by friction alone, as has been the universal way previous to these inventions.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
GERMAN OPERA; WEBER, MEYERBEER AND
WAGNER.
I.
