As to the further development of the grand pianoforte, we may look to the progress of the Chickerings and the Steinways in America and to the Broadwoods in England, the Erards in France and the Bechsteins and Blüthners in Germany. These makers are considered here because they have all contributed in no small degree to the development of the instrument as an artistic product and because they have all been responsible for some radical improvement that has later become essential to the make-up of a good pianoforte. We need only mention the Steinway cupola plate, fan-like disposition of strings, overstrung bass, duplex scale and capo d’astro bar to give the reader some idea of the many inventions that have sprung from the fertile brains of the members of this house. The other houses, notably that of Chickering in this country, and Broadwood in England, have been prolific in improvements, and the development of the grand pianoforte has consequently been rapid and successful from the musical and scientific, no less than from the commercial view-point. The history of the type in more recent years is familiar to all, however, and it is unnecessary to enlarge upon it here.
If we have seemed, hitherto, to have neglected proper consideration of the upright and square forms of pianoforte, the fault is more apparent than real. For there are two good reasons why discussion of these types should have been delayed. In the first place, the square is already obsolescent if not obsolete, while on the other hand the development of the upright into a commercially successful and largely produced instrument has only come about in recent years. This sketch would, of course, be incomplete without brief consideration of them and we shall therefore devote some space to this end.
As has already been indicated, the square piano may be considered as having a genesis quite distinct from the grand or upright. It was developed, as we know, by Zumpe, whose purpose was to fit the hammer action to the body of a clavichord. Thus, when we consider the different roots from which the clavichord and spinet-harpsichord types were themselves evolved, and the direct descent of the grand pianoforte from the latter, the entirely separate and distinct growth of the square is easily discerned. This distinction is most interesting at the present day, when the glory of the square has departed and its days are numbered.
The evolution of the square pianoforte in America has been recorded with faithful detail by Spillane in his “History of the American Pianoforte,” and the reader will find in that work an abundance of material to satisfy any curiosity that may possess him. Incidentally it may be remarked that the idea of cross-stringing the bass had been applied to clavichords as early as the time of Händel; so that the overstringing of the square pianoforte came about quite naturally, especially after the improvements of John Broadwood the First. On the other hand, this principle was for long overlooked in the design of the other popular types; so much so, in fact, that European grands and uprights are still to be found in plenty with straight stringing throughout.
The chief reasons for the gradual decline in the popularity of the square may be traced almost as much to social and economic as to artistic and mechanical causes, although these latter had the greater influence in shaping the ultimate destiny of the type. The square was developed in the United States until the native American product left all imitators and rivals far behind, but even at that the fundamental defects of construction could never be overcome entirely. The great gap in the middle of the structure, required for the passage of the hammers, entailed dangerous weakness, against which no reasonable weight of iron bracing has ever seemed to prevail. Again, the fact that the bass keys, where the strength of the blow and the leverage of the action need to be greatest, were the shortest of all, while the extreme treble keys were longest, always tended to destroy the touch proportions and entailed much counter-balancing and other operations which were, however, but makeshifts at the best. Moreover, the development of the grand type led to rivalry among those makers who confined themselves chiefly to the square, with the result that the latter was made more and more heavy and cumbrous in an effort to catch up with the fundamental advantage which the grand pianoforte possessed on account of its superior design. Besides, the square was never a thing of beauty, and its increasing size was by no means an advantage in this respect, so that when the rapidly growing population of the great American cities began to make living room continually more valuable, the claims of the small, powerful, elegant, and moderate-priced upright soon were successfully asserted. As a last consideration, it should be mentioned that the makers of square pianofortes were never able to apply to it a mechanism having the elasticity and rapid repetition that belong to the Erard grand action or the tape-check device of Wornum, which is universal in the upright.
In view of all these disadvantages, it is no longer a matter for wonderment that the upright pianoforte succeeded the square as a bidder for domestic favor, while the larger and more highly evolved grand remained the choice of professional musicians.
The commercial development of the upright pianoforte, as we have remarked, began at a comparatively recent period. In this country, owing to the popularity of the square, we find that the upright was late in coming into favor. Its development, however, had been going on in Europe since the beginning of the nineteenth century. The “cabinet” piano of Southwell and the “upright grand” of Hawkins were examples of early attempts in this line, but it remained for the genius of Robert Wornum to place the upright instrument on a truly practical footing. This was accomplished through his invention of “the tape-check action,” which at once put the upright pianoforte upon an equal plane of efficiency with the prevailing types and assured its rapid adoption. By the end of the first half of the nineteenth century the upright piano had become firmly established as the home instrument throughout Europe, and about the same time began to appear among American products. As soon as American manufacturers took hold of it, they set about making vast improvements upon European models; and we may properly date the modern development of the upright from this time. Americans were responsible for the adoption of overstrung iron-framed scales, and for the increase in size and power which now makes our best instruments of this class equal, if not superior, to the grands of a few years ago.
The later history of the upright, not less than of the grand, is a simple record of continuous improvement in details of workmanship and material, in beauty of case design and in scientific construction of scale. It is not necessary, for the purpose of this short sketch, to enter into the familiar modern history of manufacturing the various types of pianoforte, either in this country or abroad; but we may note, incidentally, that European makers have adopted more and more American inventions and improvements, so that the modern, up-to-date pianoforte owes a great part of its present efficiency to the genius of the great American makers, although these, of course, have worked along the great principles that Broadwood, Chickering, Steinway, Weber, Knabe, Erard and others laid down.
Thus we have surveyed, though truly in a somewhat hurried manner, the interesting history of the growth and development of the pianoforte of to-day. The reader will forgive the brief and sketchy nature of this bird’s-eye view, when he recollects that our purpose in this book is to lay down the correct principles of modern design, rather than to analyze those principles from an historical standpoint. Some of the laws that we shall have occasion to expound have already been noted here. In the succeeding chapters these and others will be considered in the light of their scientific and practical application.