The art of using the tone-modifying devices operated on the modern piano by pedals. In the earlier history of the instrument similar, and other, devices were operated by hand stops, knee levers or pedals. The mechanisms of these devices are described in Pianoforte, §I, and in articles on individual stops and pedals.
The number and type of tone-modifying devices on 18th-century pianos varied substantially. Cristofori, the maker of the earliest pianos, used only the Una corda, which is found on two of his three surviving instruments. The una corda also appears on an early piano from the Iberian peninsula. The earliest extant pianos from Germany, made in the 1740s by Gottfried Silbermann, were the first to have a sustaining (damper-raising) stop. The effect produced by this stop imitates the sound of the Pantaleon, a type of large dulcimer also made by Silbermann, and was popular in mid-18th-century Germany. The term Pantalon stop was used for a stop found in some unfretted clavichords (Adlung, 568) and the name ‘Pantalon’ was given to pianos with wooden hammers and no dampers. Silbermann also used an ivory mutation stop, which imitates the sound of the harpsichord by means of small pieces of ivory brought into contact with the strings just above the hammer's striking point.
A sustaining device was usual on later 18th-century German and Austrian grand pianos, and during the last quarter of the century the mechanism was normally operated by knee levers. The Moderator also became common at this time. At first the moderator mechanism was operated by a hand stop, but by the 1790s a knee lever was used for this too. A Bassoon stop operated by a knee lever is found on some later 18th-century German and Austrian pianos. From Backers (1772) onwards, the standard disposition of English grands was two pedals: sustaining and una corda.
It is difficult to generalize about the stops, levers and pedals available on 18th-century square pianos. Whereas many earlier English squares had three levers inside the piano (two to raise the ends of the damper rail and one to operate the Buff stop, some later instruments had no levers or pedals. A proliferation of tone-modifying devices, including lid swells (see Swell, §2), was fashionable with some on the Continent, but the trend was much criticized by others. Hand stops were later replaced by pedals in England, but both knee levers and pedals were used on continental squares towards the end of the century, with a preference for the former.
No pedal markings exist in music before the 1790s and other sources are generally reticent on the subject, although a few authors mention the use of the sustaining lever. C.P.E. Bach commented that ‘the undamped register of the fortepiano is the most pleasing and, once the performer learns to observe the necessary precautions in the face of its reverberations, the most delightful for improvisation’. Charles Burney was less enthusiastic about a performance without dampers given in 1770 by Anne Brillon de Jouy in Paris:
She was so obliging as to play several of her own pieces both on the harpsichord and piano forte [Burney]… I could not persuade Madame B. to play the piano forte with the stops on – c'est sec, she said – but with them off unless in arpeggios, nothing is distinct – 'tis like the sound of bells, continual and confluent.
Evidently some use was made of the undamped register and presumably of other registers too, but tone-modifying devices do not appear to have been widely accepted throughout most of the 18th century. Their use cannot have been very subtle, since they were often operated by hand stops. Descriptions suggest that they were generally thought of in the same way as organ or harpsichord registers.
Daniel Steibelt published the first music with pedalling indications in his 6me Pot Pourri and his Mélange op.10, both of which appeared in Paris in 1793. The pedalling in these pieces is of a somewhat rudimentary nature, with the sustaining pedal apparently held down for several bars at a time. It is possible that these indications simply define the outer parameters of passages in which the performer raises and depresses the dampers at will. However, pedalling indications in a slightly later concerto by Boieldieu suggest that pianists were still accustomed to raising the dampers for several bars at a time, or even whole sections of a movement: the indications ‘Grande Pédalle toute la Variation’ and ‘Sourdine aux accords seulement’ mean ‘sustaining pedal for the whole variation’ and ‘lute for the chords only’. In Steibelt's two works, new, distinctively pianistic writing begins to appear, notably the tremolando for which he was to become (in)famous and the accompanying texture in which the sustaining pedal allows a bass note to be sustained below other notes or chords which complete the harmony.
While some regarded Steibelt's innovations as mere gimmickry, others began to use similar techniques to develop a new style. Chief among the latter were members of the London Pianoforte School. Cramer seems to have introduced printed pedalling in London, in his second concerto of 1797. However, later commentators singled out Dussek as the most significant pioneer of pedalling in his generation. His first pedal markings appeared in the Military Concerto op.40 of 1798, but the technique in this work suggests that he had been using the pedals for some time previously. Clementi, the oldest member of the School, included pedal markings in some works of the late 1790s, but they represent a much less developed approach than that of his younger contemporaries.
Some German and Austrian musicians were very conservative in their use of the pedals (or levers). For example, while Beethoven's approach shared many similarities with that of members of the London Pianoforte School, Hummel was cautious: ‘Hummel's partisans accused Beethoven of mistreating the piano, of lacking all clearness and clarity, of creating nothing but confused noise the way he used the pedals’ (Czerny, 1842). Hummel later wrote that ‘though a truly great artist has no occasion for the pedals to work upon his audience by expression and power, yet the use of the damper pedal, combined occasionally with the piano pedal (as it is termed), has an agreeable effect in many passages’. At around the same time, Kalkbrenner observed that ‘in Germany the use of the pedals is scarcely known’. Pedal markings appeared in music by German and Austrian composers a little later than in England and France.
The terminology of early pedal markings has caused some confusion. In England, the term for the sustaining pedal was ‘Open Pedal’ while in Vienna it was ‘Senza Sordini’ (‘S.S.’).
Shortly after 1800 Viennese-style grands acquired something of a ‘standard’ disposition of tone-modifying devices. The knee levers were replaced by four pedals: una corda, moderator, bassoon and sustaining. To these were sometimes added a second moderator and ‘Turkish music’ (‘Janissary stop’), a stop with bells, drum and triangle or cymbal. A similar four-pedal disposition existed in France, although a Lute stop often replaced the bassoon. Pedals other than the sustaining, moderator and una corda were never highly regarded by professionals and largely died out in the 1830s. In England, the only pedals generally used were the una corda and sustaining. The latter was sometimes divided (as was the damper rail itself) to allow selective sustaining.
Refinements in pedalling technique developed quickly at the beginning of the 19th century. Accounts of Dussek's playing suggest that he gave the effect of continuous pedalling while retaining clarity in his playing. This effect requires syncopated pedalling, in which the pedal is raised on the beat and depressed again shortly afterwards. Dussek's notation is too imprecise to show this, but syncopated pedalling is suggested by the markings in Clementi's Fantaisie op.48 (1821).
As 19th-century pianos became more resonant, increasingly sophisticated pedalling was called for; it is clear that Chopin, Liszt and some of their contemporaries exhibited all the essentials of a modern technique. These pianists had individual pedalling styles distinguished, for example, by the clarity of their playing and the extent to which they used the una corda. Some, including Beethoven, Kalkbrenner and Thalberg, made extensive use of the una corda, but others objected to the changes of timbre that its use caused in the middle of phrases, and reserved it for special effects in discrete sections. Extensive use of the pedals was condemned by a few writers: Friedrich Wieck lamented what he perceived as the excesses of pianists he associated particularly with Paris.
After the middle of the 19th century, the only significant development in pedalling was the invention of the selective tone-sustaining pedal. J.L. Boisselot exhibited such a device at the Paris exposition of 1844 and other mechanisms designed to achieve the same, or similar, effect followed. However, the principle of selective tone-sustaining became established only after Steinway patented the Sostenuto pedal in 1874. A few composers indicated this pedal in scores, but many others were reluctant to use it, especially in Europe, and its adoption by leading makers was a gradual process.
Pedalling has been acknowledged as an extremely important element of performance. Following the emergence of pedalling in piano music of the 1790s, some tutors devoted significant space to it (Milchmeyer, Adam, Steibelt), but it was not, however, until the pioneering work of Schmitt (1875) and Lavignac (1889) that the subject received detailed treatment.
ClinkscaleMP
C.P.E. Bach: Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Berlin,1753/R, 2/1787; Eng. trans., 1974), 431
J. Adlung: Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrtheit (Erfurt, 1758/R, 2/1783)
J.P. Milchmeyer: Die wahre Art das Pianoforte zu spielen (Dresden, 1797)
L. Adam: Méthode de piano du Conservatoire (Paris, 1804)
D. Steibelt: Méthode de piano (Paris and Leipzig, 1809)
J.N. Hummel: Ausführliche, theoretisch-practische Anweisung zum Piano-forte Spiel (Vienna, 1828, 2/1838; Eng. trans., 1829), iii, 62
F. Kalkbrenner: Méthode pour apprendre le pianoforte (Paris, 1830; Eng. trans., 1862), 10
C. Czerny: Vollständige theoretisch-practische Pianoforteschule (Vienna, 1838–9; Eng. trans., 1839)
C. Czerny: Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben (MS, 1842, A-Wgm; ed. W. Kolneder, 1968); Eng. trans., MQ, xlii (1956), 302–17
F. Wieck: Clavier und Gesang (Leipzig, 1853; Eng. trans., 1988)
H. Schmitt: Das Pedal des Clavieres (Vienna, 1875; Eng. trans., 1893)
A. Lavignac: L'école de la pédale (Paris, 1889)
R.E.H. Harding: The Piano-forte: its History Traced to the Great Exhibition of 1851 (Cambridge,1933/R, 2/1978)
F.J. Hirt: Meisterwerke des Klavierbaus (Berlin, 1955; Eng. trans., 1968)
C. Burney: Music, Men and Manners in France and Italy, ed. H.E. Poole (London, 1969, 2/1974), 19–20 [based on Journal, 1771, and The Present State of Music in France and Italy, 2/1773]
J. Banowetz: The Pianist's Guide to Pedaling (Bloomington, IN, 1985)
W. Cole: ‘Americus Backers; Original Forte Piano Maker’, The Harpsichord and Pianoforte Magazine, iv (1987), 79–85
D. Rowland: A History of Pianoforte Pedalling (Cambridge, 1993)
S. Pollens: The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge, 1995)
DAVID ROWLAND