A term used to include a broad range of strung keyboard instruments capable of producing a sustained sound in which the volume can be controlled by the performer. First used by Isaac Henry Robert Mott to describe his instrument of 1817, the term sostenente piano may be usefully applied to instruments dating from as early as Hans Haiden’s Geigenwerk of 1575. Until the late 18th century most were of bowed type, designed to imitate the violin or human voice. Other means of sound production (such as compressed air or transmitted vibrations) began to be used in the late 18th century as part of a general trend for making expressive, ethereal instruments. In the 19th and early 20th centuries such instruments were generally intended to emulate the sound of a string quartet or orchestra.
4. Quick and repeated movements of the hammers.
5. Combination of a hammer striking the string and free vibrating reeds.
6. Electric and electronic principles.
CAROLYN W. SIMONS (1), ALEXANDR BUCHNER/CAROLYN W. SIMONS (2–5), HUGH DAVIES (6)
Bowed keyboard instruments vary in shape, stringing and bowing device. Those shaped like harpsichords and pianos usually have at least one string per key, while other designs are fretted, more closely resembling a keyed monochord, Hurdy-gurdy or automatic violin player. The earliest report of a bowed string keyboard instrument is in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (in F-Pi) and also in his drawings in the Codico Atlantico (in I-Ma), which depict versions of his viola organista with four melody strings fretted by five to nine tangents, or unfretted with one or more strings for each note, using wheels or bows to stroke the strings (for illustration see Leonardo da Vinci). Since Leonardo, more than 90 makers of bowed string keyboard instruments have been documented, most of them in Europe. The instruments may be categorized according to bowing device: the three types are straight (back-and-forth) bows, continuous bows and wheels.
One of the few instruments that incorporated straight bows was a four-octave invention by Le Voir of Paris in 1742, in which a harpsichord case contained a cello and a viola with several bridges of varying height, bowed by seven separate horsehair bands. William Mason of England is said to have described in 1761 a celestinette with one to three wire or gut strings, with a player-operated bow controlled by weights or springs and composed of silk, wire, flax, leather etc., which could be placed above or below the strings. A Bogenflügel with a compass of four and a half octaves constructed in 1794 by Carl Andreas von Meyer had horsehair bands secured on a vertical rectangular frame. This bow-frame was placed in the middle of the instrument so that the bands passed between and perpendicular to each string. When the pedal-operated bow-frame moved up and down, a lever on the tail of the key brought the moving band to the appropriate string. In Vienna in 1801 Karl Leopold Röllig and Mathias Müller modified the design by placing the strings in a vertical position, as on a clavicytherium, and using a horizontal bow-frame. Their xänorphica was imitated by Anton Friedl six years later. Ole Breiby's claviola of 1897 (now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) also uses a straight bow. The design of the instrument is that of a keyboard attached to an upright zither, with a normal violin bow. The player fingers the keys with one hand and manipulates the bow with the other.
Instruments using a continous bow include the earliest known bowed keyboard, the Geigenwerk invented by Hans Haiden of Nuremberg in 1575. Shaped somewhat like a harpsichord, it used hooks to bring the selected gut strings down to a pedal-operated revolving horsehair band. A spectacular combination instrument built in 1673 by Michele Todini of Rome was said to include a harpsichord and Geigenwerk coupled to an organ, a virginal and two octave spinets. It is not known whether Todini's Geigenwerk used a continuous band or wheels or both. Johann Georg Gleichmann produced a claviergamba in 1709 which was smaller than a harpsichord, using the string scale of a viol. Johann Hohlfeld's Bogenflügel (Berlin, 1711), akin to Haiden's invention, was admired by C.P.E. Bach and Marpurg, but it was probably Johann Carl Greiner's Bogenhammerklavier of 1782 (similar to Hohlfeld's instrument, but combined with a hammer piano) that inspired Bach's ‘Sonata für das Bogenklavier’ h280 (w65.48). Francisco Flórez of Madrid added a register of sustained voice to a glass harmonica and a piano about 1795, much like the Celestina stop already patented in England by William Mason and Adam Walker. Several continuous-bow instruments survive in museums. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg houses an unsigned instrument with a compass of two and a half octaves and dimensions similar to those of a 4' harpsichord, its string lengths comparable to those of string instruments rather than of keyboard instruments. The pedal-operated band passes beneath the keys; rollers attached to the underside of the keys press the band down onto the strings. Nearly identical in principle is Djmenjuk's bowed keyboard of 1965, now in the Glinka Museum of Musical Culture, Moscow. Instead of pedals, the Russian instrument uses a motor. A variation on the continuous band can be seen in a six-octave instrument belonging to the Technisches Museum für Industrie und Gewerke, Vienna, which was invented by Franz Kühmayer in the 1890s and built by the Hofmann and Czerny piano firm about 1915. Rather than having one continous band, the instrument uses a number of shorter leather bands, each of which bows adjacent chromatic strings. It is double-strung, with unison strings mounted one above the other. The bands are pressed against the strings by means of rollers fixed on vertical levers which move when keys are depressed. Another notable instrument was the 1909 Streichharmonium made by Karl Beddies in which a satin-covered leather band pressed each gut string against its individual, violin-shaped resonator. Formerly part of the Heyer collection in Leipzig, it was lost during World War II.
Wheels have proved an even more popular bowing device, having a precedent in the hurdy-gurdy. 26 years after building the first Geigenwerk, Haiden produced a slightly altered version using five iron wheels covered with resined parchment and iron and brass strings. The wheels protruded through the gap and the selected strings were brought against them. A woodcut of this four-octave instrument appears in Praetorius's Theatrum instrumentorum (1620; for illustration see Geigenwerk). A similar Spanish invention by Raymondo Truchado dated 1625 and having four wheels is now in the Brussels Conservatory. Other instruments vary more in detail than in principle. Two early examples of a one-wheeled bowed keyboard were Athanasius Kircher's ‘wonderful harpsichord’ of 1650, which looked like a large domed box and combined an organ, harpsichord and 49-string Geigenwerk and the ‘arched viall’, mentioned by Pepys in his diary on 5 October 1664. Cuisinié's clavecin-vielle (Paris, 1708) had one wheel for six strings with 29 keys. Roger Plenius's English lyrichord (1741) had 15 wheels for 59 strings; instead of using pedals, he varied the drive mechanism by using a clockwork action with a large weight on the back part to operate a flywheel. Le Gay of Paris produced a bowed keyboard instrument in 1762 in which gut strings conformed to a hollow cylinder in the body and were bowed by a leather-covered wooden wheel operated by the foot. John Isaac Hawkins developed a ‘claviol’ (1802) that, when closed, resembled a large wardrobe. It was based on the same principles as the Geigenwerk, but the stringing was vertical and the four pedal-operated wheels were horizontal (see Claviola (i)). In the last quarter of the 20th century at least three makers, Kurt Reichmann in Germany, William Morton in the USA and Akio Abuchi in Japan, constructed imitations of the early wheel Geigenwerk. The American maker Bob Bates has built and performed on three fretted instruments which use a metal finger to stop the string. Close in principle to instruments using wheels are those that use cylinders to rub appendages attached to strings (see §3 below). Instruments that have keys and bows but do not use strings include the late 19th-century Stimmgabelwerk of the Munich cittern virtuoso Ubelacker, which was sounded by vibrating metal prongs or tuning forks, and Luigi Russolo's piano enarmonico (1931), which used vibrating coiled springs.
The sound of the bowed keyboards varies greatly depending upon design and materials. The descriptions recorded for many of the instruments indicate a wide dynamic range – from soft violins to full organ – and a timbre that varies from the sound of a glass harmonica to a whole orchestra, with special effects including tremolo (bebung) and imitation of trumpets and bagpipes. The fact that no single design became standard may be due to the stringent acoustical challenges inherent in a bowed string instrument that lacks the immediate correction of a player-controlled bow or fretted string. Makers attempted with varying degrees of success to overcome problems of grating attacks, noisy wheels, and unstable intonation.
See also Violin player, automatic.
A number of sostenente pianos, sounded by jets of air directed at the strings, were devised from the late 18th century. They are essentially aeolian harps controlled from a keyboard. The first of them was the anémocorde (or aéro-clavicorde), an instrument of secret design, made in 1789 by the German piano builder in Paris, Johann Jakob Schnell. Only the bare essentials are known: by means of two pedals connected to bellows the air was driven through jets against the strings. The keyboard had a compass of five octaves, and pedals operated by the knees of the musician served to increase and decrease the volume of the tone. Thus, the general impression was that of approaching and receding tones. The sostenente device could be switched off to allow the musician to play on the anémocorde as on an ordinary piano. Schnell tried in vain to extend the use of his new instrument in his own country, where he otherwise built small pianos called ‘pantalons’, which became the forerunners of modern grand pianos. Schnell’s instrument was followed by the piano éolien, built by Isouard in 1837 and patented by Henri Herz in 1851. In France (1840 and 1850) and in England (1850) the piano maker Jean Henri Pape patented a device for swelling the tone of a piano by a jet of air, after the string had been struck by the hammer. Other patents of similar devices are those of Johnson and Anderson (1861) and of Tongue (1871).
The phenomenon of transmitted vibrations involves setting up vibrations in a secondary body or substance that is connected to the sounding strings, as opposed to the strings being excited directly. In 1799 the acoustician Ernst Chladni developed his Klavizylinder, in which a revolving cylinder stroked wooden bars attached to the strings. Thus the friction from the cylinder set up vibrations in the bars, which in turn travelled to the strings. The concept was successfully applied by Gottfried Kaufmann and his son Friedrich in their harmonichord (1809; a similar action, used by Gottfried's grandson, is shown in fig.1). This resembled an upright piano, and had pedals that activated a long rotating cylinder above the keyboard. Its tone appealed even to Weber, who composed for it an Adagio and Rondo with orchestra (j115). Kratochvil’s ‘coelison’, constructed in Bohemia in 1821, had the shape of an upright pyramidal piano; its strings were connected to long fixed keys, which the musician touched with his fingers. In 1817 Isaac Henry Robert Mott of Brighton constructed his sostenente piano, which used a set of rollers to activate silk threads that transmitted vibrations to the strings. In Paris, Gustave Baudet’s piano-violon (1865) and piano-quatuor (1873) were built in the shape of upright pianos. In both cases the sound was produced by means of a revolving cylinder that rubbed small bundles of plant fibres attached to the strings (fig.2)
The production of apparently sustained tones by rapid repetition is the only technique to exploit the existing mechanism of the piano. This method was used in the sostenente piano made by the Paris engineer Philippe de Girard, who in 1842 patented his piano trémolophone. This was a grand piano with two keyboards, one of them exclusively for tremolando notes. The firm of Caldera & Bossi in Turin started the manufacture of the melopiano in 1873. This had a device that could be attached to any piano to make possible the swelling of notes by quick repeated strokes of a small hammer operated by clock-springs. A similar instrument was made and sold by Henri Herz in Paris, and the system was borrowed and further improved by the London piano-manufacturing firm of Kirkman & Son. Two variants of a mechanism that struck the strings with strips of leather or cloth were patented in France in 1849 by Roeder. In the armonipiano, invented by Ricordi and Fanzi and improved by V. Hlavéč, the tone could be sustained by a second set of hammers, which maintained vibration in the strings modified by means of three pedals and two levers.
This hybrid method of producing sustained tones depends on the sympathetic vibration of reeds set in motion by strings struck in the usual way by hammers. It was used in the piano à prolongement built by Alexandre of Paris in the 19th century, and in the piano scandé invented in 1853 by Lentz and Houdart in Paris, which had various pedals that swelled the tone in each octave. The piano à sons soutenus, made by Jean-Louis Boisselot of Marseilles in 1843, also belongs in this category, as does the Canto, an electromagnetic device, invented around 1927 by Marcel Tournier and Gabriel Gaveau, which fitted inside a piano and transmitted the vibrations of the strings to a set of tuned reeds.
The use of electricity provided the means for making other kinds of sostenente pianos. As early as 1759 static electricity was used in the clavecin électrique to activate a clapper that struck two bells in rapid alternation for each note, producing a sustained sound as long as the key was held down. Several instruments used electromagnetism: in Richard Eisenmann’s elektrophonisches Klavier (developed 1885–1913) electromagnets controlled by tuning-fork oscillators activated and sustained vibrations in normal piano strings; for the musical exhibition in Vienna in 1892 Kühmayer constructed a bowed piano in which an endless bow was pressed to the strings by electromagnets; the Choralcelo (1909) and the Crea-Tone (1930) used electromagnets to sustain the vibrations of the strings for as long as the keys were depressed; an electropneumatic approach was adopted in the Palsiphone électro-magnétique patented in 1890 by Emile Guerre and Henri Martin, further developments of which were patented from 1913 by Martin with Alcide Maître; and in the Variachord (1937) the strings were both activated and amplified electromagnetically, and a mandolin-like repetition was possible. An early amplified sostenente piano, which exploited the continuous bowing mechanism, was the monophonic Radiotone (c1929–30), in which a wheel driven by an electric motor rotated against a single metal string, the vibrations of which were amplified by means of an electromagnetic pickup. In 1977 Stephen Scott developed a ‘bowed piano’ technique whereby as many as ten players use miniature solid and flexible bows to excite the strings of an open grand piano. He extended this technique with the development of an electromagnetic system (1982–3) which assigns an oscillator to each note; depressing the keys silently lifts the dampers, allowing the strings to vibrate. Five small electromagnets create sustained sounds in Alvin Lucier's Music for Piano with Magnetic Strings (1995). In all these instruments the sounds could be sustained for as long as the player desired.
While many electric pianos can produce more sustained sounds than normal pianos, the sounds decay in the usual way; they can therefore be regarded as sostenente pianos only to a limited extent. Some of the earliest electric pianos, such as the Förster Elektrochord (1933) and the Everett Piano Company’s Pianotron (mid-1930s), were normal pianos whose sounds were electrically amplified. At about the same time electrically amplified pianos without soundboards (thus increasing the maximum possible duration of sustained sound) were first marketed; these included the Neo-Bechstein-Flügel (1931), Variachord and several instruments based on a patent by Benjamin F. Miessner. (See Electric piano.)
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