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Scan 116
Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1928
25 lines. Read by computer on 12 September 2026. Printed page 82. See the scan on archive.org.
1passage so marked is to be played at an uniform rate of decreased speed until the words a tempo occur. No precise rule can be given for its interpretation, as its use varies with different masters, and even in different works by the same master.
3SOSTINENTE PIANOFORTE. A term used in connexion with several attempts, none of them permanently successful, to make a pianoforte capable of producing a sustained sound, such as that of the organ or violin. The lyrichord, melopiano, claviol and piano-violin, names adopted by inventors for certain of these attempts, are discussed below.
5The Hurdy-Gurdy (q.v.) is the germ of sostinente keyed instruments; allied to the harpsichord we meet with it in the Gambenwerk 1 of Hans Haydn of Nuremberg, dating about 1610. An instrument of Spanish origin, dated 1625, is in the Museum of the Conservatoire of Music at Brussels (see Mahillon, Cat. IV. p. 282 ff.). Pepys records in 1664 the exhibition of an Arched Viol (q.v.), an instrument similar in principle. The lyrichord, patented by Roger Plenius 2 in London in 1741, demands notice as being a harpsichord strung with wire and catgut, made on the sostinente principle, and actuated by moving wheels instead of the usual quills, so that the bow of the violin and the tone of the organ were imitated. There is no specification to the patent, but a magazine article of 1755 3 gives a drawing and complete description of the instrument, which was otherwise remarkable for sustaining power by screws, springs and balanced tension weights for tuning; for silver covering to the bass strings, like the largest bass-violins; for the use of iron to counteract the greater pull of the octave strings (in the drawing there are apparently four iron bars connecting the wrest-plank and sound-board, thus anticipating the later introduction of steel arches in grand pianofortes for similar service); and lastly for the Swell obtained by dividing the lid or cover into two parts, one of which is movable up and down by means of a pedal governed by the foot of the player. Another patent of Plenius, in 1745, added the 'Welch harp,' or buff stop (in his patent by a pedal), to the instrument. Another 'sostinente' harpsichord was the CELESTINA of Adam Walker, patented in London in 1772.
7The melopiano was a grand piano with a sostinente attachment, the invention of Caldera, applied in England by Kirkman, who secured the sole right to use it here and made several instruments with it. The principle was original, the apparently sustained sounds being produced by reiterated blows of small hammers placed nearer the wrest-plank bridge than the striking place of the ordinary hammers, and suspended by a bar above and crossing the strings.4
9An important 'sostinente' instrument was the claviol 5 or finger-keyed viol, the invention of Dr. John Isaac Hawkins 6 of Bordertown, New Jersey, U.S.A., an Englishman by birth, who invented the real upright pianoforte. This upright piano (called 'portable grand') and the claviol, which was in form like a cabinet piano, with ringbow mechanism for the sostinente, were introduced to the public in a concert at Philadelphia, by the inventor, June 21, 1802. Hawkins was in England in 1813 and 1814, exhibiting his claviol, and in the latter year complained of his idea being appropriated by others through the expiration of his patent. Isaac Mott's 'Sostinente Piano Forte,' patented by him in 1817, was a further development of the idea, and is fully described in the patent, No. 4098. Mott claimed the power to increase or diminish the tone at will; and by rollers acting on silken threads, set in action by a pedal, the 'sostinente' was brought into action or stopped. Mott's instrument had some success, he being at the time a fashionable pianoforte-maker. Another instrument of this period was Kaufmann's HARMONICHORD (q.v.).
11In 1865 Hubert Cyrille Baudet introduced an instrument in Paris named 'Piano Quatuor,' patenting it in England as piano violin. The strings were of wire as in the PF., but of greater thickness, there being only one to each note. The strings were vertical, and attached to a nodal, or nearly nodal, point of each was a piece of stiff catgut, projecting in front more than an inch. A roller, covered with fine linen and slightly rosined, was made to turn by means of treadles with great rapidity. Motion was communicated through the ties to the wires and their musical vibration excited. The impression on the ear was that of the tone of a violin.
13A. J. H., with addns.
15SOTO DE LANGA, FRANCISCO (b. Langa, near Osma, 1539; d. Rome, Sept. 25, 1619), Spanish priest and adapter of Laude Spirituali. He came to Rome at an early age and entered the Papal Choir as a soprano in 1562. Shortly afterwards he became one of the followers of St. Philip Neri, and eventually joined the congregation of the Oratorio. He still remained a member of the Papal Choir, of which he was dean for many years, but he sang at the Chiesa Nuova up to the end of his life, and preserved his voice to the age of 80.
17Examples from Soto's collections of Laude are given by D. Alaleona, Storia dell' oratorio musicale in Italia (Turin, 1908), and E. J. Dent, Proc. Mus. Ass. xliii. (1916-17), 80 ff. He includes a great many folk-songs, as being
191 Figured in Praetorius's Theatrum instrumentorum, 1620.
202 Plenius is said to have been the first to attempt to make a pianoforte in England.
213 Formerly in the possession of A. J. H.
224 The mechanism was more fully described under MELOPIANO in earlier editions of this Dictionary. See also Hipkins, History of the Pianoforte.
235 For descriptions see Rees's Cyclopaedia, 1819; Mechanic's Magazine, 1845, No. 1150, p. 136.
246 See Scribner's Magazine, 1880.
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