Scan 69
Musical Courier 1892-12-21: Vol 25 Iss 668, 1892
60 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 62. See the scan on archive.org.
1cut. The resins within the wood, like the varnish applied without, greatly modify its tone.
3Before the soundboard is set in the piano its ribs give its surface an upward curve which resists the downward pressure of the strings.
5Rimbault quotes the following lines, copied from the soundboard of a harpsichord in his possession:
7I once was living in the woods,
8But now I am cut downe
9By stroke of cruel axe indeed,
10But yet to my renowne:
11For while I lived I spoke naught else
12But what the boist'rous winde
13Compelled my murmuring strains unto.
14But being dead, I please ye minde
15And ears of such as hear me singe,
16So pleasant is my music's ringe.
18THE WOODEN BRACING.
20We have seen the evolution of soundboard and strings coincident with the entire development of our civilization. The wood and iron bracing, which is the formative element of the modern piano, is the work of the nineteenth century. When the president of the New York Piano Makers' Association laid before its members at a late annual dinner the initial story of our metal frame he threw an unexpected light upon the meaning of his art. It was the expulsion of 60,000 Protestants from Austria during the first half of the eighteenth century that sent the founders of our iron industries to America. So something stronger than iron, and infinitely nobler than mere mechanical skill—even religious conviction—is wrought into the tensile strength of our American piano. For the descendants of these same exiles, by perfecting the science of iron casting, made old Alpheus Babcock's "whole iron plate" first successful in America. This iron frame, the work of American genius, constitutes the creative feature of the piano of to-day. The speech from which I have quoted adds another essential fact. Just as Italian and Tyrolese forests rendered Amati violins possible in Cremona, so American lumber has carried piano making to its highest perfection here on our Atlantic seaboard.
22To understand the necessity for the iron plate, let us look at the wooden bracing.
24At the back of an upright and at the bottom of a grand piano are certain beams of wood corresponding to the beams and rafters of a house. Upon them everything rests; into them everything is bolted. The framing is the security of the tuning; the slightest yielding at any point throws the whole scale into disorder. No part of a piano may be loose enough to jar or tremble in its place. Every part must be so bound to every other part that there is but one absolute whole, just as the flesh and bones of a human being are grown together into a whole.
26The traditional build of this wooden frame has shown great changes. In old times a number of timbers ran lengthwise through the body of the piano, with cross braces dovetailed in at right angles. The whole was united by a sort of rim, made up of short pieces, that supported the edges of the soundboard. The wooden wrest plank, which bore the tuning pins, was likewise bolted to this frame. The weight of this shapeless mass was enormous in proportion to its strength; for it was constantly warping and bending. Originally it offered the only resistance to the whole drawing force of the strings. Since the wood alternately swelled and contracted in consequence of atmospheric changes, the strings were never under the same strain from their tuning pins, and therefore never in tune.
28It was in 1799 that Joseph Smith took out a patent for metal bracing, to strengthen the case enough "to admit of introducing a drum, tabor or tambourine, with sticks or beaters, as well as a triangle, into the body of the instrument." Smith's English patent was followed the next year by a plan for metal framing, by Isaak Hawkins, of Philadelphia. England made the second step when James Shudi Broadwood, in 1808, applied three steel tension bars above the strings to prevent the treble part of his grand piano from flattening. In 1820 Thom and Allen, two workmen employed by Robert Stodart, invented a system of bracing with hollow metal tension bars applied over the strings of grand pianos. These bars, firm at one end, were fastened at the other in a movable slide, and yielded with the expansion and contraction of the strings. The metal wrest plank plate came later.
30Babcock's "whole iron plate"—the complete frame, tension bars and string plate cast in one piece—was patented in 1825. This model, passing through various hands, was much improved by the Chickering's (grand plate with agraffes) in 1843. But the practical relations of wood and iron to each other were still little understood when, in the middle of our century, Jonas Chickering being dead, Theodore Steinway came forward to take his place in history. The experiments made by the latter required the capital of a rich and powerful industry. The Steinways began with only $10,000, and for years every day saw them at the bench, but as soon as circumstances made it possible Mr. Steinway carried out the dream of his life and set his piano upon a scientific basis.
32In a modern Steinway grand piano the strings pull from the hitch pins at one end toward the wrest pins at the other with a force of from 20 to 30 tons. The wooden braces, and iron tension bars, running nearly parallel with the strings, prevent the piano from collapsing endwise; but a cross brace is required to strengthen the wrest plank. Mr. Bord, of Paris, met this need by the invention of a transverse bar, which he called a capo d'astro, from the well-known contrivance applied to the strings of a guitar. This bar, for which Mr. Bord intended no acoustic application, is the nucleus of Theodore Steinway's capo d'astro bar in the frame before us, which not only forms the upward bearing of the treble strings—pressing them upon the front of the flange beneath, made by the extension of the wrest plank plate—but provides the node of separation for the duplex scale.
34The wrest plank plate, the transverse bar, the longitudinal bars and the hitch pin plate make up the various parts of the iron frame, cast in the piano before us in one piece.
36My three pianos show the three stages of upper bracing, the Broadwood, without brace or iron, its corkscrew strings (hooked by eyes over the hitch pins) hardly strained to the tension of a violin string; the Nuns & Clark, with its tiny plate at the right, and the cupola frame of a modern Steinway grand.
38Upon this frame you will see, at the wrest plank and hitch pin ends, little rib-like protuberances upon which the strings lie. Another plan is to screw or cast in the plate eyed pegs called (by Erard, the inventor) agraffes, through which the strings are threaded; or the strings may lie on a rib on the plate.
40Looking at my frame again you see that the hitch pin plate does not bear the groups of pins at the same elevation. The differences represent the different heights at which the base, middle and treble webs of strings cross each other. The hitch pin plate itself curves upward from the flange that forms its edge. The upper surface of the curve is marked by a series of open rosettes, which remind you of the rose of a guitar, and answer the same purpose. This arched frame, with its braces, is the famous "cupola" which, like the fan scale, revolutionized piano making.
42But the principle upon which the wooden braces of the soundboard are arranged is still more original and daring—if a work of evolution that can be traced through a quarter of a century may be called daring. I have spoken of the rectangular bracing of the old piano.
44Theodore Steinway's plan was based on the fact that wood fibre best conducts vibration when least interrupted by cross contact. He made his braces converge to one point against the beam which underlies the front of the soundboard, where they are supported by each other and by the beam, in combination with a metal shoe which bears against the iron frame. Their outer ends abut against a rim of veneered wood—the fibres sometimes 23 feet long—which forms the inner case of the piano. The front of this rim lies above the cross bar, so that the edge of the soundboard is supported by it throughout. The rim vibrates powerfully beneath this edge, and redistributes the vibrations of each portion of the board throughout its entire circle.
46The radiating braces, set like spokes against the rim of the wheel, not only offer great resistance to the inward pull of the strings, but, since they only abut against the rim, without interrupting its fibres, they allow it to vibrate freely. This rim, like the outer case, consists of many veneers of wood pressed and glued into the required curves. Upon the rim, or what answers to it in other pianos, is glued the soundboard; above the soundboard, and bolted through it to the rim, is the arched iron frame. Every precaution is taken to connect the vibrations of the wooden parts of the instrument and to separate them from the iron. To the exquisite skill with which this is effected, and to the perfect workmanship and finish of each several part, may be traced the wonderful resonance of the Steinway piano.
48The outer case of a piano when well managed has much more to do with the tone than people imagine. It vibrates powerfully with the sounding parts of the instrument, and as it is in contact with the outer air impresses its motion directly upon it. It happens then that the plainest cases often lend themselves to the best tone. But the delight of turning musical instruments into jewels has always been active.
50The museum of the Conservatory of Music at Paris contains an Italian spinet made by Annibale Rossi in 1577.
52THE STRINGING AND IRON CUPOLA FRAME OF A STEINWAY GRAND, THE SOUNDBOARD IN PLACE.
54SHOWING "METAL SHOE."
55Permission of Steinway & Sons.
57The case (I translate from Blondel) "is covered with panels and borders of ebony richly decorated with plaques of lapis lazuli and precious stones, which are framed with cartouches of ivory finely and delicately carved. Each panel is itself surrounded with ornaments of ivory incrusted with rubies, topazes, emeralds and fine pearls. The panel of the keyboard is ornamented with macarons and arabesques alternately. On the transverse bar, which is also incrusted with fine pearls, are placed three graceful figures in ivory of Amors playing the viol. The white keys are made of agates variously framed in ivory; the black of lapis lazuli. The keyboard is terminated at each end by consoles decorated with very elegant figurines carved in boxwood." France has always longed to turn the piano into an article of "vertu," and Pape long ago constructed one in a case covered with ivory for the Duchesse de Berri.
59Erard followed (the fervor of the description would be lost
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