THE PIANO

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 April 1941, Page 9

THE PIANO

INTRODUCED BY ITALIAN. COMPLICATED MANUFACTURE. The piano is the descendant of a long line of similar instruments. For two centuries and a half the nation's ancestors were content with the tinkling music of the clavichord, itself the child of the monochord. For another hundred and fifty years the clacicymbal held pride of place, with the spinet and harpsichord for rivals. These instruments differed from the piano in one important particular. While they were provided with points of quill or hard leather which plucked the wires, producing a harp-like s Hind, the piano wires are set in moth i by blows from hammers.

It was not until late Stuart days (in 1690) that Bartolomeo Cristofali, a hapsichord-maker of Padua, Italy, introduced the pianoforte. What a splendid workman Bartolomeo was is proved by the fact that two of his pianos, dated respectively 1720 and 1726, still survive.

Nearly eighty years elapsed before the piano made its public debut in England’ in 1767. The scene was the Theatre Royal. Covent Garden, and the occasion a performance of Gay's “Beggar’s Opera” for the benefit of Miss Bricklef, who played the part of Polly Peachum. “Miss Brickler,” the bill runs, “will sing a favourite song from ‘Judith,’ accompanied by Mr Dibdin on a new instrument called Piano Forte.” Years before, however, the piano was known in England; it was first introduced by one Burkhard Tschudi, an ex-joiner. When Tschudi retired, his mantle fell on the broad and capable shoulders of John Broadwood, a Scotsman, who had served his apprenticeship to the enterprising Swiss. Thus in 1773 we find Broadwood advertising himself as “Harpsichord and Grand and Small Pianoforte Maker to His Majesty.” More than 10.000 pieces of wood, metal, felt, cloth, and so on, go to the making of a piano. Before it is .finished it passes through some eighty pairs of hands. The timber used includes spruce deals from Canada, beech from English forests, oak and whitewood from America, and mahogany from Honduras.

After the wood is seasoned and cut to the sizes required, it-Hs passed into a heating chamber, where it remains, under gradually increased temperature, for three of four weeks until the last vestige of moisture is dried out of it. After a further period of drying, the pieces of wood are taken to the woodworking shop and shaped. Then follows process after process glueing, veneering with various woods, etc., until the sounding-board, the most delicate and vital part of the instrument, made from Swiss .pine, is fixed in place. The steel wires, of the finest temper and able to bear an aggregate tension of twenty to thirty tons, are stretched in their places; the keyboard is added, and the piano is ready for its case.