Piano pedals (3) - the sostenuto pedal and the rest!

"There are three pedals on these grand pianos. Don't let that confuse you - the pedal in the middle is there to separate the other two pedals - which will be wonderful news for people with three feet." - Victor Borge
 
Having covered the sustain pedal and the various soft pedals in previous articles, a few pedal functions still remain to be covered. The most commonly found of these are the sostenuto pedal and the bass damper pedal, but there are a few others as well, many of which could fall into the category of the "weird and wonderful". The middle pedal on a grand piano is normally the sostenuto. The middle pedal on an upright is often a celeste pedal (most modern uprights, and the small number of older German uprights that have a third pedal), occasionally a sostenuto pedal (a few, mostly modern, uprights), sometimes a bass damper pedal (older American uprights) and sometimes, as I mentioned in the last article, a dummy pedal.

The sostenuto pedal

The sostenuto is a selective sustain pedal - when it is engaged it will hold off the dampers on any notes that are already pressed down at that moment, but not the others. On a grand piano, the typical mechanism for this is seen in the diagram below:

The sostenuto rail is a rotating metal strip which is mounted at the back of the action in roughly the position shown in blue. The pedal rotates the sostenuto rail as shown by the green arrow, when it catches the red protrusion on the front of the damper knuckle on any notes already pressed. The damper is actually forced upwards a little by the rail, so the other dampers can continue to function normally.

The sostenuto was first developed by French piano makers Boisselot & Fils and first displayed at the French Industrial Exposition of 1844. However, the innovation was not taken up by other European makers; it was eventually adapted by Albert Steinway and patented in the US in 1874. It was subsequently fitted to Steinways and other American-made pianos, but was accepted by European makers as a matter of course only relatively recently. Interestingly, the Steinway company themselves reflected this difference - older Steinways made at the New York factory generally have the sostenuto pedal, older Steinways made in Hamburg don't. This pedal is found on nearly all modern grands but only on a few upright models.

As sostenuto pedals are quite rare in the UK, many people will never have had the opportunity to play one, so here's pianist Frederick Hodges enthusing about the advantages:

Bass damper lift pedal (uprights only)

This is just like the sustain pedal, and works in much the same way, but instead of lifting off all the dampers, raises those in the bass section of the piano only. This is sometimes found on American uprights, but is extremely rare on pianos that are found in the UK, since (as already mentioned), most older European-made pianos only have two pedals, and the mainly modern instruments that do have three normally have a celeste as the middle pedal. For the same reason, dummy middle pedals that don't do anything at all are very rare on European-made pianos.

The bass damper lift is sometimes referred to as a "faux sostenuto" since it will allow (for example) the sound of a bass chord to be sustained independently. 

Four or more?

The pedals already described cover almost all of those found on modern instruments. A very small number of modern grand pianos have a fourth pedal which is a half-blow pedal (in the same manner as an upright) - this is found on certain models by Italian manufacturers Fazioli and Australian makers Stuart & Sons (and possibly others). Also, a few models (including some by Feurich) have a fourth pedal, located to the right of the sustain pedal, which is called the "harmonic pedal" - this seems to have the effect of raising the dampers to allow resonance of the other strings, but reapplying the damper to the note that has just been played.

...and the just plain kitsch...

On some early pianos (pre-1850), a large variety of different pedal functions can be found, some of which have a "novelty" function. These were typically found on Viennese-made instruments (e.g. British-made instruments of the period rarely have more than two pedals). Examples include:

• The lute pedal pressed a piece of leather, wool or silk against the strings to damp vibration, producing a sound supposedly like a lute.
• The moderator pedal  was a forerunner of the celeste pedal, placing material (commonly leather) between the hammer and strings.
• The bassoon pedal caused a piece of parchment or similar material to come into contact with the strings to give a buzzing sound, allegedly imitating a bassoon.
• The janissary pedal was associated with a variety of percussive effects such as a felted drumstick hitting the soundboard, or striking a cymbal or bell. As the name suggests, this was associated with the fashion for "Turkish music" that peaked around 1800 - these effects were sometimes associated with performances of Mozart's "Rondo all Turca". Sometimes there were several pedals e.g. one for a drum, one for a cymbal and one for a bell.
• The cembalo pedal was a name given to various systems with the objective of making a "harpsichord-like" sound. Certain early pianos even had a second set of wooden hammers as opposed to the normal (at this period) leather-covered ones to achieve this. Another method was a strip of cloth or leather lowered in front of the strings with metal clips on, to give a jangling or tinny effect, a bit more like the sound of a harpsichord. This survived later in the form of a "mandolin rail", a similarly designed attachment occasionally used on pianos in the 20th Century to give a "honky-tonk" effect, though this latter device was commonly lowered into place by hand rather than with a pedal.

Here's a demonstration of some of these effects on a piano from 1815 by the Viennese maker Thym:

And the "Rondo Alla Turca" on an early 19th Century Rosenberger piano:

These "novelty pedals" had largely been abandoned by the 1840s, much to the relief of music critics and many listeners as well!

Piano pedals (2) - soft pedals - una corda, half-blow and celeste

Having dealt with the sustain pedal in my last article on the topic, I wanted to turn to the function of the left pedal (and in some cases the middle pedal if you have one). This time I intend to cover the the pedals on a piano that are intended to make the sound softer, which are of three main types: (true) una corda, half-blow and celeste. I should point out that in music the indication for the left pedal is "una corda" so sometimes this term is used to cover all the types, but in fact the mechanism generally works in a quite different way on an upright as compared with a grand. There are two other common pedal functions (sostenuto and bass damper lift) which do not fall into the category of soft pedals and will be covered in a third article.

So, at this point we need to cover the slightly complex question of what the pedal functions are, depending on whether you have a grand or upright, and whether it has two or three pedals. In the last article, I explained that uprights can have an underdamper action (dampers below the hammers) or an overdamper action (dampers above the hammers). For the purpose of this article, it may be useful to know whether your piano has an overdamper or underdamper action, and whether it is overstrung (bass strings cross over the treble ones) or straight strung (strings run straight up and down the piano). All modern pianos (more or less anything built after 1945) will be of the overstrung underdamper type.

If you don't want to spend time looking inside your piano, don't worry too much as it's usually possible to tell what your pedals do just by listening to them.

If you have a grand piano:

• If it has two pedals, the left pedal will normally be a (true) una corda, whilst the right pedal is (as always) the sustain pedal.
• If it has three pedals, the left will normally be the una corda, the middle will normally be the sostenuto, and the right will be the sustain pedal.

If you have an upright piano: 

• If the piano has two pedals and an underdamper action, whether overstrung or straight strung, the left pedal will normally be the half blow pedal,  and the right pedal will be the sustain pedal.
• If the piano has two pedals and is overstrung with an overdamper action, the pedal functions are frequently the same as for an underdamper action, but sometimes (but not always) the left pedal is a celeste pedal instead of a half-blow.
• If the piano has two pedals and is straight strung with an overdamper action (in the UK this is a significant minority of older instruments), the left pedal is in the great majority of cases a celeste pedal, may occasionally be a half-blow, and in a very few cases may be a true una corda, of which more later. The right pedal, as always, is still the sustain pedal.
• If the piano has three pedals it normally has an underdamper action (I've never seen three pedals on an overdamper, thought possibly a few may exist). In this case, the left pedal is normally a half-blow pedal, and the middle pedal is most commonly a celeste pedal, though more rarely, it is a sostenuto pedal, or a bass damper lift pedal.

Also, on a few (mainly older) pianos with three pedals, the middle one is just a dummy pedal that does nothing at all - generally these are American instruments since, as I had already mentioned, most older European-made pianos don't have a third pedal at all.

The Una Corda pedal

So now to demystify what these terms mean. The una corda pedal was actually the very first device used to change a piano's tone - its history goes all the way back to Bartolomeo Cristofori, the inventor of the piano. Cristofori began building pianos around 1700, and an una corda stop is featured on a surviving piano which he built later on (1726).

To understand how, and why, the una corda works, I have again used this action diagram for a grand piano:

What I've shown here is that the grand action consists of two parts - the main action, which controls the hammer striking the string, and the damper mechanism (to the left of the red line), which comprises the damper rail, damper underlevers and the dampers themselves. The function of the una corda is to move the hammers across slightly, thus striking two of the three strings (on trichords) and one of the two on bichords. This is done by a system of levers (trapwork) underneath the piano that cause the main action to be pushed slightly to the right - the action is returned to its original position by a strong spring when the pedal is released. As the entire action is shifted, the keyboard can be seen moving physically to the right.

The key thing about the operation of an una corda pedal is that the hammers should move in relation to the strings, whilst the dampers should not - these need to damp all three strings exactly as they normally would. This is quite easy to achieve on the grand action as the dampers are separate from the main action, but (as will be seen) very difficult on an upright.

The term "una corda" (Italian: "one string") comes from the fact that early pianos normally only had two strings per note, so the pedal was intended to have the hammers strike one of these. On a modern piano, normally two strings are struck, so "due corde" would be a more accurate term, but the earlier nomenclature has stuck.

This is almost invariably the function of the left pedal on a grand - if your grand piano has a middle pedal it will normally be a sostenuto pedal, which will be covered in the next article.

Half-blow pedal

This pedal is normally only found on an upright piano - it's essentially the "substitute" for a true una corda pedal. Its function is shown in the picture below:

The left pedal operates a rocker which pushes up the pedal stick (the red arrow is pointing to the top of this), the effect of which is to move a hinged part of the hammer rail closer to the strings. As the line of hammers is now closer to the strings, the volume when playing will be reduced.

Though both the half-blow and una corda pedals have the effect of reducing the volume, the una corda also changes the tone (due to striking two strings instead of three); the half-blow simply reduces the volume. Additionally, some pianists may notice a change in the feel of the keys when the half-blow pedal is in use - this is due to the fact that something technically known as "lost motion" is introduced - I won't try to explain this in full here, but it means that the keys will go down a little way before starting to propel the hammer, rather than doing so immediately.

Celeste pedal

The celeste rail on a Yamaha U1, which lowers a piece of felt in front of the strings.

This pedal is also normally found only on upright pianos - its other names included the "muffler pedal" and "practice pedal". Quite simply, it inserts a piece of soft felt material between the hammers and the strings. This arrangement is commonly found as the middle pedal on more modern (and a few older) uprights which have three pedals and an underdamper action, or as the left on older straight-strung overdamper uprights. Please note that overstrung overdamper uprights normally have a half-blow which moves the hammers closer to the strings, just the same as an underdamper.

When found on an underdamper, the celeste rail normally has spring-loaded support brackets that makes it stand above the action, and the pedal lowers the celeste into place. On the older straight-strung overdampers, because the dampers are above the line of strings, the celeste rail sits at the back of the action and is pushed up from below. In either case, the rail normally needs to be removed when tuning - in the case of the underdampers because it is sitting in front of the tuning pins and for the overdampers because it impedes wedging.

A device similar to a celeste (often called a moderator) was a feature of several early pianos - e.g. the Viennese maker Graf included two different thicknesses on his pianos in the 1780s. These were originally made of leather or cloth, sometimes cut into strips to allow the strings to vibrate more freely.

Is it possible to have a true una corda pedal on an upright?

The Wikipedia article on piano pedals quotes a work by Edwin Good, entitled: Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos: A Technological History From Cristofori to the Modern Concert Grand, as saying that an una corda pedal on an upright is impossible because the strings "run at such an oblique angle to the hammers that if the action were moved sideways, the hammer might strike one string of the wrong note".

In fact, I do not believe this is the main reason why upright pianos scarcely ever have an una corda pedal. After all, some small baby grand pianos have strings that run at an oblique angle (a few are even double overstrung), yet still have an una corda, whilst even larger or stright-strung uprights hardly ever have one. In my view, there's no reason that problem couldn't be overcome by careful string-spacing and action placement. The real cause of difficulty can be seen by looking at a diagram of an upright piano action:

Upright action diagram - this is typical of an older American upright

The key point here is that the hammer butt (yellow, top right) which carries the hammer, the lever (yellow, lower down), which carries the jack, and the damper body (blue), which carries the damper, To achieve an una corda, the levers and hammers need to move across (the two yellow pieces), but the blue damper bodies need to stay where they are. To achieve this you would somehow have to split the wooden beam so that the part that carries the dampers (and the damper lift rod, which is hinged to the beam) stays in the same place, but the rest of the beam moves across. This would be extremely difficult and fiddly in practice.

So is it impossible to have a true una corda on an upright? The answer is no, though they are extremely rare; whilst it is near-impossible to achieve on an underdamper action, it is perfectly possible on an overdamper, because the dampers are attached to a separate rail above the main action. This is still uncommon in practice, but I have come across a couple of these on my rounds and here is a video of a German piano tuner playing another:

Beethoven Broadwood Bicentenary

This year, the firm of John Broadwood & Sons is promoting a celebration of a remarkable gift - a grand piano sent to Beethoven exactly two hundred years ago.

Thomas Broadwood (1786-1861), the third son of John Broadwood was visiting Austria in 1817 and had contacted the famous composer Ludwig van Beethoven whilst in Vienna. He was invited to the composer's apartment, but noted that Beethoven did not have his own piano at the time; rather, he was borrowing or hiring instruments from sympathetic local piano makers. Additionally, Beethoven's deafness meant that he was seeking a louder piano: at the time, the grand pianos being built by Broadwood's in London were capable of more volume and power than contemporary Viennese instruments.

On returning to London, Thomas decided that he would send Beethoven one of Broadwood's pianos as a surprise gift. He enlisted the help of several eminent pianists to select the most suitable instrument - No.7632 was the one eventually chosen - and the piano was dispatched from London Docks on 27th December 1817, to be taken all the way to Trieste in the Adriatic by sea. The piano was kept in a warehouse until April 1818, when the Alpine passes were clear of snow, and then taken the 360 miles to Vienna by horse and cart. Despite being placed in a protective packing case for the duration of its journey, the piano had nevertheless suffered some damage as a result of its lengthy peregrination, and Beethoven recruited the assistance of his friend Nanette Streicher, a Viennese piano builder, to carry out essential repairs.

The route taken by the Broadwood piano on its way to Vienna

The piano was taken to Beethoven's apartment in Mödling, near Vienna, in late April or early May 1818. He was delighted with the gift, but moreover the increased sonority and sustain of the English-made instrument inspired him to employ these qualities in three of his late piano sonatas, Op.106 in B flat, Op.109 in E (the "Hammerklavier"), and Op.110 in A flat (most evident in the composition of the bass part).

After Beethoven's death in 1827, the piano was sold to a Viennese music publisher, C Anton Spina, who kept it until 1845 and then gave it to the composer Franz Liszt. Liszt kept the piano in his house in Weimar until 1874, when he donated it to the Hungarian National Museum in Budapest, where it remains to the present day. The piano was restored to a playable condition in 1991 and is on regular public display at the museum.

Scheduled events (in the UK)

Beethoven recital at the Clarke Clavier Collection, Oxborough, Norfolk at 3.00pm on 28th and 29th April 2018. Mariko Koide will be performing. Tel 01366 328217 for booking (essential).

Lunchtime recitals on early Broadwood grands by students Yehuda Inbat and Amiran Zenaishvili at the Royal Academy of Music Keyboards Museum, London NW1 5HT on 2nd and 9th May 2018 at 2.30pm. Details at www.ram.ac.uk

"A most remarkable gift": Talk and demonstration by Dr Alastair Laurence, chairman of John Broadwood & Sons, also at the Royal Academy of Music Keyboards Museum on 8th May 2018 at 7.00pm. Details at www.ram.ac.uk

"The Vaulted Concert Room": International concert pianist Paul Roberts performs Beethoven and Debussy on a 1921 Broadwood steel barless grand at Finchcocks, Goudhurst, Kent TN2 5LE on 27th May 2018 at 7.30pm. Advance booking essential, see www.finchcocks.com

First concerts in the new recital room at the Richard Burnett Heritage Collection, Waterdown House, Tunbridge Wells, Kent TN2 5LE. On 10th June 2018 at 2.30pm and 6.00pm, young virtuoso Julian Trevelyan plays Beethoven on early Broadwood grand pianos, with commentaries from Dr Alastair Laurence. Advance booking essential, tel 01892 523203.

Events elsewhere in Europe

Beethoven's Broadwood Grand Piano is on display at the Hungarian National Museum, Muzeum krt.14-16, Budapest, Hungary. Open 10.00am-6.00pm every day of the week except Monday. See www.mnm.hulen

Commemorative Concerts at the Thönet Schlössl Museum, Josef Deutsch-Platz 2, A-2340, Mödling, near Vienna, Austria. These will take place throughout April and May, performed by local schoolchildren and professional musicians. A guided tour of Beethoven's apartment at Mödling (where the Broadwood piano was delivered) follows after each concert. See www.museum-moedling.at

Exhibition of Ephemera surrounding the Broadwood gift, in association with the display of an 1817 Broadwood grand at the Beethoven Birthplace Museum, Beethoven-Hause, Bonngasfe, 24-26, 53111 Bonn. See www.beethoven.de

Piano pedals (1) - the sustain pedal

 

As a couple of people have asked me recently, I thought it might be useful to run through a brief history of how the pedals on a piano evolved and the mechanics of how they work. This is the first in a planned series of three articles.

Two pedals or three?

The first question is - how many pedals does the typical piano have? The answer may depend on which part of the world you live in. In Europe, the great majority of older pianos will have only two pedals - only since around the 1970s and 80s has the middle pedal become commonplace on new models. On the other hand, in North America, I understand that three pedals is generally the norm, and the situation may vary in other parts of the world. In any case, almost any piano will have either two or three - a few historic instruments (typically from the 1860s or earlier) may have only one pedal (normally the sustain pedal); also in a very few cases there may be four or more (of which more in a later article).

The exact functions of pedals on an upright piano is typically different from a grand piano, and some uprights differ from each other, so to ease into the discussion I'll deal with the one pedal which does more or less the same thing on every piano, and is almost always located in the same place - it's the right-hand or sustain pedal.

The sustain pedal (right-hand pedal) - also called the damper pedal

When pianists talk about "using the pedal", it is the right-hand or sustain(-ing) pedal they normally mean. This has a similar function on more or less every instrument, which is to lift off all the felt dampers that prevent the strings from ringing on after being struck by the hammer. Because of this, the pedal is sometimes referred to as the damper pedal or the loud pedal, though the latter term is often held to be incorrect since it does not make the notes any louder; nor is it the pedal's particular purpose (it is often used in quiet passages). However, its use does change the timbre of a note when struck, as it allows the strings of the other notes to vibrate sympathetically. On some early pianos, the sustain pedal is the only pedal though it was not the first to be invented (that was the una corda, of which more in the second article).

The first maker known to have used the sustain pedal mechanism in essentially its current form was Johann Andreas Stein (1728-92), although his pianos featured knee pedals rather than the modern foot-operated ones. This was a development of an earlier idea by Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753), but this earlier device was a hand stop, so could only be switched on and off whilst the piano was not being played. A picture of a Stein grand piano, with the knee pedal visible, can be seen on the Cobbe Collection website here:
http://www.cobbecollection.co.uk/collection/15-grand-piano/

John Broadwood in 1783 used the modern concept of the sustain mechanism operated by a foot pedal on his grand pianos, though this may have been used on some earlier English-made instruments.

How the sustain pedal works

Although this pedal has the same basic function on every piano, it actually works in a slightly different way depending upon the type of piano you have. 

Underdamper uprights (all modern and some older uprights)

All modern upright pianos and some older instruments have dampers that are located underneath and behind the hammers - this is called an "underdamper action". This picture shows the bass section of a Yamaha U1 - I have pressed the pedal down and as you can see, the dampers have come away from the strings (the position of the dampers is shown by the red arrows).

When the pedal is pressed, it moves a pivoted rod (usually wooden on older pianos, sometimes metal on newer ones) called a rocker, and this pushes up the pedal stick, normally at the left-hand side of the case.

This picture shows a typical arrangement of two pedals, the pedal rockers and pedal sticks on an older German-made upright piano. When the pedal is pressed down, the pedal bolts pull down the pedal rocker at the right-hand side - the left-hand side pivots up raising the pedal sticks (at the left side of the case).The rocker is returned to position by a spring.

The pedal stick engages with a hinged metal rod at the back of the dampers, called the damper lift rod, which pushes the tails of the dampers forwards and brings the heads away from the string.

This picture shows a modern Yamaha U1 action from the back, removed from the piano so you can see what is happening. The pedal stick comes up where my hand is and the rod (the end of which can be seen under the green arrow) moves the damper tail outwards, moving the head back from the string.

You will also note that the top notes (typically the top couple of octaves) on any piano will not have dampers, as they sustain for such a short while that damping is unnecessary.

The invention of underdampers goes back to 1829 when they were featured in an action design by the French piano makers Blanchet et Roller.

Overdamper uprights (some older pianos)

An 1890s German overstrung upright with overdampers

If your upright piano looks a bit like this with the top door removed, you have an overdamper model. Overdampers are very common in many European-made pianos from before the Second World War, but the design gradually disappeared over time and ceased to be made at all after about 1950 (outside Europe I believe they may be much less frequently-encountered). They can very easily be identified by the long wires at the front of the action which operate the dampers, located on a separate damper rail above the line of the hammers. Unlike the underdamper action, which relies on springs to push the dampers back on to the strings, the overdamper mechanism is gravitationally operated (there are often weights located in the wooden damper bodies). Please note however that some older pianos - including pre-1900 models - have the modern-style (underdamper) mechanism.

On these pianos, the dampers are normally lifted by a wooden or metal rail underneath the damper bodies - the blue arrow on the diagram shows the end of the damper lift rail and the top of the pedal stick (which is pushed up by the pedal). The damper body (the piece of wood connected to the top of the long wire) links to a right-angled wire that connects to the damper head.

There is some variation in these arrangements - a few (normally older) overdamper models have a spring-loaded damper rail which is pulled away from the strings, or a hinged rail which moves upwards with the pedal, drawing back the dampers in both cases.

Overdampers are similar to a design used by Robert Wornum in his patent for a "double action" in 1826, which is the basis for all modern upright actions. It appears that most English manufacturers used this design through the mid-nineteenth century, whereas some French makers used underdampers; quite a lot of German makers followed the English practice. From the latter part of the nineteenth century onwards until around 1950, overdampers were gradually phased out as more and more manufacturers switched over their action designs. However some noted makers (such as the German firm Blüthner) continued to use overdampers until relatively late on.

Grand pianos

On a grand piano, the dampers sit on top of the strings (except for a few older models that have them underneath) and are easily visible when the lid is raised. Each damper is connected to a wire, which goes through a hole in a piece of wood through the damper guide rail, and connects though a pivoting knuckle to the damper underlever, which is attached to a rail underneath the soundboard. Note that under normal circumstances these underlevers are difficult to see with the action inside the piano.

This arrangement is shown in the diagram below:

When the key is pressed down (the front of the key is off the right-hand end of this diagram), it pivots on the balance pin (coloured blue) and the back of the key is pushed upwards (red arrow). This will propel the hammer up toward the string, but the part we're interested in here is that the very back of the key (shown in red) will rise up and push up the damper underlever, so lifting the damper head (green) and felts from the string.

If the pedal is pressed, this typically connects to a metal strip that pushes up a dowel underneath the damper lift rail (shown in orange) - this raises all the damper underlevers and the dampers (green), regardless of whether the key is pressed down or not.

You will also note that in the grand action, the damper mechanism is effectively separate from the main action, which will be important in the next article!

When the sustain pedal isn't working

The pedal is extremely important for expression in many piano pieces - especially those from the romantic era - so pianist Eliane Rodrigues had to think on her feet when things went wrong during a performance in Rotterdam. Here's what happened when the piano had to be taken off-stage, using a descending trapdoor, and replaced:

The other pedals (left pedal and middle pedal, where there is one) will be covered in two further articles.

How to keep healthy, bright-eyed and slim

I remember that some years ago, there was a commonly available ointment called "Zam-Buk" - my granny would nearly always have a tin of it in the bathroom. It was a sort of green-coloured emollient that you could put on grazes or scratches. It used to come in tins that looked a bit like this:

The ointment is still marketed today in some other parts of the world, and you can still buy it here in Britain - except that it now comes in "heritage style" tins that mimic the original packaging of the late Victorian period. It turns out that Zam-Buk (the origin of the name is not quite clear) was produced by a company based in Leeds, called C E Fulford Ltd, established in the 1890s. By the 1950s, the factory was in Carlton Hill, just off Woodhouse Lane - however the building and almost everything around it was completely demolished in the 1960s. You can see a picture of it here.

My reason for mentioning this was that it brings me in a roundabout way to the fact that the Fulford company also marketed several other products - their other offerings included "Peps, for coughs, colds & bronchitis" and "Guy's Tonic, for indigestion and nerviousness."

Yet another product was Ven-Yusa, "the oxygen face cream". In an advertisement of 1917, the heading referred to "The Lady Conductor" and went on: "None of the War occupations of women call for more exposure to the elements than that of the lady conductor on tram or bus. Unless proper measures are promptly taken, a painful roughness and discolouration of the skin are bound to result." Well, whoever knew that being a clippie could be so hazardous! But never fear, because: "For this trouble, Ven-Yusa is the favourite application because it gives the skin an invigorating 'oxygen bath'."

If you are sensing a hint of late Victorian quackery at work in the background, you may have a point, as will be seen shortly. However, the particular product that I wanted to discuss here should be familiar to anyone living in York, and possibly quite a few of those who have visited. I refer, of course to "Bile Beans", another flagship product of the Fulford Company.

York's famous "Bile Beans" sign in Lord Mayor's Walk

This famous "ghost sign" was actually repainted by public subscription after the York Civic Trust raised £1,600 back in 2012. As a point of interest, I suspect that it probably dates from after the Second World War and possibly as late as the 1950s, since the style of the sign is consistent with the company's print advertising at that time; and who could forget the snappy injunction that Bile Beans - taken nightly, of course - keep you healthy, bright-eyed and slim.

There is a slightly darker history behind this, which has its origins back in the 1890s. Strange as it may seem now - even the name would probably be offputting to the modern customer - this was once a highly-popular and widely-advertised product. The Fulford Company was established by Charles Edward Fulford, a Canadian emigré born in 1870. By 1895, he was in Australia hawking around a medicinal concoction of questionable value, "Dr Williams' Pink Pills for Pale People" on behalf of his uncle, George Taylor Fulford. Working with a colleague, Ernest Gilbert, in 1897 he launched "Bile Beans for Biliousness", which proved so successful that in 1899 he came to Leeds to set up the manufacture and marketing of the same in Britain.

The back story behind the product - initially described as "Charles Forde's Bile Beans", was that Charles Forde, an Australian scientist, had scoured the outback for medicinal plants previously known only to the aborigines, before carefully distilling them into the formula for the incredible cure-all: bile beans. Unfortunately the reality was that "Charles Forde" was a figment of the imagination - except inasmuch as he was a thinly-disguised alter ego of Charles Fulford, who was neither Australian nor a scientist.

A great deal of money was spent on advertising: according to Wikipedia the company was spending as much as £60,000 (perhaps at least £5 million today) per annum on a whole variety of different forms of marketing, including wall signs, print advertising, door-to-door leaflets, free gifts, the "Bile Beans Cookbook" and later on a "Bile Beans Puzzle Book".  In fact, even as late as the 1950s, advertisements seem to have been widespread - for example, there are records of several "Bile Beans" signs in Leeds around that period. One of these, in Hunslet, still survives:

The 'other' Bile Beans sign in Hunslet, Leeds

Advertising blurb often contained anecdotes, endorsements and purported scientific research, such as "The Verdict of Science on Bile Beans" (an article from 1907), proclaiming: " 'We have satisfied ourselves that Bile Beans are of purely vegetable origin,' says that leading London scientific journal, 'Science Siftings.' 'Our laboratory experiments and practical tests have disclosed to us a valuable preparation... excellent for constipation and as a regulator of the liver and bile.' "

The verdict of the somewhat better-known "British Medical Journal" contrasted rather sharply with this: in an article entitled "Patent Medicines" of December 26th 1903, the ingredients were shown to be a concoction of items commonly found in chemists' shops of the time. The laxative effect was real enough due to the presence of aloin, though it would not now be considered safe due to its side effects. The article warned: "It would not be unfair to describe most of the preparations of the patent medicine vendors as quack remedies. The chief means by which patent medicines were found to succeed is persistent and audacious advertisement."

The company ran into trouble in 1905 after taking legal action against a chemist called George Davidson of Edinburgh, who started producing his own product called "Davidson's Bile Beans." The official records of the case note that: "The advertisements of the Bile Bean Company stated that the basis of their Bile Beans was an Australian herb discovered by Charles Forde, an eminent scientist. These statements and others in the advertisements were false." Lord Ardwall, the judge, stated: "There is no doubt in my mind that their business is based on fraud, impudence and advertisement." In the appeal case of the following year, Lord Kingsburgh the Lord Justice Clerk was even more explicit: "I agree with the Lord Ordinary [Lord Ardwall] in holding that the Complainers being engaged in perpetrating a deliberate fraud on the public, in describing and selling an article as being what it is not, cannot be listened to when they apply to a Court of Justice for Protection."

Despite this setback, it seems the public's enthusiasm for "Bile Beans" was scarcely dimmed. However, Charles Fulford did not enjoy the proceeds of his enterprise for very long - he died suddenly aged just 36 on a return visit to Australia, with "exhaustion" as the stated cause, leaving, by all accounts, an enormous fortune. At this point, his elder brother Frank Harris Fulford stepped in and took charge of the firm.

The Bile Bean March

This brings me to one of the Fulford Company's less orthodox forms of advertising. Frank Fulford's true interest in life was music - he was an accomplished viola player, having studied in Leipzig, and who was working as a music dealer in Canada. In 1898, he composed a jaunty piece called "The Bile Bean March", which could be obtained free by sending a letter of request to the Fulford Company's headquarters. The true objective, of course, was to obtain an address to which subsequent exhortations on the value of "Bile Beans" and other products could be sent.

A letter to the British Medical Journal from E P Edmonds of Aylesford near Maidstone in 1966 stated: "The account [referring to an article in a previous issue] of the piano teacher addicted to 'Bile Beans', prompted me to take a look at one of my prized possessions - a copy of the 'Bile Bean March'." The letter goes on to point out that "this moving melody has been 'rendered with immense success by leading artists & orchestras throughout Great Britain' [as stated on the front].

"Before propping this sheet on the piano we can read on the first page of 'One of the most miraculous cures of the century.'

" 'When ten doctors and infirmary staff have failed to do any good; when for four long years a young woman has been gradually sinking, when her own mother by sheer force of circumstances had to abandon all hope, nay, to go further and actually prepare her daughter's grave clothes, and in her mind to select the bearers for the last solemn ceremony, then it will be admitted such a case looks about as black as it possibly could.'

"Black indeed! But this young lady, Miss Annie Brook, was recommended Charles Forde's Bile Beans for Biliousness, and after taking five boxes she was completely cured. In a legally sworn statement she tells us that, 'My mother used to feel at me every five minutes to see if I was dead, for the doctors said I might go off at any minute'."

I have, courtesy of the National Library of Australia's online archive, managed to obtain a copy of "The Bile Bean March". As far as I can make out, there is no online recording of this piece anywhere. The full piece goes on for five pages, but I am able to present what is very possibly the internet premiere of the first movement of this piece below:

Frank Fulford went on to contribute much to the cultural life of the city of Leeds. In 1909, he moved into Headingley Castle (the building still stands but has now been converted into flats), and during his time there collected many pictures and interesting artefacts, and a fine collection of sheet music. Later on, he served for some years on the council's Art Gallery committee, and donated many items from his collections, including his sheet music which remains at Leeds University Library to this day. He died in 1943, still leaving a considerable fortune. It appears his personal generosity and good nature were well thought of in his lifetime and afterwards, but his true opinions on the nature of the remedies that brought him so much wealth are not recorded.

How to keep healthy, bright-eyed and slim

Personally, my advice would be:
1. Get your morning off to a good start by playing the invigorating strains of  the "Bile Bean March" on your piano.*
2. Stay well away from "Bile Beans" and other products of dubious medicinal value.

* Alternatively, you could enjoy listening to this ukulele ensemble from York, whose logo seems to have a distinct passing similarity to the iconic "Bile Beans" sign!

What is a piano tuner listening to when tuning?

All about beats

A piano tuner will explain that when tuning they are listening to "beats" - being able to recognize and correctly judge the speed of these is one of the key skills developed in the course of learning to tune. So I though it might be useful to put something on the blog about what these "beats" actually are, in physical terms, and why listening to these is an essential part of the process when tuning. To be a tuner you don't need the ability to hear low-flying aircraft, noises that only bats or dogs can normally hear, or strange mystical powers. What you do need to do over time is to train yourself to recognize particular sounds  within the large number of apparently random noises coming out of a piano.

Firstly, very few tuners have perfect (or absolute) pitch, namely the ability to recognize the pitch of a sound ("that's an F#") instantly - this is a rare gift even amongst musicians. It's very rare amongst tuners as well, and not always an advantage!

For the rest of us (and that includes me), to get a piano to pitch, it is necessary to tune the first string either to a tuning fork (the traditional way) or to an electronic tuner. Personally, I use an electronic tuner for the pitch of the first string only - everything is then tuned by ear relative to that first string. For that reason, a tuner needs to be able to recognize different musical intervals and have a good relative sense of pitch. Normally I use middle C as the reference point, but many tuners will use A instead.

The next thing is to get the two unison strings of middle C in tune with the first string.This is where the tuner needs to be able to recognize "beats" in the sound of two strings together, when one is slightly out of tune with the other. It would help at this point to explain why "beats" occur, and what actually causes these sounds in practice.

This graph represents a sound wave as a sine curve:
 

This is a simplified model - of course in practice the sound isn't a perfect sine wave, and the curve is simply a representation of compressions and rarefactions in the air itself - but it does help to illustrate how two sound waves combine together. This second graph shows the effect of two sound waves perfectly in tune with each other - one is coloured green and the other yellow, but you can't see the yellow one because it's covered by the green one. The red curve (of double the amplitude) is the combination of the two.

As you can see, the two sound waves just reinforce each other.

Now watch what happens if the green and yellow sound waves are at a slightly different frequency:

In this particular illustration, the yellow sound wave is at a higher frequency than the green sound wave; the ratio is 16:15 - this isn't typical of the kind of ratio you would normally be listening to as a tuner, but will do very nicely to illustrate the principle. The combination of these two sound waves gives the following result (red line):

You can see that the two waves start off in phase, so the combined sound wave is nearly double the amplitude; however, as the green and yellow waves diverge from each other, they start to cancel each other out, so the red wave goes almost down to nothing, then starts increasing in loudness again.

This graph shows the same pattern - this time I have increased the frequency of the green and yellow waves and the ratio is now 51:50. You can clearly see that the red wave - the result of addition of the green and yellow - shows a clear, regular "beating" pattern which is the consequence of wave interference. This is what a tuner is listening for when attempting to put the two strings in unison.

Here's the same graph except that I have now increased the frequency of the yellow wave again, so it's now in a ratio of 52:50 to the green one. As you can see, the "beat" is now faster - double what it was previously. This illustrates the important point that as two strings get further apart in frequency, the speed of beating increases until the strings are just obviously out of tune. The other thing to note is that the speed of beating tells the tuner how far away the two strings are from each other, but not whether the string being tuned is higher or lower than the reference string - that has to be worked out by listening to the speed of beats changing as the tuning pin is moved.

Obviously, the tuner's objective in this case is to try and get rid of the "beating" sound, which should put the two strings in tune. So this is fine for getting two strings perfectly into unison with each other, but that isn't good enough if we want to tune a whole piano - we need to be able to tune other intervals as well. In practice, a tuner will put in a "scale" or temperament octave - that is tuning every note in an octave around the middle of the piano and then work outwards in octave steps from there. I'm not going to deal with exactly how the scale octave is done now because it involves an understanding of musical temperament (in particular equal temperament, which is nearly always used in piano tuning) and in practice, this process involves putting in "beats" instead of just getting rid of them. I expect to return to these subjects in some future posts, but for now I'll deal with the simpler case of tuning an octave.

The first thing to understand is that two notes an octave apart should have a frequency ratio of 2:1, so the tuner will need to be able to hear the result if two notes are in a perfect octave or slightly out. For this reason, I've set up the graph to show the resulting pattern for an 81:40 ratio - i.e nearly an octave but not quite, to see what results. Although there is some kind of regular change in the wave pattern, there is no clear variation in amplitude (loudness) as with the case of the near-unison we looked at earlier. The bottom line, in fact, is that this does not produce any clearly discernible "beat" which is of use to the tuner; how, then, is it possible to hear when a octave is in tune?

Hearing the harmonics

What saves the day here is a property of a vibrating string fixed at both ends: as well as its "fundamental frequency" (i.e. the soundwave produced when it oscillates along its entire length), it also has separate vibrations through 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/5 of its length and so on. These are called upper harmonics or partials of each note, and help to give the tone of an acoustic piano its richness.

This is called the harmonic series. What this means is that if we look at a particular note (for example the C two octaves blow middle C), it is producing all the following sounds:

The fundamental frequncy: C two octaves below middle C
2nd harmonic: C one octave below middle C
3rd harmonic: G below middle C
4th harmonic: Middle C
5th harmonic: E above middle C
6th harmonic: G above middle C
7th harmonic: Doesn't quite correspond exactly, but close to Bb above middle C
8th harmonic: C above middle C

Yes! Really, all these noises are coming out of your piano when you play just the one note. In fact, the series goes on ad infinitum, but in practice the harmonics above the 8th are not really important for piano tuning and above about the 12th they are very weak indeed, to the point of being virtually undetectable. Also, a bass note will have more audible harmonics than one in the treble - the additional partials get progressively weaker the higher the note.

If you're interested in a longer explanation, there's one here:

How does this help the tuner? Well, if two notes an octave apart are being tuned, the second harmonic of the lower note should be at the same frequency as the note above, and thus produce a recognizable beat, exactly the same as a unison, if the notes are slightly out of tune; thus, the tuner is trying simply to remove the "beat" in exactly the same way as before.

So that's how an octave is tuned - for completeness, I should briefly add that when an octave is tuned on a piano, it's actually slightly wider than a theoretically perfect one. The reason for this is that the strings on a piano aren't "ideal strings", i.e. perfectly flexible; rather they have stiffness and this results in the upper harmonics being slightly sharp of where they ought to be. The technical name for this is "inharmonicity".

But that's enough for now - tying up some of the loose ends should provide topics for future posts!

Yorkshire Piano Makers (2): Waddington and Sons

Here's Stonegate - one of York's most picturesque ancient streets and a popular destination for visitors; but I wonder how many of the people walking past these picturesque shops realize that they were once the site of one of the largest piano factories outside London?

Below is a picture of Stonegate, from nearly the same place, some time around 1890. Across the street is the sign for "Boddy's Star Inn", now known as the "Olde Starre Inne" (there is still a sign in just the same place), but above and to the left of it, there is a sign saying "Waddington". In the 1901 edition of Kelly's directory for York, we find that Nos. 43, 44 and 45 Stonegate were occupied by "Waddington and Son, Pianoforte Manufacturer."

There was a varied list of other activities going on in Stonegate at the time including a cycle maker's, a wire worker, a dancing academy, an electrical engineer, a taxidermist, an antique dealer (then as now!), a fancy repository (roughly a high-class gift shop), a baker, a tailor, a dressmaker, a coal merchant, a watchmaker, a solicitor.... it seems you could get just about anything you might have wanted here at the time. However, such was the popularity of the piano in the period, apart from Waddington's there were two other shops in the street selling them as well - a Mr H Fordham and a Mrs E Bell, both on the opposite side. Both are described as "piano warehouses" so presumably they weren't actually making instruments, though they might well have been doing repairing and tuning work. York was certainly "piano city" at the time because Noyes and Son, piano dealers, could be found in Tower Street, and in Coney Street there was Gray and Sons piano warehouse, as well as a "pianoforte saloon" run by A Ramsden Ltd - though whether of the Wild West variety I cannot tell! (Ramsden crops up a little later in our story, as well).

York in fact has a history of strong connections with keyboard instrument manufacture dating back to the eighteenth century - Thomas Haxby of York (1729-1796) based at 28 Blake Street, produced organs, spinets, and latterly square pianos, which are considered some of the best made during the period. He even merits his own entry in Wikipedia.

It took a bit more work to unearth details about the business of Waddington and Sons, but "The History of Stonegate", by John Ward Knowles, from the York City Archives, offers some interesting insights. An earlier nineteenth-century piano maker in York was a Mr Marsh of Coney Street, who had been a former employee of the famous firm of Broadwood and Sons, but later took to becoming a dealer. Knowles says that "in 1838, William Alfred Waddington came to York and commenced in a small way to manufacture pianos, occupying some workshops behind the Star Inn." From this it can be gathered that he wasn't originally from York - in fact it appears from fragments of information on the internet that he was a native of Everton (Liverpool). Knowles tells us that he died in 1896 at the age of 79, which would put his year of birth as 1816 or 1817.

He was married to Mary Ann Waddington (nee Hunt) who was born in York - but intriguingly she again has a connection to the piano industry. According to Knowles, her (older) brother, Richard Hunt, was working as a hairdresser at No.2 Stonegate in 1840, but by 1843 he had adopted music as a profession and had moved just around the corner to 23 Blake Street, "where he had opened out a musical instrument department and commenced the manufacture of pianos." Whether it was Waddington who inspired Hunt to start off in the piano trade or vice versa is unclear. Apparently in 1851, Hunt produced a "new shaped instrument which appeared externally to resemble a centre table  for a drawing room with  pedestal feet and which he had exhibited at the Great Exhibition of that year." However, by the 1860s he had moved to Scarborough as a hotel owner and was the founder in 1873 of the Scarborough South Cliff Tramway Company, which built the first ever funicular railway in Britain (it still operates today). Possibly he may have handed his residual piano business over to his brother-in-law.

Some more information appears in "A musical place of the first quality - a history of institutional music-making in York, 1550 - 1989", by David Griffiths. He notes that Waddington's took out an advertisement in the York Herald in 1862 thanking patrons for their business over the last fourteen years (implying establishment in 1848) but in the 1920s the firm claimed to have been established in 1838. Whatever the truth of the matter, the firm was reported as employing 135 to 150 people by the 1860s and by 1876 said in an advertisement that it had sold 10,000 instruments. Clearly if these statements are anything like correct then the firm must have been significant within the piano industry - for comparison, the famous London firm of Broadwood and Sons was employing perhaps 500 people at its peak during the late Victorian period. Thus, the claim to have been the "largest piano manufactory outside of London" in 1871 may not have been an enormous exaggeration. Despite this, the firm seems to have attracted very little attention from piano historians - it does not even merit a mention in the list in Alfred Dolge's "Pianos and their Makers" from 1910.

William Alfred Waddington, the firm's founder, seems to have been responsible for at least two patents: No.972 from 1st May, 1854, described as "Improvements in the construction of sounding-boards for pianofortes and other like stringed instruments", and No.3187 of 28th November 1862 "for an invention for Improvements in machinery for cutting wood." However, he also seems to have seen his fair share of legal actions of one kind or another; for example on 19th May 1862 he was granted a "deed of arrangement and composition" - which means an arrangement by a debtor to pay creditors a percentage of the money owed to them (7s 6d in the pound, in this particular case). The main creditor seems to have been the York Union Banking Company respresented by George Dodsworth - this company was established in 1833 (the "Railway King", George Hudson, was one of the original directors) and was eventually absorbed by Barclays in 1902.

Another intriguing snippet of information from the internet concerns a legal dispute in 1879 between William Alfred Waddington and Archibald Ramsden the same who had a "piano saloon" in Coney Street. Unfortunately the details of this action are not available online (only by ordering from the National Archives). However, the said Archibald Ramsden was a performer and impresario, born in 1835, who returned to his native city of Leeds in 1864 to open a shop selling pianos, harmoniums and sheet music (later there was also a shop in London). In fact, there is even a picture of his main showroom in Park Row, Leeds in an advert from the 1870s. Unfortunately this building (a stone's throw from City Square) is now demolished.

Some pianos were manufactured with the name "Archibald Ramsden", but as far as I can determine there is no record of Ramsden's having their own factory. This would not have been unusual at the time - in fact it was commonplace for music shops to have pianos made for sale under their own name by other manufacturers, rather like an "own brand" product. These were known as "stencil" pianos, a system that remained commonplace probably at least until the 1930s. It seems possible that Waddington's were supplying Ramsden with pianos, possibly under the Waddington name or possibly Ramsden's. Whatever the cause of the argument in 1879, it seems at least a distinct possibility that it was piano-related.

I decided to pop into York city centre on a Saturday afternoon to investigate the site of the Stonegate factory. The buildings in Stonegate were subsequently renumbered - I'm not sure exactly when this happened - but 43 and 44 Stonegate are now number 34, whilst 45 Stonegate is now number 32. These buildings are now occupied by the the "White Stuff" clothes shop and by Cath Kidston. The staff in both shops were kind enough to allow me to take photos inside the buildings.

Here's a picture of the front of the two buildings as seen from Stonegate. According to the register of historic buildings in York Library, the property on the right (No.34) was built around 1730; it was originally two houses (hence it originally had two numbers). No.32 on the left was built somewhat later, in the early part of the 19th Century. These two buildings housed the warehouse and shop of Waddington's, and upstairs were music rooms (and presumably also offices).

This is a picture of the tiled staircase in No.32, leading up to the first floor - whether it was the same back when the building was a piano warehouse I don't know, but the tiles certainly look fairly old.

Here's a picture of the first-floor front room at No.34 - possibly this was once used for musical soirees?

This is a picture taken from the rear window of No.32, now Cath Kidston's. The building at the very top right of the photo is the rear extension to the Masonic Hall in Duncombe Place, built in the 1930s and which backs on to the Olde Starre Inne (therefore very likely the site of the original workshop used by Waddington's). There were more buildings over what is now the grassed area in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, so this area was very likely part of the factory at that time.

J. W. Knowles gives us some further information on the history of the firm. He says: "In 1920 the removal of the manufacturing part of the business was considered to be necessary, the premises in Stonegate being old and much cut up into small sections. Therefore a new and up to date factory was planned and commenced at Scarborough and in 1922 the whole of the Stonegate premises were cleared and the two warehouses fronting Stonegate converted into shops, which are to be made into show rooms for the sale of their pianos, and on August 17th two large and artistic posters were affixed to the plate glass windows which had been fixed the previous week."

Until recently, a 36-minute film from the Yorkshire film archive showing operations at the Waddington factory in Scarborough in 1928 was available online (you may still be able to access a copy by contacting them). This factory became part of, or at least was very near, the site of Plaxton's Coachworks in Seamer Road. Part of the building survived in the form of the Mere Social Club (originally the Waddington Works Club); however, this too was demolished in 2012. The Coachworks itself happily survives as a local business, though now it has moved to more modern premises just down the road in Seamer.

Unfortunately, if the directors of Waddington's back in 1920 had had a crystal ball, they might have thought twice about their investment in new manufacturing premises, because the firm succumbed to the onslaught of the wireless, the gramophone and the Great Depression as did most other British piano manufacturers in the early 1930s, and just like Pohlmann's, the subject of my last post. In fact, information on their time in Scarborough is relatively thin, perhaps because they were only based there for a little over 10 years.

The Herne Hill Piano

There is an interesting addendum to this story. Later on, the Waddington factory made pianos under the name "Bremar", and one of these later became something of a celebrity in its own right. Here's a film about it:

Judging by appearance, the piano probably dates from around the 1920s, so it could have been made in either York or Scarborough. Apparently the original Herne Hill piano was retired in late 2016 - however the crowdfunding project for a replacement was so successful that some money has also been raised to help pay for piano lessons for children whose parents can't afford piano lessons.