Gustav Holst's Piano - event reports

I was rather busy last month, so I've only just had time to write up a report of the events involving Gustav Holst's piano. As I had mentioned, this is the very piano in Holst's special soundproof room at St Paul's Girls' School, where he was teaching at the time, and on which he composed the famous Planets Suite between 1914 and 1916. The piano originally cost 225 guineas, and was delivered to the school in 1913; as well as being in Holst's room, it was periodically transported within the school to the Singing Room and Great Hall for concerts, and then back again.

It was on view in Lythe Village Hall near Whitby on 8th June all day, with a concert at 3pm given by international concert pianist You Chiung-Lin featuring a solo piano arrangement of Mars, Venus and Jupiter from the Planets Suite. The performance of Jupiter in particular was a real "show-stopper". There was a steady flow of people through the day and the hall was absolutely packed by an appreciative audience for the afternoon concert with over 200 people in attendance.

The Broadwood 7'6" barless grand piano used by Holst whilst composing the Planets Suite, seen at Lythe Village Hall

The audience gathers in preparation for the afternoon concert

The barless design has no cast iron bracing bars, a feature unique to Broadwood, meaning that the frame flexes significantly when strung and is made of cast steel instead of cast iron, which would not be strong enough.

There was also a display of children's artwork on the theme of "The Planets", seen in the photographs below:

The Holst piano also made an appearance in the Whitby Gazette and on the BBC (Look North and the Breakfast News) in which Alastair Laurence of Broadwood's explained its history. There was also a mercifully short cameo appearance on the programme by yours truly doing some work at the Broadwood workshops!

The piano then left to continue its journey southwards, making its way to the University of York's Jack Lyons Concert Hall on 14th May. I also attended this evening concert featuring all the movements of the Planets Suite - Mars, Venus, Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, which was given by concert pianists Jakob Fichert and Mark Hutchinson (four hands on one piano)and which proved to be an absolutely magical performance. The Broadwood barless grand has a very mellow tone compared to most modern concert grands and a wonderful sustain in the bass.

There was again a fantastic turnout of approximately 250 people for the concert, which was part of the York Festival of Ideas.

You can find out more about the performers here:

You-Chiung Lin

Jakob Fichert

Mark Hutchinson

Future events

21st September, 3pm at St Paul's School

The piano will now make its way to St Paul's Girls' School, Brook Green, London W6 7BS, where there will be a concert on Saturday 21st September, Holst's birthday. John and Fiona York will perform a piano duet version of The Planets, with Heidi Pegler (soprano) and the Paulina Voices choir from the school. There will be an introduction by Dr Alastair Laurence from Broadwood's.

Concert at 3pm, £12 admission, students 18 and under free admission. 

Booking is advisable: you can book your ticket here

28th September, 7pm at Finchcocks

The Planets will again be performed in a duet version by Jong Gyung-Park and Anthony Zerpa-Falcon on a "Model 5" Broadwood from 1920 (identical to Holst's), at Finchcock's, Goudhurst, Kent TN17 1HH. 

Concert at 7pm, tickets £10. Booking essential, see www.finchcocks.com

13th October, 2pm and 7pm at the Holst Birthplace Museum, 4 Clarence Road, Cheltenham  GL52 2AY

"Inspirations from England" will feature music by Holst, Elgar, Sullivan, Stamford, Vaughan Williams and Britten, performed by Greg Tassell (tenor) and Gary Branch (piano).

Two perfomances at 2pm and 7pm, tickets £20 including wine and canapes, booking essential on 01242 524846 or curator@holstmuseum.org.uk

Gustav Holst's Broadwood Barless Piano is coming to Yorkshire in June

There will be some forthcoming special events during the summer celebrating the work of the composer Gustav Holst (1874-1934), most famous for his remarkable and inventive orchestral work "The Planets" composed in 1914-16, and recognized as an enormous influence on later 20th Century composers.

Between 1905 and 1934 Holst was a teacher at St Paul's Girls' School in Hammersmith, London, a fact commemorated in a composition of 1913, "St Paul's Suite". Whilst teaching there, he had a special soundproof room built in which he could compose, with a 7'6" Broadwood barless grand piano. This piano was later sold by the school, but was recently found to be in private ownership in Edinburgh. It will now be making its way back to St Paul's School in September, but making several special stops en route.

Open day on Saturday 8th June, 10am to 5pm

Holst's Barless Broadwood piano will be on display all day at Lythe Village Hall, Lythe near Whitby, YO21 3RT. This building is on the main road through the village, just opposite the community shop and bus stop. There are regular half-hourly buses during the day (service X4) on the Whitby to Loftus, Redcar and Middlesbrough service.

There will also be pictures on display from a children's art competition based on the theme of "The Planets", which has been organized with a local school. The competition will be judged by You Chiung-Lin, the performer for the afternoon concert (see below).

There will be an opportunity to look closely at Holst's piano; staff from the nearby Broadwood workshops will be in attendance all day, and refreshments will be available; entry is free until 3pm.

At 3pm, there will be a special performance of Holst's music by international concert pianist You-Chiung Lin, with a ticket price of £5 for this part of the schedule.

Concert in York on 14th June

Holst's piano will be played in a performance at the Lyons Concert Hall, York at 7.30pm on Friday 14th June. This will be a duet of the Planets suite (four hands on one piano) by concert pianists Jakob Fichert and Mark Hutchinson. The concert will be introduced by John Broadwood & Sons chairman, Alastair Laurence. Tickets £10, concessions £8, students £3. This event will form part of the York Festival of Ideas and appears on their website.

http://yorkfestivalofideas.com/2019/events/holst-planets/

Further events will take place during the year - watch this space for details!

Yorkshire Piano Makers (3): West Yorkshire firms - Hilton & Hilton, Newsome Brothers, Upton Gill & Co

In my last two posts on piano manufacture in Yorkshire, I covered the firms of Pohlmann and Waddington, who I believe were the makers with the largest output. However, there were several other smaller makers based in West Yorkshire, so I wanted to put as much information as I have about them online.

Hilton & Hilton

A Hilton & Hilton oak piano, originally manufactured for school use, dating from c.1920 (by kind permission of customer)

The village of Ravensthorpe, just outside Dewsbury, seems to have been quite a centre of piano-building during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, being home to at least two firms: Hilton & Hilton and Newsome Brothers. The manufacturers Hilton & Hilton were based after around 1900 at the Victoria Piano Works, which was on a site at the north end of Victoria Street in Ravensthorpe (the north side of the building backed onto Clarkson Street). The terraced houses in Victoria Street itself still remain, but the works site now has some houses on it that look to date from around the 1970s - the old maps for the area seem to show that the old works disappeared some time between 1974 and 1983 (though piano production had ceased long before then).

Victoria Street in Ravensthorpe as it is today. The modern houses at the far end are on the site of the former Victoria Piano Works; the works and the houses in the rest of the street were built some time around 1900.

Hilton & Hilton (the firm may originally have been known as Hilton & Co) appears to have been established around 1872 by Tom Hilton and Tom Hilton (presumably they were related but not brothers!) The older Tom was born in 1843 and according to the 1881 census was living in Huddersfield Road, Mirfield with his wife Mary, his five children Charles, Harry, Clara, Asa and Ann, and his mother, also named Ann; he is listed as a piano maker. The younger Tom (born 1847) was based in Dewsbury and was married to Martha, with two children, Edith and Ralph. An 1881 trade directory gives the address of Hilton & Hilton as being Saville Street, Leeds (a now long-demolished thoroughfare which was adjacent but to the west of Little Queen Street, quite close to the site of what is now the Westgate roundabout), and this is still given as their address in a directory of 1894. Whether this was a factory, earlier factory, office or warehouse is not at all clear, though the evidence of the census does suggest that manufacturing was likely taking place in Ravensthorpe by this time. From the evidence I can gather, the Leeds building was located on the west side of Saville Street, roughly at the rear of the Argus Foundry.

It seems that the older Tom concentrated on manufacturing, whilst the younger Tom, who was a musician, was responsible for the sales side of the business. Later on, in the 1920s, Tuley's piano shop in Bridge End, Leeds, were listed as their agents (whether this was the location of the showroom at an earlier date I cannot be sure). From census returns, it appears that they may have had a workforce of around 20 people in the late nineteenth century, perhaps half of whom were piano builders and tuners, and the remainder were skilled woodworkers, carpenters, french polishers and the like; the output of instruments was perhaps in the region of 80 a year (by the 1920s the firm claimed to have made around 2,000 pianos).

The former showrooms at Tuley's music shop in Bridge End, Leeds, now the offices of a Chartered Accountancy firm.

There are several other characters who may have been associated with the firm (or possibly the other Ravensthorpe manufacturer, Newsome Brothers), one of whom is Tillman J Putz. According to "Makers of the Piano" by Martha Clinkscale, he is recorded as a piano builder in London in around 1855, having his workshops at 1 Judd Street, Brunswick Square, "of probable German or Austrian origin." By 1881, he was lodging with a family in Huddersfield Road, Ravensthorpe, West Yorkshire; it appears very likely that he may have offered his considerable expertise to either Hilton & Hilton or Newsome Brothers (see below). From census returns, it appears likely he may have been born in Cologne in around 1820, and by 1891 he was living in London again, hopefully perhaps having made enough money to enjoy a decent retirement.

Another person who seems to have had an association with instrument manufacture in the area around the same period was George Tanfield, born around 1851 in the village of Gate Helmsley, near York. His occupation is described as "piano maker" and in 1881 he is living in Bradbury Street, Ravensthorpe. From this it seems very likely that he may have been an apprentice at Waddington's in York (the subject of a previous post) and then, having learned his trade, then went off to work for either Hilton & Hilton or Newsome Brothers. In the early twentieth century he turns up in Bradford (of which more later).

Bradbury Street in Ravensthorpe, where George Tanfield was living in 1881. Most of the original houses have been replaced by modern ones, but a few remain on the right-hand side of the photo.

It seems that by around 1900, neither of the two Hiltons were any longer connected with the firm, both being described as retired. Around this time the company appears to have passed into the ownership (or at least the chairmanship) of Harry Cottam, of Bradford. Cottam was not a piano maker by trade - in fact he seems to have started his working career as a mill hand, then went on to become a successful manager at a Co-op shop in the city. He had a "break" when he inherited an estate of houses, a mill and some building land from his father-in-law and then went on to become one of the movers and shakers in the local building trade - apparently he was responsible for developing several streets on either side of White Abbey Road, some of which still stand today, and was also instrumental in the development of the suburb of Thornbury, until then a semi-rural area.

The houses that Harry Cottam built - Bilton Place in Bradford, one of the streets he originally developed.

From this it seems unlikely that Harry Cottam ever learned to build or tune a piano himself, but he seems to have added this to his large empire of business interests - although why specifically he took the decision to branch out into musical instrument manufacture is not known. An internet obituary of Private William Haldenby, who sadly died in action on the Western Front in 1917, says he had worked for eleven years at "Cottam's Victoria Piano Works", so it seems Cottam had taken over some years before the war. Hilton & Hilton pianos were still being built into the 1920s, and although there is no record of when the firm closed this was quite likely to have happened in the early 1930s along with so many others, with the advent of recorded music and the radio. As mentioned earlier, the buildings survived, presumably in other uses, for another fifty years or so.

The Hilton & Hilton pianos I have come across from the 1920s are very well-built overstrung models with a decent tone. They seem in particular to have produced a large number of pianos intended for school use, typically with oak cases.

 Hilton and Hilton "Gold Medal" Pianos

Quite a number of Hilton & Hilton instruments seem to have the phrase "Gold Medal Pianos" next to the makers name, and some of these actually have pictures of the gold medals; there are two, one marked "Gold medal - Leeds 1900" and another saying "Highest award - Dublin 1902". The Leeds gold medal has a design which looks very like the city's coat of arms which suggests that this event may have been arranged or facilitated by the municipal authorities, but it is not the Leeds Triennial Music Festival as that took place in 1898 and again in 1901. Unfortunately I cannot determine which events or exhibitions either of these two medals refer to. It seems very likely that these may have been trade exhibitions of a more general nature, rather than anything specifically piano-related.

A Hilton and Hilton "Gold Medal" piano from around 1900, with magnificent walnut case and original candle sconces (by kind permission of customer)

I was recently asked to tune this Hilton and Hilton "Gold Medal" piano from around 1900 or perhaps a little earlier (there is no mention of where the gold medal has come from). It has a good tone in the bass compared with many straight-strung upright pianos of its era.

Newsome Brothers

I should mention another Ravensthorpe firm called Newsome Brothers. Unfortunately, information about them seems to be relatively scant, but early twentieth century pianos made by them feature two gold medal awards, one for "excellence of manufacture" in 1898, and one "for merit" in 1899, though as with Hilton and Hilton there is no explanation of which particular trade fair or association these are related to. By 1920, the address of the firm is listed as "North Road, Ravensthorpe", very much in the same vicinity as the Victoria Piano Works, and the proprietor again is listed at this point as Harry Cottam. In view of this, one would stringly suspect that by this point they were being produced at the same site as Hilton & Hilton.

Huddersfield Road in Ravensthorpe: William Newsome was based somewhere in this area. Tillman Putz was also living in this street in 1881, lodging with Maria Sleight, a confectioner.

The first mention of the firm I can find is in a West Riding trade directory from 1881, which lists a William Newsome, Pianoforte Manufacturer simply giving the address as Ravensthorpe; the 1891 census lists a William Newsome, piano manufacturer, living in Mirfield and his date of birth as 1828. A trade directory of 1894 (which also shows Hilton and Hilton still based in Saville Street, Leeds), again lists William Newsome in Ravensthorpe and also two other piano related businesses: the "Ravensthorpe Piano Depot" of whom we are informed that Walter Holt is the manager, and the piano maker Joseph B Wood (but likewise no address for either apart from Ravensthorpe). Whether the firm had existed for some time by then, or whether William Newsome had worked elsewhere or simply took up piano-making later in life is not clear, but the business crops up again in the directory of 1894. By around 1900, William Newsome (who would by then have reached an advanced age in any case) no longer seems to be working for the firm.

It appears, however, that William was not one of the "brothers" as a copy of the London Gazette from November 10th, 1899 found online states: "NOTICE is hereby given, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between us the undersigned, Frederick Newsome, Ernest Newsome, and Arthur Newsome, carrying on business as Piano Manufacturers, at Ravensthorpe, in the county of York, under the style or firm of Newsome Brothers, has been dissolved  by mutual consent as and from the first day of November, 1899, so far as regards the said  Frederick Newsome. All debts due to and owing by the said late firm will be received and paid by the said Ernest Newsome and Arthur Newsome, who will in future carry on the business under the same style or firm of Newsome Brothers. Dated sixth day of November, 1899." From this it appears that William was most likely the father of the brothers and that until 1894 the firm was simply known under his name alone. Census records also suggest that Arthur and Ernest were both born in the mid-1870s, so would have been too young to take over the firm at least until the mid-1890s (I cannot establish Frederick's date of birth but he may have been a little older).

Upton, Gill & Co

By 1901 we find George Tanfield (who was mentioned earlier) now living in Bradford, along with Fanny Tanfield (b.1854), presumably his wife, and Alice Tanfield (b.1874), who may have been his daughter; his home address was in Boynton Terrace, West Bowling (which still exists) and he was associated with a firm of piano manufacturers called Armitage & Tanfield, with factory premises in Newall Street off Manchester Road (the street still exists but all the original buildings are now demolished). I do not know how many pianos they made as I cannot find any record online of an Armitage and Tanfield piano, and it is possible a large part of their business may have been as a piano dealership or carrying out repairs.

Boynton Terrace in West Bowling, Bradford: George Tanfield was living here in 1901.

According to the 1911 census, George Tanfield was still living in Bradford, but in the 1912 trade directory, the firm in Newall Street is now referred to as Armitage & Hiram. It is possible that Tanfield had moved to another firm, Upton Gill & Co, who seem to have started out relatively late, as they do not appear in trade directories until 1912. There is no record of them in the 1901 directory, though there is a "Charles Edward Upton-Jones" of Claremont Terrace, Morley Street (just a couple of streets away from their factory), who was listed as a music and musical instrument seller, though it does not appear he had any connection with the firm. An A H Gill, piano manufacturer, who presumably must have been one of the partners in the company, was living in the leafy suburbs of Mayfield Grove, Baildon near Bradford in 1912, but there is no record of him anywhere in the vicinity in 1901.

From census records, it appears that this may well be Arthur Howard Gill, born 1867, who is described in 1911 as "managing pianoforte factory". His place of birth was Southwark, from which one might be tempted to suspect that he may have learned his trade at one of the London firms; however, he is listed in 1901 as still living in the capital, but working as a grocer; in 1891, an Arthur Gill, who may be the same person was a merchant clerk. It may be, therefore, that he was mainly an entrepreneur, manager and administrator, rather than having a detailed knowledge of piano construction himself.

The same records turn up a George Upton, born 1880, who is described as a "piano maker" in the 1911 census - his birthplace was also in Southwark, the same as Arthur Gill. In 1901, there is no record of him in Bradford, but there is a George H Upton in London whose profession is frustratingly not recorded. We can speculate that perhaps Arthur Gill was the business guru behind the enterprise, whilst George Upton had the technical know-how; however, what event precipitated their decision to up sticks from London and come to Bradford to set up a piano factory is not entirely clear.

Their factory was located at the Wilton Works, Wilton Street, Bradford, just off Morley Street; a snippet of information from a local history website states that in February 1908 the "Wilton Street Piano Works" were destroyed by fire (so presumably the firm must already have been in existence by then). The 1908 map of the city shows a couple of empty sites at the western end of Wilton Street near the junction with Morley Street but the firm is listed at the same address in 1912, so they must have rebuilt around then. Some of the older buildings in Wilton Street survive today, and from this I believe it is quite possible (though not absolutely certain) that the building at the west end of the south side of the street, which occupies the corner plot, was the Upton Gill factory from around 1908 (when it was rebuilt) until production finished.

This may possibly have been the Upton Gill piano factory (constructed around 1908) on the corner of Wilton Street and Morley Street. The doorway just to the left of the blue sign has an elaborate fanlight with two carved cherub-like figures. The building has now been converted into student accommodation, known as Kexgill House.

In 1912, the firm also had a telephone number, Bradford 2652, which would then have been something of a novelty.

The firm produced modern instruments (including some player pianos) and probably ceased operations in the early 1930s. In 1944 the company went into voluntary liquidation with a special meeting held at 5 Seawell Avenue, Morecambe - the retirement home of the then Chairman, Harry Cottam. Cottam himself seems to have enjoyed a comfortable retirement, and on his death in September 1946 left an estate valued at the not inconsiderable sum of £63,655 12s 11d. Whoever said no-one ever made any money out of pianos!

A history of pitch standards in piano tuning

In a previous post I explained that "standard" or "concert" pitch means that the note A above middle C has a frequency of 440Hz (cycles per second), and that this was settled upon at a conference in 1939. However, someone recently asked me what pitch would originally have been used for a late nineteenth-century Broadwood grand piano. This is a difficult question to answer, since prior to A=440Hz, there was no single universally agreed standard. So I thought it might be interesting to have a look at the different pitches pianos were tuned to in the past, and how the current standard came about.

The situation can be summed up fairly well by looking at this set of tuning forks, which would date from around a hundred years ago. These are "C" forks which probably would have been used by a piano tuner in the early part of the twentieth century, and there are four different pitches as inscribed on the side of the prongs:

C 517.3 Continental
C 522 New Philharmonic
C 528 Medium
C 540 Old Philharmonic

An set of tuning forks (left) used about a hundred years ago. Two modern forks (C523.3 and A440) are on the right.

It seems to have been a feature of the British piano trade that people were traditionally (and commonly still are) taught to tune using middle C as the reference note (although the forks are actually an octave above this). If we recalculate these frequencies (assuming equal temperament) to values for the note A, which is the generally accepted standard for orchestral tuning, we get A=435Hz, A=439Hz, A=444Hz and A=454Hz (none of these corresponding to modern standard pitch, though "New Philharmonic" is close). From the fact that tuners were carrying these sets of forks around, it would seem likely that these may all have been used at various times depending on the requirements of the customer, and no doubt all of this caused considerable confusion!

To work out the origin of all these pitch standards, we should transport ourselves back into the late eighteenth century, when pianos were becoming widely produced and available for the first time. It should be noted that during this period, there was no standardization of pitch. At the time, absolute pitch could only be measured with limited accuracy - for example, the Italian mathematician, Vittorio Francesco Stancari (1678-1709) had experimented with a toothed wheel as a tone generator. It should also be mentioned in passing that the French mathematician Joseph Sauveur (1653-1716), who worked extensively on acoustic theory, was an early advocate of pitch standardization and in 1713 proposed that middle C should be 256Hz (known as "scientific" or "philosphical" pitch as each "C" has a frequency which is a power of 2), which would correspond in an equally tempered tuning to A=430.54Hz. Apparently, Sauveur's efforts were not particularly welcomed by musicians in his own time, and this pitch has never been widely used as a musical standard (though Italian musicians briefly adopted something similar in 1881, actually A=432Hz, before agreeing to the A=435Hz at the Vienna conference of 1885); however, medical tuning forks, employed for the measurement of hearing, are quite commonly found at this frequency.

The tuning fork had been invented in 1711 by John Shore (1662-1752), a prominent British musician, so it would have been possible to have a convenient portable reference of relative pitch from this time onwards, and it may have had at least some effect in reducing the enormous range of standards in use. A fork made by Shore, which he gave to the composer Handel, still exists today and has a frequency of A=422.5Hz. A fork belonging to the instrument maker Johann Andreas Stein in the 1780s, whose pianos were played by Mozart, comes in at a similar value of A=422Hz, so this is likely a tuning that would have been familiar to musicians of this period. However, there was no consistency - some church organs built during the period have A as low as 390Hz, and some chamber instruments (according to contemporary measurements) were as low as around 410Hz. At the other end of the scale, some organs in Germany that were played by Bach have A as high as 480Hz - a difference in pitch of nearly a major third!

Nonetheless, it seems quite likely that, allowing for significant variations, the pitch of Shore's tuning fork was fairly similar to what might have been used in the early days of piano tuning. Several tuning forks survive from the early nineteenth century - for example a tuning fork used by John Broadwood & Sons, piano makers, from 1800 is equivalent to approximately A=423Hz (it's actually a C-fork) and some from the 1820s give A=428Hz. However, in the first half of the nineteenth century, a trend became very apparent: pitch used by instrumental performers, especially orchestras, was getting higher and higher, a phenomenon often described as "pitch inflation". It is possible that one factor in this trend was a set of musical instruments presented by Tsar Alexander of Russia to the Austrian Army on the occasion of the Congress of Vienna in 1814, tuned to a higher pitch than was normal for the time. The use of higher pitches and wind instruments or increased tension on strings gives a more "brilliant" sound with more overtones, and in the course of the quest for this, pitch inflation continued unabated. (It is true that pianos too can sometimes have a brighter tone when the pitch is raised, but of course they are not normally tuned by the performer, but rather by someone who does not want to break any strings!)

Pitch inflation and tuning in the nineteenth century

In any case, the early nineteenth century was the heyday of the orchestra and by mid-century pitch inflation was almost out of control, with some orchestras (such as the London Philharmonic) going higher than A=450Hz - a full semitone above what it was in Mozart's time. Needless to say, this development was received with much chagrin by singers, who were straining their vocal chords trying to reach the ever-higher notes. The situation became so bad that in 1859, the French government decided to act and declared that by law A=435Hz was in future to be the standard for musical performances. This standard was known as the "Diapason Normal" (diapason is French for a tuning fork), but in English-speaking countries was normally referred to as French Pitch, Continental Pitch (as in our set of tuning forks), or International Pitch (this last term should be used today with caution as it may be taken to mean International Concert Pitch, or A440). This pitch was adopted by several other countries (it was adopted at an international conference in Vienna in 1885) and remained an important standard until the adoption of A440 in 1939; however it was by no means universally accepted, possibly not even in France, and certainly not elsewhere, e.g. the Vienna opera is recorded as using A=447Hz in the 1870s. In particular, the British held out at the "Philharmonic Pitch" of approximately A=452Hz (it is actually a bit of a moveable feast) for orchestral performances until almost the end of the nineteenth century.

Another development around this time is also worthy of mention: Johann Scheibler, a German silk manufacturer who was a self-taught acoustician, invented a "tonometer", a set of 56 carefully calibrated tuning forks, arranged by carefully counting "beats" between adjacent pairs and measuring them using a pendulum or metronome. This enabled a more accurate measurement of absolute pitch than had previously been the case. At a conference of German scientists attended by Scheibler in 1834, A=440Hz was proposed as a standard pitch, although it was not widely adopted - however it may have been used in some parts of Germany (e.g. the Dresden Opera in 1862), and by the Streicher piano company. Incidentally, around the same time as Scheibler, a Frenchman called Felix Savart was experimenting with toothed wheels as more accurate tone generators.

However, this does not really answer our question of what piano tuners were doing in the latter part of the nineteenth century. There is some evidence from records and tuning forks of common practice in the UK. The Broadwood company was using three different pitches which seem to have stayed very roughly the same - a "low" pitch, starting at around A=433Hz but which eventually seems to have settled down to the French standard of A=435Hz, a "medium" pitch of around 446Hz, which eventually moved to around A=444Hz, and a "high" pitch equivalent to the Philharmonic Pitch (later referred to as "Old Philharmonic") which varied between around A=452Hz and A=455Hz.

Around the 1860s, Broadwood tuners were issued with sets of three "C" forks, marked "Vocal", "Medium", and "Philharmonic", corresponding to tunings of A=435Hz, A=445Hz and A=452Hz respectively. The low pitch was presumably used for singing, the medium pitch probably for standard domestic tunings and the high pitch perhaps for concerts or playing with other instruments. These three pitches are the ancestors of three of the four tuning forks in our early twentieth century set: the Continental (A435), Medium (A444) and Old Philharmonic (A454). 

The final one derives from 1896 - under Sir Henry Wood, when the famous Promenade Concerts were first instigated, the very high orchestral pitch was abandoned, supposedly in favour of A435. However, this was incorrectly assumed to apply to a temperature of 15⁰C (59⁰F) - in fact it was an absolute standard. In a concert hall at 20⁰C (68⁰F) the pitch of brass instruments tuned to A435 at 15⁰C would rise to approximately A=439Hz, so this was adopted as the new standard, and became known as the "New Philharmonic" pitch, with the previous, higher, pitch now referred to as "Old Philharmonic". This was still not an end to the matter, as the British Army continued to hang on to the old higher pitch for its military bands until the 1920s. The cost of replacement of the older instruments tuned to the higher pitch may have been a significant factor in this.

In his book "A Treatise on the Art of Pianoforte Construction" of 1916, Samuel Wolfenden, chief designer for the well-known firm of George Rogers and Sons, describes the same four pitch standards, the only difference being that the "medium" pitch is given as C=530Hz (A=445.7Hz), which he describes as the old Society of Arts pitch (from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce), and also notes that both the Medium and Old Philharmonic pitches varied slightly because of "slight concessions to the conditions under which pianofortes are used in combination with wind instruments at high temperatures". He describes the Continental pitch of A435 as "general throughout Europe" and said that there had been many years of contention among musicians due to the use of the high pitch [Old Philharmonic] which was obnoxious to vocalists; he comments that it is "retained because used by military bands...because of the great expense of new instruments." He also mentions in passing that "quite recently an influential committee of musicians and manufacturers in America has established a pitch founded upon A=440 v.s. [vibrations per second]."

In an article to the "Organist and Choirmaster" magazine of July 1899, the piano manufacturers John Broadwood & Sons put themselves at the forefront of the drive to move to the then newly established standard of A439, commenting that: "So far, pianoforte makers have held aloof and made no effort to secure uniformity in regard to the pitch at which their productions are tuned. Some favour one pitch and some another. The consequence is that if a visit be made to any of the large emporiums in provincial towns where pianos are sold, the visitor is hampered in his choice by seldom finding all pianos in the same show-room tuned to a uniform pitch." The letter continued: "In regard to concert grands, the want of uniformity in regard to pitch is serious, and necessitates makers keeping a double number of instruments." They had written to other manufacturers about this matter, which seems to have led to the use of the "New Philharmonic" pitch as at least an informal standard for British piano tuners around this time.

A selection of three forks used in the middle of the twentieth century - A439 (marked New Philharmonic) on the left, A440 (marked British Standard) in the middle and A452.5 on the right.

Another set of forks from a piano tuner's kit around the middle of the twentieth century contains three "C" forks. The one on the left, labelled "New Philharmonic" is equivalent to A=439Hz as one would expect, the middle one is an A=440Hz fork, and the one on the right is a slightly different version of an Old Philharmonic fork, A=452.5Hz. In her 1933 book "The Piano-forte, its history traced to the Great Exhibition of 1851", Rosamond Harding describes the use of the New Philharmonic A439 pitch as "almost as universal in this country as on upon the continent, though pianos are occasionally tuned to the old Philharmonic pitch, a' 454 (c'' 540)." (The idea that the New Philharmonic and Diapason Normal were in some sense the same seems to have persisted for a long while).

The road to A440

So having meandered through the many twists and turns of the various old tuning standards, it seems appropriate to come to the question of how A440 came about. It appears that in the United States, there was relatively little pitch standardization with A continuing to creep upwards, getting to somewhere between A=455Hz and A=460Hz (Steinway were apparently using A=457Hz in 1890). An early advocate of A440 as a standard was J C Deagan, proprietor of a company producing percussion instruments, notably including tuning forks. He described it as the "higher German pitch" (in contrast to A435), but there also seems to have been an argument along the same lines as the New Philharmonic Pitch - that when concert halls were heated (in this case to 72⁰F from the 59⁰F on which the French standard was supposedly based), the pitch of wind instruments rises to A=440Hz. The American Federation of Musicians adopted this in 1910, and it seems to have gradually gained acceptance, being generally used by the US recording industry after 1925 and ratified by the American Standards Association in 1936.

In May 1939, a meeting at Broadcasting House, London (facilitated by the British Standards Institute) was held, attended by delegates from France, the Netherlands, Germany and Italy, with representations from Switzerland and the United States sent by telegram. It was this conference that eventually agreed on A=440Hz as the new standard, although some British representatives were still in favour of A=439Hz. It seems that the British electrical engineer James Swinburne (1858-1958), a keen musician, may have played a role in advocating A440 as it is easier to subdivide mathematically. Apparently piezo-electronic generators of the time (as used by the BBC) worked on the basis of a tone which was divided or multiplied by particular numbers and as 439 is a prime number, 440 was easier to work with in this respect. To what extent this really was a factor in the decision I don't really know, but in the end 440Hz was agreed upon, practically the last thing anyone across Europe reached consensus about before the outbreak of the Second World War. In 1955 the International Organization for Standardization confirmed this standard as ISO 16, and reaffirmed it in 1975.

Well, with agreement reached, that should bring us to the end of our discussion... but in fact, it does not. Notwithstanding the fact that A440 is the only agreed international standard for tuning musical instruments, today the majority of orchestras in the world do not tune to this frequency (jazz musicians generally do, however). In fact, there is a website here (should you ever need to know) giving the tunings used by various orchestras in countries around the globe.

Firstly, it would be worth saying a little about the lower pitch standards in use today. For early music, both A=430Hz and A=415Hz (sometimes called Baroque pitch) are often used. These do not reflect the exact tunings actually used in the Baroque period (as there were no standard tunings), but rather are convenient compromises. Both are probably closer to the actual (albeit inconsistent) tunings that were used, but an additional consideration is that it is somewhat safer to tune historic instruments (at least in the case of harpsichords or early pianos) below A440. The 415Hz tuning is also highly convenient as it is exactly a semitone below modern standard pitch and therefore can be played with modern or standardly tuned instruments if the parts are transposed by a semitone.

Leaving the question of early music aside, however, it is clear that many orchestras tune to 441, 442, 443 or 444Hz, in search of that same brilliance of sound as their nineteenth-century predecessors. To understand this, we should consider the old French pitch of 1859 - the important thing is that, although many musicians ignored it, up until 1939 it had the important effect of putting a brake on pitch inflation. In fact, the whole thing is a bit like inviting people to turn up to a party at 7.30 when you actually want them to come at 8, since if you asked them to come at 8 they would actually come at 8.30. In the same way, whatever pitch standard is set, some people will try to push the envelope, but normally only so far.

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