Piano Thoughts
Gold Country Piano Institute
Fine tuning Grotrian Piano at the Miners Foundry
[ Voicing Grotrian Piano, The Cricket Piano Action ]
The familiar keyboard was the offspring of the carillon, which had a
wooden keyboard with big keys that were played with the fists and
elbows (some composers have reverted to this touch!)
The piano is the great grandchild of the harp and lute, grandchild
of the carillon and organ, and offspring of the harpsichord and
clavichord.
With the rise of the romantic period, an instrument that was capable
of more emotional expression than the harpsichord was needed, in other
words, a clavier with the passion of the guitar, capable of a range of
dynamics and tone from PPP (pianississimo, meaning very very very soft)
to FFF (fortississimo, meaning very very very loud).
Although the clavichord was also capable of dynamic expression in
response to changes in touch, its tone was too small to permit it to be
used in ensemble music; the harpsichord (in which the strings are
plucked rather than hit) had a louder sound but was incapable of
producing significant changes in loudness in response to changes in
touch.)
The musical advantages initially possessed by the piano were not
generally recognized at the time of its invention even though the
instrument made its first appearance in a highly developed form, the
work, amazingly, of a single individual, Bartoleomeo Cristofori, keeper
of instruments at the Medici court in Florence, in 1700 (the Medicis
were lovers of music as well as poisons).
Cristofori’s grasp of the complex problems involved in creating a
keyboard instrument that sounded by means of strings struck by hammers
was so complete that his action (called the cricket because it looks
like one) included features meeting every challenge that would be posed
to designers of pianos for well over a century.
Unfortunately, the very completeness of his design resulted in a
mechanism so complicated that builders were unwilling to duplicate it
if they could possibly devise anything simpler that would work. Much of
the history of the 18th-century piano is the history of the gradual
reinvention or readoption of mechanisms such as the cricket that were
an integral part of Cristofori’s original concept. It was only with the
introduction in the 19th century of increasingly massive hammers that
the principles discovered by Cristofori could no longer provide the
basis for a satisfactory piano action, requiring the still more
complicated mechanism known today.
Paraphrased in part from The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Voicing Grotrian Piano
Glenn Woodruff Voicing Grotrian Piano
No, he’s not force feeding the piano bird. Glenn Woodruff, piano
technician and representative of Grotrian Piano Inc. is voicing the new
Grotrian used by Gold Country Piano Institute. He softens the felt
hammers by repeatedly piercing the felt with a special needle, which
softens the tone to even the tones of all the notes of the wide range
of the piano and to make the piano’s tone suit the acoustics of its
location. Voicing is an art, not a science.
photo credit for images 1 and 2, Ken Schumacher, Live Vibes Recording
All Rights Reserved by K. Wayne Land ©1998
If you’re at all interested in the technical aspects of the piano
and would like to see the cricket in action, among other fascinating
aspects of the piano, please visit Mr. Land’s wonderful website.
Contact Gold Country Piano Institute
Address: P.O. Box 1321, Nevada City, CA 95959-1321
Telephone: (530) 265-8648 or (530) 432-3451, Fax: (530) 478-9485
URL: ./piano_thoughts.htm
Last modified: February 03, 2006
| 
THE 