Striking a Chord
With the Prices of New Grand Pianos Reaching the High Notes,
High-Quality Used Pianos Have Become an Increasingly Attractive
Alternative
by Miles Chapin
Chances are there's a piano lurking somewhere in your
childhood--maybe it was in the music room in grade school or in your
grandmother's front parlor. But though we may be familiar with
pianos, few people can say with any certainty what makes them work,
or can articulate the difference between a flea market special and a
concert grand.
The piano has held the central position in Western music for two
centuries and, according to the Oxford Companion to Musical
Instruments, more music has been written and published for the piano
than for any other instrument. We carry images of the grand piano
and its players in our hearts and minds--everything from Frédéric
Chopin and his romantic compositions and Irving Berlin with his
popular melodies to the flamboyant Liberace and the rambunctious
Jerry Lee Lewis, who was reputed to have once set fire to a piano
onstage. But regardless of who is striking the keys, be it an
old-time master or a popular contemporary artist, a few intractable
facts about grand pianos cannot be avoided: they are big, they are
usually immobile and they are terribly expensive. But there is a lot
more to the story of the piano, and the history of the instrument is
far from finished.
A grand piano may be the most complicated piece of machinery made by
hand in the world today. More than 12,000 parts, mostly wood and
mainly fashioned by manual labor, go into a grand piano, and it can
sometimes take up to four years to go from the tree to the concert
hall or living room, depending on the manufacturer. The metal frame,
hammers, strings, tuning pins and woodwork that you see underneath
the top of a modern grand piano embody nearly 300 years of
technological progress that has evolved toward one goal: to create a
musical instrument with the greatest sensitivity to the artist's
touch and with the highest potential for the production of sound.
Yet these instruments are also capable of great delicacy--the music
of French composer Erik Satie must be played on the same instrument
that can handle a Tchaikovsky concerto. Or, to put it another way,
the same piano that can serve the delicious trills and runs of a
jazz virtuoso such as Art Tatum must also handle a flat-out rocker
like Little Richard.
However, unlike many other highly engineered objects (sports cars
are a good example), pianos are often thought of as mere decoration.
Isn't there a white baby grand piano in every New York penthouse in
every MGM musical? What about the magnificent White House piano that
sits in the East Room--a gilded mahogany case embellished with
scenes of Americana, seeming to float above golden legs carved in
the shape of eagles? Do these instruments ever get played?
In the case of the White House Steinway (the company's 300,000th
instrument, presented to the country as a gift from Steinway & Sons
in 1938), the answer is yes, occasionally. For the baby grand in the
Hollywood films, the answer is probably no. In fact, it's likely
that the piano at the old MGM studios wasn't even a musical
instrument at all, but simply a white, piano-shaped object used as
set decoration. The music, if the piano was to be played at all in a
movie, was added in post-production.
For many people, a piano is something that simply sits in a corner
of the living room collecting dust, a grand symbol of civilized
living. If the name on its keylid is a prestigious one, so much the
better. Others with a more musical bent may want an instrument that
has a good touch and a nice sound at the lowest possible price. This
dichotomy has affected the piano market for decades, making the
purchase of a piano, new or used, a stressful event for many buyers.
In recent years, as many people's incomes have soared, a new buyer
has emerged--one who is as interested in the musical qualities as
much as the decorative, status or investment aspect of the
instrument. The market for high-quality used instruments that
satisfy both criteria is soaring.
Maximiliaan Rutten, a Manhattan dealer in the high end of the
market, describes this new breed as "very sophisticated, very
well-educated, wealthy individuals who are at a point where they
want to reward themselves and their families with the best of the
best. If they have a serious piano education, they may emphasize the
decorative aspects of the piano less. If they do not have that
background, they are very often admirers of music, and they go after
a piano that is not only high quality, but also an instrument that
in style and design matches their interior."
In choosing a piano, you are looking at a commodity that must serve
several purposes at once. Whether you choose an instrument for its
looks, its sound or its investment potential, you should proceed
cautiously. There is today, and historically has always been, a
large measure of chicanery in the piano trade. Fortunately, quality
pianos are tremendously durable and the basic design hasn't changed
much for almost a hundred years. Pianos are plentiful, and numerous
options are open to the buyer in terms of new instruments, older
instruments both refurbished and not, and the specialty trade in
one-of-a-kind or limited-edition pianos.
But you must look carefully; two pianos that appear nearly identical
may carry vastly different price tags: one could go for a few
hundred dollars while the other might cost a hundred thousand. Is
there a difference between them? You bet. It gets confusing very
quickly, though, when you are dealing with a two-headed beast like a
collectible piano. To appreciate some of the subtleties, it helps to
have a little historical background.
The instrument generally regarded as the earliest ancestor of the
modern piano was "invented" by Bartolomeo Cristofori, an Italian
craftsman at the Medici court, around 1700. Three of his instruments
still exist--one is in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. In
creating his "Arpicembalo che fà il piano e il forte," as he called
it--a harpsichord that could play quietly and loudly--Cristofori
adapted the physics of the clavichord, a popular instrument of his
day, but with one important innovation. To improve upon the limited
vibration that the clavichord's string produced, Cristofori devised
a free-falling hammer mechanism (called the "action") that would
allow the string to vibrate along its entire length. The repetitive
movement of the mechanism (which lies between the piano key and a
string) enabled trills and flourishes to be played that previously
could not.
This innovation also made one other crucial thing possible: the
ability of the keyboard artist to vary the sound the instrument
produces by varying the touch upon the keys. Harpsichords, which
were the primary stringed keyboard instruments of Cristofori's day,
cannot do this--their strings are excited by plucking, and their
action is far less sensitive to the artist's touch. The organ, the
other keyboard instrument in wide use in 1700, is similarly limited
in its expressive range. The introduction of this new instrument, it
can be argued, altered the course of musical history; would Chopin
have created his romantic Ballades if the only instrument available
to him was a pipe organ?
Within a few years of Cristofori's invention, the pianoforte, as it
came to be known (piano meaning soft, and forte, loud), displaced
both the harpsichord and the clavichord as the premier stringed
keyboard instrument. Craftsmen, mainly in Vienna, London and Paris,
adapted Cristofori's action for use in their own instruments, and
the engineering advanced rapidly. Competition was intense. By 1850,
names such as Broadwood, Pleyel, Erard, Bösendorfer, Blüthner and
Bechstein were well established, but it was at the International
Exposition of 1867 in Paris where a grand piano from the young
American firm of Steinway & Sons caused a sensation.
Continued ....
