Thursday, October 21. 2010
The argument concerning the why’s and wherefore’s of extended keyboards is indeed not a new one, and indeed the publishing of music for extended keyboards is not, and one suspects never has been, without risk.
The eminent Bohenian pianist Jan Ladislav Dussek spent some eleven years in London, in part as a refugee from the French Revolution where he was unpopular with the regime at that time. He was, as well as being a pioneer of performance practice (he was, for example, the first to sit sideways to the audience so they could admire his profile), instrumental in advancing the limitations of piano design, as the following extract from Grove’s Dictionary of Musicians indicates:
“While in London he also encouraged the firm of Broadwood to extend the range of the piano – in 1791 from five to five and a half octaves, and in 1794 to six octaves. Compositions written for the extended keyboard were said to be for ‘piano with additional keys’; many compositions of this period were published with two versions for the right hand, so that they could be performed ‘with or without the additional keys’.”
It was a piano of this range that John Broadwood sent to Beethoven as a gift in 1817, and much of Beethoven’s later piano work was written for this instrument. Interestingly, after Beethoven's death, the music publisher Spina bought the Broadwood at the sale of the composer's effects. Spina later gave the instrument to Franz Liszt - a fitting recipient, for it was very likely the Broadwood that Liszt had played for Beethoven when taken to see him as a child-prodigy. Liszt kept the Broadwood when he lived in Weimar, where it remained until his death in 1886. The following year his estate donated it to the Magyar Nemzeti Muzeum (Hungarian National Museum) in Budapest, where it remains today.
From that point on, the keyboard range of the piano increased slowly but surely as the following table will indicate:
Date________________Keyboard Range
1794 to approx. 1804___6 octaves C1 to c4.
1804 to approx. 1824___6 octaves F1 to f4.
1804 to approx. 1860___6 octaves & 4th C1 to f4
1860 to approx. 1880___7 octaves A2 to a4
1880 to approx. 1900___88 keys A2 to c5 (today’s standard)
1900________________97 keys 8 octaves CCC to c5 (some specialised pianos, very rare)
So the concept of a ‘standard’ piano key range is not a ‘standard’ at all, but merely a convention forced upon pianists by manufacturers. My first two pianos (and that of my music teacher) were 85-note pianos, and it wasn’t until I was comparatively advanced as a pianist that I was given an 88-note piano. Now, of course, I have a 97-note piano and have played the ‘ultimate’ 102-note Stuart grand piano on a number of occasions.
I cannot for the life of me understand why pianists are critical of extended range pianos. Two reasons seem to be paramount:
1) There is very little music written for them, so what’s the point?
2) I get confused because the ends of the keyboard are not what I’m used to
Both are easily debunked. There is very little music because these instruments are not common. Whilst the Bosenyamaha Imperial has been around for a while now, it does not appear to have caught the imagination of composers much at all, quite possibly because there are so few of them in the concert halls of the world. The advent of the Stuart, with its new sound envelope and performance paradigm, is the one piano which is capable of meeting the challenges of modern 21st century piano music, but can also be adapted to the classical repertoire (including the extended range where appropriate) without any issues other than the infamous ‘it’s not a bloody Steinway’ syndrome.
The second is purely the limitation of the pianist, and his/her reliance on the physical size of the keyboard, and hence inability (or unwillingness in many cases) to adapt. The Bosenyamaha trick of discolouring the extra notes is a thinly disguised homage to that restriction and is a total anathema to the Stuart paradigm as I have said on a number of occasions now.
One wonders whether Dussek and Broadwood changed the colour of their extra keys to warn the innocent victims of their technological prowess. I know Beethoven was deaf, but he certainly wasn’t blind. I only wish pianists today shared his enthusiasm for the new order.
Tuesday, October 19. 2010
One of the criticisms levelled at pianos such as the Stuart which feature keys above and below the ‘standard’ 88-key range (A1-C8) is that there is little or no music written for such a range, therefore why worry about the extra keys.
In fact, pianos with extended ranges (normally the bass, but also the treble) have been known since the mid-1800’s. Henri Pape (the inventor of the overstrung piano) made an eight octave piano from F0 to F8 above the usual C8 around 1840. And in the same period, Johann Peter Pixis wrote a piece with the use of this high F. (I haven’t been able to locate this yet). Henri Herz (inventor of the whippen spring, pianist, composer and piano builder) produced a concert grand of 90 keys from G0 to C8. And there are others. From a compositional viewpoint, Busoni, Bartok in a concerto, Dukas in his famous Sonate, Maurice Ohanna in one of his 24 Préludes, Maurice Ravel in "Barque sur l'océan" have used an expanded keyboard.
The 102-note Stuart piano (C0-F8) is the only full-range piano currently being manufactured – full range in the sense that this range is seen as the (current) practical limit for an acoustic piano from both a technical and acoustic viewpoint.
Writing music for such an extended range is actually now much more accessible than it used to be given the plethora of electronic keyboards now available. Indeed, it is now possible to produce a ‘piano’ sound over the entire human auditory range – certainly a much greater range than any acoustic piano would be able to do. So, technically, one can write for any range one wishes to take.
But then, what is the next step? How to perform it, and how does it sound? All electronic keyboards I have seen have 88-notes or less, so as a live performance instrument the entire 102-note range of the Stuart is not available. It is certainly possible to transpose the entire keyboard up or down as much as you like, so whilst the 102-note range is covered, only 88 notes of that range are available at any one time. If the music is notated electronically, then MIDI playback can play as great a range as is physically possible on such a keyboard, but you lack the live performance dynamics.
There is another issue which really strikes at the heart of what is being attempted here. An electronic instrument will normally transpose by applying an appropriate frequency modification to the patch stored in the instrument. Even more sophisticated systems will need to provide some sort of predictive algorithm to try to produce a note with the ‘right’ frequency response. And that is where the problem lies – because the actual frequency response of the very low notes on an acoustic piano bears no resemblance to the higher notes which would be used as a template to be modified in an electronic piano, i.e. the FAT (Frequency/Amplitude/Time) envelopes are totally different.
This means that not only is the sound going to be invalid, but also the interactions of that sound with other frequencies will also be invalid – so you will never get the genuine sound of an acoustic piano, and you will never get the FAT of the total piano experience with an electronic instrument.
So, yes, music can be written for extended range pianos. Bear in mind, however, that it just not a case of writing the notes – anyone can do that. It is critical in this day and age to write for the sound of the instrument – the attack, the decay, the frequency envelope. And in live performance, where the pianist needs to be in total control of mind, body and instrument – an electronic instrument just will not do. It has to be acoustic, and at this time, the Stuart piano is the only piano which is specifically designed for such a task.
Monday, October 18. 2010
No matter what is out there, everyone will have a different opinion on its worth. I have no problems about this, but it does worry me when any view is expressed without a reasonable amount of knowledge, analysis and logic. Not that I succeed in this all the time, of course, but I think I succeed many more times than I fail in this regard.
Take this example from the Pianoworld fora: “Also, I disliked the extra keys. It became a distraction when doing large jumps. Most of us are used to calculating our hand position based on position of the edge of the keyboard. It was weird hitting octaves that are usually at the bottom of the keyboard.”
So what this pianist is saying is that he is unable to adjust to the extra keys, so they shouldn’t be there. Never mind the sound, or the extra capabilities those keys allow. The fact that he cannot adjust is surely his problem, and not the fault of the piano. It implies that pianos will always have 88 keys until the end of time because we’re too stuck in our ways to change. It’s like saying I don’t like a five speed gearbox on a car because I’m used to a four speed gearbox and therefore the fifth gear is useless because it confuses me.
This attitude is symptomatic of what I might call the ‘status quo’ syndrome which seems to permeate piano performance and basically stultifies any development of the piano, either artistic or technical. The point of the Stuart piano is that it is different, and therefore all of the old pianistic paradigms, both technical and artistic, have to be thrown out of the window. If you have to change the way you play, so be it. The Stuart piano absolutely demands that you do. If you can’t, that is your failure to do so, not the failure of the piano.
The fact that extra keys are so worrisome to the majority is symptomatic of this syndrome. Bosendorfers have their extra bass keys in different colours so that pianists can avoid them like the plague. They may as well not be there because the psychology of the piano is telling the pianist ‘don’t touch me – I’m unclean’. The psychology of the Stuart is clear – either accept what I am and tackle my challenges head on or else go back into your little Steinwegian square and vegetate.
Stuart pianos make unprecedented demands on the pianist. They are asked to forget the status quo and let their skills and imagination loose on a totally new way of playing piano music - not just new music but the entire piano repertoire. The quotee exampled above obviously didn’t understand what he was playing and consequently was chained to an outdated and antiquated paradigm, and proceeded to complain because he couldn’t adjust.
The pianist is the problem, not the piano.
|