The Stuart piano has four, rather than the standard three (for a grand piano), pedals, as follows:
1) the sustain or damper pedal (often erroneously and annoyingly called the loud pedal). Depressing this pedal lifts all the dampers off the strings and allows sustain on all notes.
2) the sostenuto pedal. Depressing this pedal sustains only those notes which have been depressed at the time – all other subsequently played notes are not sustained. This pedal is not often used, but can be very useful in, for example, Debussy’s La Cathedrale Engloutie.
3) The una corda pedal. This pedal shifts the hammers to the right, with the result that the hammer now only strikes one string rather than all strings for a particular note.
4) The dolce pedal (for want of a better name). The pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings so that not only do they hit the strings with less force (resulting in a quieter note) but this also allows the player to actually play the note more quietly than he or she could without the use of the pedal.
All pianos have a damper pedal, and, more and more these days, the sostenuto pedal, but it is in the area of the ‘soft’ pedals that there is much less consistency.
Many uprights I have seen have the dolce pedal, or else a mechanism whereby a layer of felt is placed between the hammers and the strings, thus producing an admittedly softer but also annoyingly muted, even strangled, sound. I might suggest that this type of pedal be named the recalcitrant neighbour pedal, because I can quite frankly imagine no other use for it, musical or otherwise. Very few uprights have the una corda, and my limited experience suggests that this is restricted to the higher end instruments.
On the other hand, most grand pianos I have seen have the una corda pedal, and very few have the dolce pedal. The Stuart piano has both. Much has been made of this, quite a deal of it negative. Why have two pedals which basically do the same thing? A waste, surely?.
Of course, they
don’t do the same thing, and this is the point that virtually everyone who espouses the temerity of duo soft pedals misses completely.
1) The dolce pedal allows the pianist to play more quietly (although he/she doesn’t have to, but they can’t play as loudly) and the tone obtained is basically the same, since all strings are still being struck in the same fashion and in the same way.
2) The una corda pedal also allows the pianist to play more quietly, but as is the case with all other pianos as well, since only one string is being hit the sound is intrinsically softer and the tone is somewhat thinner and more muted. Note that this also is the case for the bass strings, where there is only one string anyway. In this case the hammer gives a slightly glancing blow to the string, and the effect is still the same.
So, depending on the effect you want, you use the pedal you want. But wait, there’s more…
The tonal and volume effect of the una corda pedal is
gradual, in other words you can get a partial effect by partially depressing the pedal, both volume wise and tonally. The technique used here is to place the left foot somewhere in between and over the two pedals and then ‘rock’ the foot onto the una corda whilst still in control of the dolce pedal. In this way you can get a myriad of different combinations of the two soft pedals the result of which is a myriad of different touches, tones and timbres on the piano.
Without putting too fine a point on this, this is quite unique in the piano world. It transforms the use of the soft pedals from a straightforward to a vastly increased and more complex combination of effects which can be used to totally transform the sounds that are played and as a result totally transform the music in ways that have not been possible before.
Whilst it is true that Fazioli and Steingraeber pianos have the same double action, their implementations are totally different to the Stuart. Fazioli puts the fourth pedal some distance away from the shift pedal and it’s nearly impossible to play them together. He completely misses the concept of two pedals together. This is also the case with the Steingraeber Phoenix where the dolce action is at the bottom of the shift action – push to the first position is shift, keep going and its dolce - completely different objective. The four pedals have been in the Stuart design since 1989/90 as his original upright proof of concept had a shifting mechanism plus the dolce. Fazioli introduced his later.
Together with the overall sound and resonance of the piano, this presents a vastly increased volume and tonal palette which enables the pianist to completely reinvent the piece of music being played, no matter from which period in history the music is from. It thus allows composers to specifically tailor their music to the possibilities offered by the instrument – from the softest, almost inaudible lows to powerful, clean sounds that dwarf the capabilities of other pianos – from delicate timbres to amazingly clean and sharp basses and trebles and all combinations in between.
This may sound fanciful, but, believe me, its no joke. Its real, it exists and its here now. This instrument really is a leap forward and it opens up so many possibilities that those possibilities seem endless. The way I play Bach, Beethoven and Chopin would be an anathema to many traditionally minded souls. But the ability to reinvent is a powerful incentive to creative artistry. That’s why I can’t go back to a piano which, no matter how well it is built and how much craftsmanship goes into it, nonetheless doesn’t allow that kind of freedom and artistic licence.
I have reinvented my square, and I suspect this will not be the last time I do it.