Temperaments

[Les Smith]

On Sun, 25 Jan 1998, ralph m martin wrote:

> Les and Ron
> Piano sales are most surely shrinking. I don't think they will diminish
> to the point of equaling violin sales numbers though.
> 
> Maybe the manufacturers will tool down to the point where each builds
> maybe two upper end grands and three or four uprights making it feasible
> for them to continue production for quite some time based on a six model
> line.
> 
> Watcha think?

Unfortunately, Ralph, it probably doesn't matter. What I lament is not
the death of the acoustic piano, as much as the death of the American
acoustic piano. Where once the US made more pianos than the rest of the
world combined, and led the way in piano technology and development,today
that world is increasingly dominated by pianos built in far away places.
And all those pianos have the distressing  tendency to look, play and
sound the same--essentially all clones, knock-offs, and imitations of   
the same Japanese prototypes. 

If I had to sum up what has been lost with the demise of the great and
near-great American pianos of the past in one word, that word would be
VOICE. More than anything else, that which once made a Knabe, a Knabe;
a Mason and Hamlin, a Nason and Hamlin; a Chickering, a Chickering: a
Weber, a Weber; a Steck, a Steck; or even an old Henry F. Miller, a
Henry F. Miller, was that each spoke and sang with their own, unique,
immediately-identifiable voice. They DIDN'T all sound the same, yet
each was beautiful and eloquent in their own special way. Blindfold
a pianist, put him in a room full of such pianos, and he could dis-
tinguish one from the other merely on the basis of how they sounded.

It's hard to believe that, today, when you see those pianos rebuilt
and listen to how they sound NOW. It's not at all uncommon to walk
into a store today and see a rebuilt Knabe and Chickering and Steck
and Marshall&Wendell and Mason&hamlin and Weber all sitting side by
side AND ALL SOUNDING JUST AS MUCH ALIKE AS A YAMAHA AND A KAWAI, OR
A YOUNG-CHANG AND A SAMICK. In the process of rebuilding them, care-
less and economy-minded rebuilders frequently destroy those old,
characteristic voices which made each a uniquely individual work of
art. Few things depress me more than sitting down at a beautiful-
looking, newly-rebuilt vintage piano and discovering that it sounds 
like a bad Yamaha because some technician thought that they could
get by with using a $100 set of hammers in it. Thus, not only were
the old, great pianos silenced a long time ago, but even those that
still survive today are systematically being killed off, ony by one.

So I lament the demise of the great American pianos of the past and
the fact that so many of their once-so-eloquent voices have been    
stilled. No one is more grateful than I, that at least Steinway still
remains to remind us of how things used to be when the Amereican-
built piano ruled the world. Yet I sometimes fear that someday the
American piano may be remembered by the last spinet piano Aeolian
cranked off the assembly line just before it self-destructed and the
American piano technician by the guy who did the final action set-up
on that spinet and then proudly signed his name inside: "Anonymous".

Les Smith :(