evolution

[Anne Beetem]

>To use a lovely mixed metaphor, we can now have our cake and eat it as
>long as we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. We can have an
>1814 Streicher *and* a 1998 Steinway and we can tune either in any
>temperament we choose.


Thank you Stephen,  I'll take one of each please, and a Graf too?
And a later Streicher?

>
>> I disagree with the position that the piano is no longer evolving.
>> Pianos are made faster and cheaper, with less attention to detail and
>> usability.  Tone production simply does not have the range and domain of
>> former years.  The same is true of actions.
>> ...
>OK but this is not evolution. As I said it is stagnation. Retrogressive.
>It is not a response to the consumer's requirements...i.e. not an
>adaptation to the environment. Nobody wants a bad piano of any kind.

In fact,  it is reduction to the uneducated mass market's pocket.   We can
see evolution in the digital keyboard, which continues to improve yearly,
though has a long way to go to my taste yet.



>
>All piano makers have faced the same acoustical and mechanical problems.
>It is simply modern arrogance to suppose that our 20th Century solution
>is better than a 19th or an 18th Century solution. It is just different.
>
>Stephen


Precisely!     Much of the motivation of the design of the modern
instrument was the need for LOUD instruments to fill those BIG HALLS filled
with the new paying public upper middle classes.    Tone quality had little
to do with it.   This plus the belief in the supremacy of the industrial
age,  of iron, and size and volume, dictated the evolution of the piano
into the 20th century.

Anne




Anne Beetem
Harpsichords & Historic Pianos
2070 Bingham Ct.
Reston, VA  20191
abeetem@wizard.net