Early Steinway Grand

[Kent Swafford]

I received a call from a new customer asking me if I was interested in 
tuning an old Steinway. He said it was among the first made, and was 
"nothing special." I told him I was eager to see the instrument but (the 
usual disclaimer).

What I found when I came to the instrument was an 85 note 7' grand of no 
recognizable model; the scale resembled a modern D with the bass/tenor 
break at f2 and wound trichords just below the break. The rim was not 
continuous and the pinblock was open-faced and along with the tuning pins 
was tilted down toward the strings to match the angle of the strings 
coming up from the agraffes.

The piano tuned well and at concert pitch. The piano was playable but a 
few notes wouldn't play under a hard blow, as if the jacks were skipping 
out. The customers are voice teachers and say that the piano, with 
Steinway & Sons New York cast in to the plate, found its way to Europe 
and had served as a rehearsal piano in an opera house until they 
purchased it and brought it with them home to America.

The piano was an absolutely beautiful example of piano technology applied 
to an early piano with the aim of keeping the piano working and useful 
rather than historically accurate. If the case had had any carving or 
ornate trim it had been removed, new modern legs had been installed, and 
the piano had been (re)finished in ebony. New hammers, dampers, and 
restrung at some point. 

The serial number 480 would put the date of manufacture in the 1850's. As 
a matter of fact, the Fostle history on Steinway lists the first official 
Steinway as 484 and claims that some 300 early Steinways are unaccounted 
for and not claimed as "Steinway" by the company. The book goes so far as 
to claim that serial number 483 was destroyed by the company in the 
1940's. Wait, maybe I should not be mentioning this piano in a forum that 
Steinway sometimes monitors.  :)

Anyway, I don't know if the 480 number on the piano is accurate. 
Speculations from persons here more knowledgeable about such things are 
welcomed. But this clearly is an interesting Steinway, especially to me 
in Kansas City where we are accustomed to seeing pianos from the 1890's 
but not much earlier.

Kent Swafford