Talked to Paul Poletti recently on the subject of fortepiano stability. I've appended his comments in our discussion below...sorry if it's a bit long, but it seems to give a good perspective on the recent discussion and offers some practical hints that could be useful. Comments from Paul Poletti: ---------------------------------------------------------------------- My two cents on tuning is that it is not all that mysterious. I reckoned the other day that I have tuned for close to 1000 concerts, many different pianos both copies and originals, and almost every player in the scene, both European and American. I've tuned for solo concerts, chamber with strings and winds, and concerti. I agree with you that any piano which is abused will not stay in tune. Why should it? Basically, aside from abusive playing, two things will make a piano go out of tune: moving and changes in environment. Temperature and humidity will affect all pianos, even modern pianos, some more than others of course depending on the way the cases and boards respond. I don't think stability is necessarily desirable, at least not against weather, because stability usually means massiveness. The early builders were still working with the idea of making a structure only as strong as it needs to be, or as weak as possible is another way of looking at it. Perhaps Graf, Streicher, and Bleyer were the first to depart from this concept with the stacked frames. Graf seems to have gone to far, since his early instruments are all oak and later he goes back to oak-spruce-oak-spruce. I'm not surprised that some "Steins" you know are very stable. I know of no real Stein copy in America, and all the Zucky Stein-like things are quite over-built. I've moved instruments from LA to San Francisco and from Amsterdam to Paris and had them be perfectly in tune when they come out of the van, but miserable after sitting a few hours and adapting to the local environment. I recently shipped a piano from Amsterdam to Belfast by airfreight. It was in good tune when it went into the crate. One week later when it came out of the crate in Belfast, it was ice cold and miserably out of tune. After sitting for several hours and coming back to a temperature and humidity that was quite similar to Amsterdam, it went by itself back into perfect tune. I've had instruments that have sat in a hall for days perfectly stable go berserk when thunder storms moved in in the middle of the concert. The things are great hygrometers. Generally the pattern is that the extremes of the instruments go in opposite directions: if the weather gets dry, the board flattens, lowering the tension on the whole instrument, but since the tension in the bass and tenor is so much higher than in the treble, the structure relaxes, the frame expands, pulling the treble sharp. The reverse happens when the weather gets wet. Moving pianos can also cause problems if you don't do it right. The trick is you have to keep the same three legs on the ground. If the piano has 4 or 5 legs, you have to choose three (the tail and bass keyboard will of course always be two of these) and make sure it stays the same where ever the thing is moved to, whether it be 500 miles or one foot (no floor is flat). This is why you see the historical shift to three legs around 1820. I think the two front legs are the best, but some people like to take the cheek/bentside leg. Makes no diff, really. You can easily prove the importance of this by lifting the right front corner of a well-tuned five-octave piano with your knee whilst playing it. You can hear the treble go as you lift, and return to good tuning as you lower it. Stage light also can ruin a tuning. Hundreds of people breathing can ruin a tuning. In general, the modern concert life places such ridiculous demands on instruments that it is a wonder it works at all. Any time you hear a well-tuned fortepiano in concert you should count your lucky stars. They were never made to withstand that sort of jet-set concert life. They were made to sit in music rooms and salons of stone and brick buildings which stayed pretty much the same humidity and temperature year round. Our workshop has stone walls and brick floors on sand, both of which act as a tremendous moisture sink. The humidity never goes above 75% and never below 60%, regardless of outside conditions or winter heating. I would imagine that most of northern Europe had similar conditions two hundred years ago. It is the modern centrally heated and cooled environment that is death to instruments, since humidity is almost never monitored or controlled. On the topic of hard playing, when you read Streicher and von Schonfeld, you realize that they are talking about subtleties of touch which are never approached in modern times. The halls are too big and many fortepianists still play too much modern piano. The best players (not only in terms of tuning but also in terms of control and color) are those who also play clavichord. Clavichord will simply not take abuse. Either you adapt to its terms or you get no sound. Paul Poletti
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