<div> Israel,<br>
<br>
Fascinating. Thanks for sharing this. Think I'll quiz my wife about it...after all, shouldn't a doctoral student in piano at USC know such things? Valuable ammo!<br>
<br>
Alan Eder<br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
-----Original Message-----<br>
From: Israel Stein <custos3@comcast.net><br>
To: pianotech@ptg.org<br>
Sent: Sun, 22 Jul 2007 7:55 am<br>
Subject: 2nd Try on Sostenuto Research Resources<br>
<br>
<div id="AOLMsgPart_0_e1655cc4-f987-4fbc-9eab-8425aa25e5b6" style="margin: 0px; font-family: Tahoma,Verdana,Arial,Sans-Serif; font-size: 12px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
At 11:00 AM 7/21/2007, <a href="mailto:pianotech-request@ptg.org">pianotech-request@ptg.org</a> wrote: <br>
<br>
>All: <br>
> <br>
>Surely there must be some resources out there that you might refer
>me to--people, textual, research threads--on the development of the
>sostenuto and its impact on piano composition. Any ideas would be
>helpful. Thanks, <br>
> <br>
>Paul Revenko-Jones <br>
<br>
Paul, <br>
<br>
I can't help but note that you will most likely not find the import
of the sostenuto if you confine your research to its "impact on piano
composition". You will find that impact to be negligible, obscure and
peripheral. The only time I ever used it was in a piece by Francis
Poulenc - and later I found out that his handspan was so great that
he did not need the sostenuto to play those passages... <br>
<br>
The evidence is staring you right in the face: if most piano students
can manage to get a degree in the field without ever learning its
function, if European piano manufacturers did not find it necessary
to add a sostenuto pedal to their products until export to the US
became a reality, if most vertical pianos are still sold without it,
if the only time I get a complaint about the sostenuto from the
faculty here at SFSU is when it interferes with damping - how much
impact could it have had? <br>
<br>
If you want to delve into the real impact of the sostenuto you need
to look into piano marketing practices, economic and sociological
trends, the development of the music publishing industry and the use
of the piano in the home - and not on the concert stage. If you think
about it, the advent of the sostenuto was contemporaneous with the
spread of the piano as a consumer product among the middle classes -
and its establishment as the "home entertainment unit." It is
throughout the latter 19th century and early 20th that the practice
of singing around the piano or playing popular tunes and latest hits
on the piano in the evenings by family groups was a standard form of
passing the time among the emerging middle classes. Music publishers
fed this pastime by rushing into print a piano transcription of every
latest musical "hit" - be it vaudeville, opera, musical theater show,
symphony or concerto. In fact, the success of a composer's having
music published hinged on its suitability for such piano
transcriptions - that's where the money was... It is in the playing
of these transcriptions of orchestral works that the sostenuto pedal
would be most useful - grab a chord representing the bass parts in
the sostenuto, and free both hands to play the upper orchestral
parts... This is why in cheaper pianos the function could very easily
be fulfilled by a bass sustain pedal (the so-called "poor man's sostenuto")... <br>
<br>
After the advent of the radio and the gramophone, the piano lost its
importance in the middle-class home, except for the most part as a
status symbol or a symbol of cultural pretensions which we all try
very hard to cultivate in order to stay in business... And the
sostenuto pedal became a pretty much vestigial mechanism - for the
most part ignored by composers and pianists alike. <br>
<br>
Israel Stein <br>
<br>
<br>
</div>
<!-- end of AOLMsgPart_0_e1655cc4-f987-4fbc-9eab-8425aa25e5b6 -->
<div class="AOLPromoFooter">
<hr style="margin-top:10px;" />
AOL now offers free email to everyone. Find out more about what's free from AOL at <a href="http://www.aol.com?ncid=AOLAOF00020000000437" target="_blank"><b>AOL.com</b></a>.<br />
</div>