Piano pedals are foot-operated at the base of a piano that change the instrument's sound in various ways. Modern pianos usually have three pedals, from left to right, the soft pedal (or una corda), the sostenuto pedal, and the sustaining pedal (or damper pedal). Some pianos omit the sostenuto pedal, or have a middle pedal with a different purpose such as a muting function also known as silent piano.
The development of the piano's pedals is an evolution that began from the very earliest days of the piano, and continued through the late 19th century. Throughout the years, the piano had as few as one modifying stop, and as many as six or more, before finally arriving at its current configuration of three.
By the late 18th century, piano builders had begun triple stringing the notes on the piano. This change, affecting the una corda's function, is described by Joseph Banowetz:
The sound of the una corda on early pianos created a larger difference in color and timbre than it does on the modern piano. On the modern piano, the una corda pedal makes the hammers of the treble section hit two strings instead of three. In the case of the bass strings, the hammer normally strikes either one or two strings per note. The lowest bass notes on the piano are a single thicker string. For these notes, the action shifts the hammer so that it strikes the string on a different, lesser-used part of the hammer nose.Williams, J. (2002). The Piano: An Inspirational Guide to the Piano and Its Place in History, New York: Billboard Books, 45.
Edwin Good states,
Beethoven took advantage of the ability of his piano to create a wide range of tone color in two of his piano works. In his Piano Concerto No. 4, Beethoven specifies the use of una corda, due corde, and tre corde. He calls for una corda, then "poco a poco due ed allora tutte le corde", gradually two and then all strings, in Sonata Op. 106.
The term "sostenuto" is perhaps not the best descriptive term for what this pedal actually does. Sostenuto in Italian means sustained. This definition alone would make it sound as if the sostenuto pedal accomplishes the same thing as the damper, or "sustaining" pedal. The sostenuto pedal was originally called the "tone-sustaining" pedal. That name would be more accurately descriptive of what the pedal accomplishes, i.e., sustainment of a single tone or group of tones. The pedal holds up only dampers that were already raised at the moment that it was depressed. So if a player: (i) holds down a note or chord, and (ii) while so doing depresses this pedal, and then (iii) lifts the fingers from that note or chord while keeping the pedal depressed, then that note or chord is not damped until the foot is lifted—despite subsequently played notes being damped normally on their release. Uses for the sostenuto pedal include playing transcriptions of organ music (where the selective sustaining of notes can substitute for the organ's held notes in its pedals), or in much contemporary music, especially spectral music. Usually, the sostenuto pedal is played with the right foot.
The moderator stop was popular on Viennese pianos, and a similar mechanism is still sometimes fitted on upright pianos today in the form of the practice rail (see Sostenuto pedal, above). Joseph Banowetz states that for the bassoon pedal, paper or silk was placed over the bass strings to create "...a buzzing noise that listeners of the day felt resembled the sound of the bassoon."Banowetz 1985:5-6. The buff stop and cembalo stops seem similar to each other in method of manipulation and sound produced. The buff ("leather") stop used "...a narrow strip of soft leather ... pressed against the strings to give a dry, soft tone of little sustaining power." The cembalo stop pressed leather weights on the strings and modified the sound to make it resemble that of the harpsichord.Banowetz 1985:6 Johannes Pohlmann used a swell pedal on his pianos to raise and lower the lid of the piano to control the overall volume.Crombie 1995:18-19. Instead of raising and lowering the lid, the swell was sometimes operated by opening and closing slots in the sides of the piano case.
Famous for his pianos, Muzio Clementi was a composer and musician who founded a piano-building company, and was active in the designing of the pianos that his company built. The Clementi piano firm was later renamed Collard and Collard in 1830, two years before Clementi's death. Clementi added a feature called a harmonic swell. "This introduced a kind of reverberation effect to give the instrument a fuller, richer sound. The effect uses the sympathetic vibrations set up in the untuned non-speaking length of the strings. Here the soundboard is bigger than usual to accommodate a second bridge (the 'bridge of reverberation')."Crombie 1995:31.
The Dolce Campana pedal pianoforte c. 1850, built by Boardman and Gray, New York, demonstrated yet another creative way of modifying the piano's sound. A pedal controlled a series of hammers or weights attached to the soundboard that would fall onto an equal number of screws, and created the sound of bells or the harp.Gill 1981:248. The Fazioli concert grand piano model F308 includes a fourth pedal to the left of the traditional three pedals. This pedal acts similarly to the "half-blow" pedal on an upright piano, in that it collectively moves the hammers somewhat closer to the strings to reduce the volume without changing the tone quality, as the una-corda does. The F308 is the first modern concert grand to offer such a feature.
Up to six pedals controlled all these sound effects. Alfred Dolge states, "The Janizary pedal, one of the best known of the early pedal devices, added all kinds of rattling noises to the normal piano performance. It could cause a drumstick to strike the underside of the soundboard, ring bells, shake a rattle, and even create the effect of a cymbal crash by hitting several bass strings with a strip of brass foil." Mozart's Rondo alla Turca, from Sonata K. 331, written in 1778, was sometimes played using these Janissary effects.Crombie 1995:26.
Sometime around 1777, Mozart had an opportunity to play a piano built by Johann Andreas Stein, who had been an apprentice of Gottfried Silbermann. This piano had knee levers, and Mozart speaks highly of their functionality in a letter: "The machine which you move with the knee is also made better by Stein than by others. I scarcely touch it, when off it goes; and as soon as I take my knee the least bit away, you can't hear the slightest after-sound."Bie, O. (1899). A History of the Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players, London: J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd, 136.
The only piano Mozart ever owned was one by Anton Walter, c. 1782–1785. It had two knee levers; the one on the left raised all the dampers, while the one on the right raised only the treble dampers. A moderator stop to produce a softer sound (see Other pedals, above) was centrally above the keyboard.Williams 2002:35.
After their invention, pedals did not immediately become the accepted form for piano stops. German and Viennese builders continued to use the knee levers for quite some time after the English were using pedals. Pedals and knee levers were even used together on the same instrument on a Nannette Streicher grand built in Vienna in 1814. This piano had two knee levers that were Janissary stops for bell and drum, and four pedals for una corda, bassoon, dampers, and moderator.Good 1982:79.
Beethoven's Broadwood grand, presented as a gift to him from the Broadwood company in 1817, had an una corda pedal and a split damper pedal — one half was the damper for the treble strings, the other half for the bass strings.Crombie 1995:37-38. In an effort to give Beethoven an instrument loud enough for him to hear when his hearing was failing, Conrad Graf designed an instrument in 1824 especially for Beethoven with quadruple stringing instead of triple. Graf made only three instruments of this nature. David Crombie describes this instrument: "By adding an extra string, Graf attempted to obtain a tone that was richer and more powerful, though it didn't make the instrument any louder than his Broadwood."Crombie 1995:36. This extra string would have provided a bigger contrast when applying keyboard-shifting stops, because this keyboard shift pedal moved the action from four to two strings. Crombie states: "These provide a much wider control over the character of the sound than is possible on Graf's usual instruments."
This piano included five pedals: a keyboard shift (quad to due corde); bassoon; moderator 1; moderator 2; and dampers. A different four-string system, aliquot stringing, was invented by Julius Blüthner in 1873 and remains a feature of Blüthner pianos. The Blüthner aliquot system uses an additional (fourth) string in each note of the upper three octaves. This string is slightly higher than the other three strings so that it is not struck by the hammer. When the hammer strikes the three conventional strings, the aliquot string vibrates sympathetically.
As a composer and pianist, Beethoven experimented extensively with pedal. His first marking to indicate use of a pedal in a score was in his first two piano concertos, in 1795. Earlier than this, Beethoven had called for the use of the knee lever in a sketch from 1790 to 1792; "with the knee" is marked for a series of chords. According to Joseph Banowetz, "This is the earliest-known indication for a damper control in a score."Banowetz 1985:144. Haydn did not specify its use in a score until 1794. In all, there are nearly 800 indications for pedal in authentic sources of Beethoven's compositions, making him by far the first composer to be highly prolific in pedal usage.Banowetz 1985:143-144.
Alfred Dolge writes of the pedal mechanisms that his uncle, Louis Schone, constructed for both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn in 1843.Dolge 1911:191. Schumann preferred the pedal board to be connected to the upright piano, while Mendelssohn had a pedal mechanism connected to his grand piano. Dolge describes Mendelssohn's pedal mechanism: "The keyboard for pedaling was placed under the keyboard for manual playing, had 29 notes and was connected with an action placed at the back of the piano where a special soundboard, covered with 29 strings, was built into the case".Dolge 1911:191.
In addition to using his pedal piano for organ practice, Schumann composed several pieces specifically for the pedal piano. Among these compositions are Six Studies Op. 56, Four Sketches Op. 58, and Six Fugues on Bach Op. 60.Williams 2002:40. Other composers who used pedal pianos were Mozart, Liszt, Alkan and Gounod.Banowetz 1985:3-4.
The piano, and specifically the pedal mechanism and stops underwent much experimentation during the formative years of the instrument, before finally arriving at the current pedal configuration. Banowetz states, "These and a good number of other novelty pedal mechanisms eventually faded from existence as the piano grew to maturity in the latter part of the nineteenth century, finally leaving as survivors of this tortuous evolution only today's basic three pedals".
A particularly unusual design is demonstrated in the "Dog Kennel" piano. It was built by Sebastien Mercer in 1831, and was nicknamed the "Dog Kennel" piano because of its shape.Crombie 1995:42. Under the upright piano where the modern pedals would be located is a semi-circular hollow space where the feet of the player could rest. The una corda and damper pedals are at the left and right of this space, and face straight in, like the table piano pedals. Eventually during the 19th century, pedals were attached to a frame located centrally underneath the piano, to strengthen and stabilize the mechanism. According to Parakilas, this framework on the grand piano "often took the symbolic shape and name of a lyre", and it still carries the name "pedal lyre" today.
More sophisticated and expensive electronic keyboards and may have Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) support for a range of user-selected articulations, and the keyboard itself may have an assignable jack or multiple jacks. Standard MIDI continuous controller (CC) messages that users can select for pedals include: CC 64 (sustain pedal, the most commonly used option); CC 65 (portamento); CC 66 (sostenuto pedal); CC 67 (soft pedal); CC 68 (legato pedal); and CC 69 ("hold 2 pedal"). Some such keyboards, such as the Nord Stage, also include a jack for an expression pedal.
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