CAUT

  • 1.  What year did the Bӧsendorfer Model 290 Appear?

    Posted 09-05-2017 19:59
    It is amazing how history can get revised. Sometimes it is by people who should know better, the insiders. Why did I waste my whole day, when I could have slept in for the morning?

    Recently and not so recently I've spent a lot of time with Miroirs, a series of pieces dedicated to Soiciété des Apaches, a group of musicians, writers, and artists in France in 1904-05. Far from expecting people to heap blandishments on he and his friends, with disingenuous emulations of the ostensibly superior, Maurice Ravel and his homies were happy to be known by terms typically applied to what we call gangsta, thug, hustler, and other coeval terms of street cred not so flattering, today. Maurice and his buddies wanted to be punks and tried hard to be one whenever possible, at least, while young and not so dumb. Is that so bad? This was the last piece I remember formally studying with an instructor before entering a phase of self-teaching that appears to be permanent. But I keep returning to the set. Translation of Soiciété des Apaches certainly is not geniuses, which far more, would be an appropriate antonym. Why so offended? Touchy touchy.

    Being released from the Steinway Bubble and being the man who fell to earth can be somewhat enlightening. C'est un véritable truc d'Apaches,[i] Fred Sturm wrote an article in December 2011 The Invention of the Sostenuto Pedal, and mentioned something, I floating, grasping for breath as I, puzzled over a score published in 1853, bars 7-10 of Liszt's 12th Hungarian Rhapsody, at how on earth it could be written or executed without a sostenuto pedal, as Sturm observes, "Some say Albert Steinway invented it, citing his 1874-75 patents." Floating through the depleted ozone layer, I read on, gasping for air, as that I had been taught this my whole life, and suddenly, it bursts, as Sturm continues, "The Boisselot brothers received their patent for the sostenuto in 1843 or 1844," research I had been spared from for so many years. Suddenly, Liszt made sense, who claimed, "The perfection of a Bösendorfer exceeds my wildest expectations." Which brings me to my question about the chronology of another invention, the 8 octave Model 290.

    In the third movement of the Miroirs suite, "Une barque sur l'océan," we have in the 40th bar what likely is editorial, though I have not seen the autograph or an edition that is not the same. Instead of what we find in Ravel's own transcription of the piece for orchestra,[ii] what would be G#-0 at the piano, we have A-0. He repeats this in bar 42 apparently. But then, in bar 45, we have G#-0. What is the problem with this?

    When I inquired about these things @Wikipedia on Bӧsendorfer I found a reference to a recent version of the Bӧsendorfer website. It claims that Bӧsendorfer built its first prototype, not put into production, the Model 290 in 1909 at the request of Ferruccio Busoni.[iii] The updated website did not remove the word prototype.[iv] I am having a hard time believing it was a prototype or a factory production of the piano in 1909. Wikipedia does provide a translation of the work that Busoni wrote, "On the Transcription of Bach's Organ-works for the Pianoforte,"[v] in order to accomplish the task that many claim motivated Ludwig Bӧsendorfer to build the Model 290, in 1909. But Busoni's work was published in 1894, not a work in progress by then either.

    Is this a chronological aberration? Again, Busoni published his instructions for Transcribing JS Bach's organ works in 1894. Could this be something other piano manufacturers were experimenting with at the time? Not to take anything away from Bӧsendorfer, but these are dates it provides about itself. 1909 sounds late to me in light of the piano literature. Is this just another example of how history changes itself when people begin trying to remember it, especially in writing? Perhaps Ravel's earlier composition from 1904-05 is neglected because of what could be considered its spurious dedications?  

    [i] Stolen from the internet

    [ii]Ravel, M. Une barque sur l'océan for Full Orchestra,@ http://ia802305.us.archive.org/16/items/Cantorion_sheet_music_collection_2/9c55d32b80fb3f64031d996365dfa5e8.pdf#track_/download/1178/9c55d32b80fb3f64031d996365dfa5e8/Miroirs%20Une%20barque%20sur%20l%2526%23039%3Boc%C3%A9an%20%28orchestral%20score%29%20-%20Orchestra%20-%20Maurice%20Ravel.pdf?view=1

    [iii] Obsolete Bӧsendorfer Website.@ https://web.archive.org/web/20131111181650/http://www.boesendorfer.com/en/model-290-imperial.html

    [iv]Current Bӧsendorfer Website.@

     https://www.boesendorfer.com/en-us/pianos/pianos/Concert-Grand-290-Imperial

    [v] Busoni, F. "On the Transcription of Bach's Organ-works for the Pianoforte", First Appendix to Volume I of Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavichord, pp. 154–190 New York: G. Schirmer, 1894.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Busoni-On_the_Transcription_of_Bach_Organ-works_Schirmer_English.pdf



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    Benjamin Sloane
    Cincinnati OH
    513-257-8480
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  • 2.  RE: What year did the Bӧsendorfer Model 290 Appear?

    Posted 09-05-2017 20:12
    I should probably add for those not familiar with the score that I went through and tried to find a note in the region I could tune alternately as ersatz for an actual G#0 in Miroirs. In the movement, A-0, A#-0, B-0, C#-1, and as I recall D-1 are all employed to sound as tuned. So what about detuning C-1 to fix the problem? Though it takes until the 5th movement, C-1 is eventually employed in bar 16 of "La vallée des cloches." So there virtually is no way to compensate on the conventional 88 note piano detuning which is part of why I didn't mention it.

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    Benjamin Sloane
    Cincinnati OH
    513-257-8480
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  • 3.  RE: What year did the Bӧsendorfer Model 290 Appear?

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 09-05-2017 23:02
    I don't know the history of the extra note models of Bösendorfer, but larger compasses than 88 keys date to 1844, when Henri Pape made pianos with eight octaves. The article I read that in (1844 Revue et Gazette Musicale de Paris) doesn't specify the range, but it is pretty hard to go above C8, so presumably it went below A0. Could have been F0 to F8, but who knows?
    Bosey didn't have a monopoly on extended range in later years. Gaveau made pianos that went down to G0 in the late 1920s, as I learned from the memoirs of the piano technician who accompanied Villa-Lobos on a concert tour of the state of São Paulo in 1931. He described the piano (belonging to Villa-Lobos, who had agreed to sell Gaveau instruments on consignment in exchange for use of the Salle Gaveau concert hall in 1927-29) as going down to G0. It was described as a "half tail," meaning about 6'6" - 7'. So obviously others were at least experimenting in that direction over the years. Hard to get at exactly who and during what years. 
    Regards,
    Fred Sturm
    "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." Twain





  • 4.  RE: What year did the Bӧsendorfer Model 290 Appear?

    Posted 09-08-2017 21:51
    G#0!, yell it again, G#0!, yell it again, G#0!, G#0!

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    Benjamin Sloane
    Cincinnati OH
    513-257-8480
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  • 5.  RE: What year did the Bӧsendorfer Model 290 Appear?

    Posted 09-23-2017 09:26
    No autograph yet for Ravel's Miroirs. It being a pre-WWI composition, it might not exist.

    The challenge even in light of the historical development of the range in the piano that attributing advocacy for expanding the base range solely to Busoni well as the organ works of Bach doesn't seem to affirm then contemporary developments in keyboard literature. Figures such as Charles-Marie Widor were exponents for the works of J.S. Bach as well at the time, who produced an annotated edition of his organ works with Albert Schweitzer 1912-1914. There are further observations more speculative that might be made of Miroirs without the aid of Ravel's orchestral versions of the pieces. 

    Strangely enough, we have a recording of Ravel's own rendering of "La Vallée des Cloches," the final piece of the set, which Ravel apparently recorded on a piano that rather than employing an expanded range in the bass, featured a piano that did not start at A0, but in all likelyhood, C#1.

    Maurice Ravel plays La vallée des cloches from Miroirs
    YouTube remove preview
    Maurice Ravel plays La vallée des cloches from Miroirs
    Ravel, Miroirs ("Mirrors") 5. La vallée des cloches ("The Valley of Bells")
    View this on YouTube >

    In bar 42 of the piece, Ravel substitutes C#1 for B0, and again in 43, not in the score but in his personal performance of the piece, which must have been terribly irritating for him. It provides evidence of Ravel composing beyond the range of many keyboards nevertheless. Furthermore, it seems that again, G#0 as a bottom note for the final octave of bar 44 would give the piece more continuity, and even E0-E1 for the final octave of bar 45, resolved by F#0-F#1 in bar 49, giving a superior inevitability to not only the piece, but the entire set. Again, is this edited to reflect the range of most pianos at the time, which Ravel himself, even if not edited, was suffering through as a performer? The single E1 in bar 48 would be more appropriately an octave with E0-E1, and C#1-C#2 in bar 49, low as C#0-C1, assisting the flow of the entire set in performance in this piece very close to the end. See related file for score. 

    Ravel exhibits his inclination to move notes higher due to a deficiency of bass range in bars 16 and 17.

    Expanding the range of the piano by Bösendorfer could have involved more than Busoni's pleas, whether or not unprecedented; chronologically the development very well could have happened, for a prototype, much earlier than 1909. 

    Certainly would appreciate anyone furnishing a copy of the autograph. 

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    Benjamin Sloane
    Cincinnati OH
    Tristatepianoworks@yahoo.com
    513-257-8480
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  • 6.  RE: What year did the Bӧsendorfer Model 290 Appear?

    Posted 09-23-2017 16:48
    To be fair,

    Concerning observations about the American Steinway sostenuto mechanism,

    I should add that I have never seen the documentation on the patent for the Steinway sostenuto mechanism. It may be that Steinway did not mean to claim that Steinway invented the sostenuto pedal, but the mechanism it added to create the same effect to the piano, and that the patent was embellished to be something it was not by unscrupulous historians, commentators, journalists, and biographers, to a claim by Steinway to have invented the sostenuto pedal function itself, not the trapwork for the sostenuto itself unique to Steinway. Hyperbole is part of marketing virtually everything.

    Attaching the trapwork to the the top action, or the stack, may very well have been unprecedented, while creating a functioning sostenuto rail was not. I would not be the one to verify that possibility.

    I've found the sostenuto mechanism created by Kawai easier to work with. The Steinway sostenuto design forces the technician to remove the action again if estimating the distance of the rail incorrectly. There is less guesswork with the Kawai design.

    The sostenuto is something taxing for the technical exam CTE. Modifications for the technical exam might start with back action problems like the sostenuto. Action models are most deficient in accounting for competence in damper work, back action problems, generally speaking. If a pedal portion on a real piano were added to the technical exam, many of us who passed would fail.

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    Benjamin Sloane
    Cincinnati OH
    513-257-8480
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  • 7.  RE: What year did the Bӧsendorfer Model 290 Appear?

    Registered Piano Technician
    Posted 09-24-2017 13:03
    Albert Steinway patented several implementations of the sostenuto mechanism, presumably covering the types of pianos they were producing and intended to produce for at least several more years:

    156,388 (1874) for the square piano
    164,052 (1875) for the modern grand piano
    164,054 (1875) for the English action
    164,053 (1875( for the vertical piano action

    The actual patents can be viewed/downloaded at patents.google.com.

    For information on much earlier French patents, see Myth/Truth sidebar in Pianos Inside Out, p. 76.

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    Mario Igrec, RPT
    http://www.pianosinsideout.com
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