CAUT

It is my understanding that the earliest pianos had dampers that were one of the last vestiges of the harpsichord action: a jack, with damper felt (sans the tongue and plectrum), with one for each note and no way to control all of them at once. The question has come up about when pianos started having UNdampened notes in the highest part of the scale. Was it when the damper system grew a pedal? Shortly thereafter? A music history prof. (from one of those OTHER music schools, on the other side of the hill) contended that the reason there aren't dampers on the highest notes is because, "At the time of its invention, they did not have the wherewithal to make dampers go all the way up to the top." And here I thought it was because of an aesthetic choice, the desire to have sympathetically ringing strings (the way some harpsichords are set up without dampers on the highest part of the four foot register, if present, or on instruments such as the sitar).

Thanks,

Alan Eder

I though that the dampers only went so far because the strings are short with a fast decay. A damper wold make them nearly inaudible. Some pianos have dampers that go high than others because they have an efficient board to sustain the higher notes.

It is my understanding that the earliest pianos had dampers that were one of the last vestiges of the harpsichord action: a jack, with damper felt (sans the tongue and plectrum), with one for each note and no way to control all of them at once. The question has come up about when pianos started having UNdampened notes in the highest part of the scale. Was it when the damper system grew a pedal? Shortly thereafter? A music history prof. (from one of those OTHER music schools, on the other side of the hill) contended that the reason there aren't dampers on the highest notes is because, "At the time of its invention, they did not have the wherewithal to make dampers go all the way up to the top." And here I thought it was because of an aesthetic choice, the desire to have sympathetically ringing strings (the way some harpsichords are set up without dampers on the highest part of the four foot register, if present, or on instruments such as the sitar).

Thanks,

Alan Eder

Alan,

"At the time of its invention, they did not have the wherewithal to make dampers go all the way up to the top."

What a bizarre statement! What "wherewithal?" And does your authority who came up with that dictum actually know what the damper design was on Cristofori's piano?

I can't say for certain that no piano ever had dampers all the way to the top (I've never seen one), but it wasn't because makers were incapable of doing it. I'm with you in believing it is an aesthetic choice to leave the top notes free of dampers, for the reasons you state, and that it was a tradition that simply continued from the harpsichord. Nothing to do with the pedal. I'd be interested to learn if there ever was a piano with dampers to the top.

Making the dampers extend to the top of the scale would certainly involve a radical change in the design of current grand pianos.  The belly rail is kind of in the way.  Upright pianos - with the dampers below the hammers - would be marginally simpler though I can't really think of an advantage in doing it other than phony superiority claims by the marketing section.  "We're the ONLY piano with dampers all the way to the top". 

dp

Alan,

"At the time of its invention, they did not have the wherewithal to make dampers go all the way up to the top."

What a bizarre statement! What "wherewithal?" And does your authority who came up with that dictum actually know what the damper design was on Cristofori's piano?

I can't say for certain that no piano ever had dampers all the way to the top (I've never seen one), but it wasn't because makers were incapable of doing it. I'm with you in believing it is an aesthetic choice to leave the top notes free of dampers, for the reasons you state, and that it was a tradition that simply continued from the harpsichord. Nothing to do with the pedal. I'd be interested to learn if there ever was a piano with dampers to the top.

Alan,

"At the time of its invention, they did not have the wherewithal to make dampers go all the way up to the top."

What a bizarre statement! What "wherewithal?" And does your authority who came up with that dictum actually know what the damper design was on Cristofori's piano?

I can't say for certain that no piano ever had dampers all the way to the top (I've never seen one), but it wasn't because makers were incapable of doing it. I'm with you in believing it is an aesthetic choice to leave the top notes free of dampers, for the reasons you state, and that it was a tradition that simply continued from the harpsichord. Nothing to do with the pedal. I'd be interested to learn if there ever was a piano with dampers to the top.

Fred,

Action schematics of Cristofori's early efforts show the harpsichord-jack-based damper system as described in my original post. Once the hammer was introduced as a means of exciting the string--as opposed to the plectrum, which was part and parcel of the same jack that housed the damper--things must have got a bit crowded in the little speaking length of the string between where the soundboard meets the belly rail and the near termination (and pinblock/wrestplank).

Does anyone out there know whether or not the dampers on early pianos went all the way to the top (as they do on harpsichords)?

Alan,

I understand that the Cristofori dampers (and others, like the Stein) were like harpsichord jacks, and rode in similar guides. Hence, they would be hard (but not impossible) to adapt to a pedal mechanism. The question is whether Cristofori had dampers all the way to the top of the scale. On many harpsichords, the damper felt is left off in the top notes. I guess I could ask Laurence Libin, if he doesn't happen to chime in. 

Did they go to the top in the Stein piano? My recollection is that they did not, but I can't really be sure. Photos won't usually help, as there is a stop rail on top, and I haven't found any with the stop rail off that show the very top end of the instrument. If we are talking about pre-pedal (presumably including the knee lever), we actually need to go before Stein, as Stein apparently invented that. So I guess it worked with the jack style damper (don't know for sure, only know that the Steins I have seen have those jack style dampers).

A lot of the earliest square pianos were made in Germany without any dampers at all, and others with dampers that had a stop to lift them, either all at once, or bass and treble halves.

The modern piano makes it harder to place dampers to the top (if anyone wanted to) because of the range, and consequent short length of the top strings. But the earliest pianos with a C2 to C6 range, expanding later, gradually, to 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6 octaves, etc., would have had the space. IOW it would have been easier to do dampers to the top on early pianos. And since the strings were longer, they probably had more (relative) sustain, so would have been more worth damping.

Square pianos put their damper lift wires through holes drilled in the pin block (or hitch pin rail if the tuning pins are on the right), and they lift the end of a lever that is hinged to a rail suspended above the strings. Such a system could work on a modern grand piano, if someone cared to do it. But I don't think anyone would want to.

Alan,

I understand that the Cristofori dampers (and others, like the Stein) were like harpsichord jacks, and rode in similar guides. Hence, they would be hard (but not impossible) to adapt to a pedal mechanism. The question is whether Cristofori had dampers all the way to the top of the scale. On many harpsichords, the damper felt is left off in the top notes. I guess I could ask Laurence Libin, if he doesn't happen to chime in. 

Did they go to the top in the Stein piano? My recollection is that they did not, but I can't really be sure. Photos won't usually help, as there is a stop rail on top, and I haven't found any with the stop rail off that show the very top end of the instrument. If we are talking about pre-pedal (presumably including the knee lever), we actually need to go before Stein, as Stein apparently invented that. So I guess it worked with the jack style damper (don't know for sure, only know that the Steins I have seen have those jack style dampers).

A lot of the earliest square pianos were made in Germany without any dampers at all, and others with dampers that had a stop to lift them, either all at once, or bass and treble halves.

The modern piano makes it harder to place dampers to the top (if anyone wanted to) because of the range, and consequent short length of the top strings. But the earliest pianos with a C2 to C6 range, expanding later, gradually, to 4.5, 5, 5.5, 6 octaves, etc., would have had the space. IOW it would have been easier to do dampers to the top on early pianos. And since the strings were longer, they probably had more (relative) sustain, so would have been more worth damping.

Square pianos put their damper lift wires through holes drilled in the pin block (or hitch pin rail if the tuning pins are on the right), and they lift the end of a lever that is hinged to a rail suspended above the strings. Such a system could work on a modern grand piano, if someone cared to do it. But I don't think anyone would want to.

I'll try again with the picture.

Richard,

Fortepiano copy builders preferred the Walter design to that of Stein, because Walter introduced the check-rail which held individual backchecks for all the hammers, while Stein expected the hammers to check on the edge of the wrestplank (pinblock to us) - a rather awkward and undependable mechanism. Kipnis had a check rail installed in his 1799 Graebner - you could tell it was a later addition, since it was made of aluminum... :-)

Whatever happened to Phillip Belt? He sort of disappeared from the scene just as the "original instrument" really heated up in the early 90's... 

Richard,

Thanks for the information on Phillip Belt - sorry to hear he's gone... BTW, I don't remember too many people in the Historically Informed Performance field (the last known to me moniker for what used to be Early Music) who weren't some sort of "interesting" character in one way or another. David Way - later in his career - styled himself as D. Jacques Way, which is how I and a lot of other people knew him. And Malcolm Bilson was one of the nicest people I met during my 25+ year involvement in this field.

Alan,

"At the time of its invention, they did not have the wherewithal to make dampers go all the way up to the top."

What a bizarre statement! What "wherewithal?" And does your authority who came up with that dictum actually know what the damper design was on Cristofori's piano?

I can't say for certain that no piano ever had dampers all the way to the top (I've never seen one), but it wasn't because makers were incapable of doing it. I'm with you in believing it is an aesthetic choice to leave the top notes free of dampers, for the reasons you state, and that it was a tradition that simply continued from the harpsichord. Nothing to do with the pedal. I'd be interested to learn if there ever was a piano with dampers to the top.

Folks,

No need to guess or theorize. I have worked on a fair number of both replicas of older instruments and restored original ones in the Boston and the San Francisco areas, and I can tell you unequivocally that 18th and early 19th-century pianos had dampers all the way to the top and a fairly simple mechanism to lift them all.  In the very early pianos the dampers were operated by means of a knee lever (actually, two knee levers which allowed for the lower half and the upper half of the dampers to be lifted separately). In later 18th century pianos they were operated by pedals - in fact, some pianos had multiple pedals for different sound effects (bassoon, celesta, bass drum, mute - already present in the time of Mozart) - so the presence or absence of dampers has nothing to do with the invention of the pedal. 

I am trying to recall if any of the so-called "transitional" mid-19th century pianos (composite metal frame, leather covered hammers) had dampers all the way up. The one I remember is a restored Rosenberger Viennese action piano (ca. 1850) belonging to Peter Sykes in Boston - I think it did have dampers all the way up. A late Beethoven Graff copy (6+ octaves, Viennese action) belonging to David Cates in Berkeley did have dampers all the way to the top (with pedals). So did a restored 1799 Graebner 5-octave Viennese action piano belonging to Igor Kipnis (with knee levers). And I have seen lots of Stein-era 5-octave pianos in Massachussetts, California and Amherst with dampers all the way to the top. I do not recall if an 1870's Streicher belonging to Peter Sykes and a similar one in the Harvard University instrument collection did or not have dampers all the way to the top. A few English action, composite plate Broadwoods and Erards from the 1870's I worked on in the San Francisco area definitely didn't. 

It's possible that the English action design might have made it difficult to have dampers all the way up - and thus the sympathetic vibration phenomenon was identified as a good thing. Or it is just a coincidence - and the omission of dampers on top was a deliberate aesthetic choice based on experience during piano construction and damper installation. I also suspect that with the introduction of the cast plate it became just about impossible to squeeze dampers onto the very short top treble strings - and so belly rail design followed from that, since there was no need for damper mechanism space above note X. Just a conjecture.

The learned professor has no idea what he is talking about, and should probably stick to subjects he does know (if any). 

Depending on maker and country, the range of 5 or 6 octave pianos might be F to F, A to A, or C to C if an even number of octaves, most commonly F to C or C to F if 5 1/2 or 6 1/2. There was no absolute norm, and the range was in constant flux, with various makers pushing the envelope (Henri Pape in particular, going so far as to do an 8 octave piano in 1844 - it wasn't very successful).

The question of how many notes are left without dampers and why isn't a simple one. Damping is audible in even the top notes of a modern piano (you can do it with a finger or mute, just after attack, and hear). It is less clean because of both duplex (if any) and the other undamped strings, but there is a significant difference in the sustain sound, even of C8. Furthermore, there are many pianos which could easily and logically (and without significant expense) have one or a few additional dampers at the top. Baldwin L, for instance, stops three notes below the top break. 

So the bottom line has to be that the decision is an aesthetic one, not absolute, and not entirely based on how much ring there is in the first undamped note compared to the last damped one. It's a tradition, but one with variety as to where the break occurs, and it isn't obvious why that decision was made by the given maker.

Depending on maker and country, the range of 5 or 6 octave pianos might be F to F, A to A, or C to C if an even number of octaves, most commonly F to C or C to F if 5 1/2 or 6 1/2. There was no absolute norm, and the range was in constant flux, with various makers pushing the envelope (Henri Pape in particular, going so far as to do an 8 octave piano in 1844 - it wasn't very successful).

The question of how many notes are left without dampers and why isn't a simple one. Damping is audible in even the top notes of a modern piano (you can do it with a finger or mute, just after attack, and hear). It is less clean because of both duplex (if any) and the other undamped strings, but there is a significant difference in the sustain sound, even of C8. Furthermore, there are many pianos which could easily and logically (and without significant expense) have one or a few additional dampers at the top. Baldwin L, for instance, stops three notes below the top break. 

So the bottom line has to be that the decision is an aesthetic one, not absolute, and not entirely based on how much ring there is in the first undamped note compared to the last damped one. It's a tradition, but one with variety as to where the break occurs, and it isn't obvious why that decision was made by the given maker.