Piano pedals
"[1] The damper pedal has the secondary function of allowing the player to connect into a legato texture notes that otherwise could not thus be played.
This change, affecting the una corda's function, is described by Joseph Banowetz: On the pianos of the late eighteenth to early nineteenth centuries, the pianist could shift from the normal three-string (tre corde) position to one in which either two strings (due corde) or only one (una corda) would be struck, depending on how far the player depressed the pedal.
On the modern piano, the una corda pedal makes the hammers of the treble section hit two strings instead of three.
In that respect, at least, the modern piano does not give the player the flexibility of changing tone quality that early ones did.
[2] On the modern upright piano, the left pedal is not truly an una corda, because it does not shift the action sideways.
French piano builders Alexandre François Debain and Claude Montal built sostenuto mechanisms in 1860 and 1862, respectively.
[citation needed] Among other pedals sometimes found on early pianos are the lute stop, moderator or celeste, bassoon, buff, cembalo, and swell.
[12] The moderator, or celeste mechanism used a layer of soft cloth or leather between hammers and strings to provide a sweet, muted quality.
"[4] The cembalo stop pressed leather weights on the strings and modified the sound to make it resemble that of the harpsichord.
[16] Instead of raising and lowering the lid, the swell was sometimes operated by opening and closing slots in the sides of the piano case.
[citation needed] "[This pedal] introduced a kind of reverberation effect to give the instrument a fuller, richer sound.
"[17] 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.
Banowetz speaks of these novelty pedals: "At their worst, these modifications threatened to make the piano into a vulgar musical toy";[2] professional musicians did not like them.
According to Good, this possibly began "...when King Augustus the Strong of Poland received the gift of a Turkish military band at some time after 1710.
Owing to the desire of composers and players to imitate the sounds of the Turkish military marching bands, piano builders began including pedals on their pianos by which snare and bass drums, bells, cymbals, or the triangle could be played by the touch of a pedal while simultaneously playing the keyboard.
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.
[2] According to David Crombie, "virtually all the fortepianos of the last three decades of the eighteenth century were equipped with a knee lever to raise and lower the dampers ... "[25] Sometime around 1777, Mozart had an opportunity to play a piano built by Johann Andreas Stein, who had been an apprentice of Gottfried Silbermann.
[28] James Parakilas states that the damper stop was introduced by Gottfried Silbermann,[3] who was the first German piano builder.
However, many successful English piano builders had apprenticed with Silbermann in Germany, and then left for London as a result of the disturbances of the Seven Years' War in Saxony.
[30] Americus Backers, Adam Beyer, and John Broadwood, all piano builders in England, are credited as being among the first to incorporate the new feature.
This piano had two knee levers that were Janissary stops for bell and drum, and four pedals for una corda, bassoon, dampers, and moderator.
It had... four pedals, including an una-corda, a damper lift, a lute stop, and a moderator for softening the tone.
Crombie states: "These provide a much wider control over the character of the sound than is possible on Graf's usual instruments.
Other times, an independent pedal board and set of strings could be connected to a regular grand piano.
His father, Leopold, speaks of this pedalboard in a letter: "[the pedal] stands under the instrument and is about two feet longer and extremely heavy".
[27] Alfred Dolge writes of the pedal mechanisms that his uncle, Louis Schone, constructed for both Robert Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn in 1843.
[31] James Parakilas describes this pedal location as giving the piano a "pigeon-toed look",[3] for they turned in slightly.
[41] 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.
Eventually during the 19th century, pedals were attached to a frame located centrally underneath the piano, to strengthen and stabilize the mechanism.
