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INTRODUCTION
This is the second edition of this site. It is now organized into a set of sub-pages. We invite the suggestions of knowledgable piano experts, piano builders, preservers and restorers; piano designers; piano manufacturers, piano historians, archivists and curators, and piano technicians.
The Early Steinway Grand Research Project
This project is a “history of technology” study of the early Steinway grand piano (the wing or “flugel” grand), from 1856 to 1886.
This project includes several inter-related components:
1. Research activity and writing;
2. Identification and documention of significant pianos through site visits and the gathering of documentation from technicians and other parties;
3. Collection of important early Steinway grand artifacts and pianos for archiving and teaching;
4. Teaching and lecturing in Piano Technicians Guild and other venues.
It is my aim to increase the public awareness of early Steinway grands, especially among piano technicians and piano historians. I hope to correct long-held inaccuracies restraining our understanding of the early Steinway. I hope to increase understanding of the rebuilding, remanufacturing, restoration and conservation issues. I hope to raise the early Steinway grand to the respect which it once received as a musical instrument and a technologically advanced marvel. And I hope to bring attention to the little-known designs which had their own claim to brilliance.
SITE VISIT AND LECTURE
I document early Steinway grand pianos and lecture on the Early Steinway Grand. I endeavor to schedule my presentations so that I can also coordinate a site visit for documentation. With your help I intend to thoroughly chart the development of the Steinway wing grand, compare this to piano design developments outside of the Steinway company, and more completely and accurately tell the story of this influential grand piano in its first 30 years. So I invite calls to document early Steinways. Piano technicians, keyboard conservators and avocational Steinway enthusiasts may help with the gathering of important technological data on Steinway wing grands from this period.
All Steinway wing grands before 1878 are included in this study (some through 1886), and all Steinway wing grands fit into one of the following three groups.
EARLY STEINWAY WING GRANDS IN THIS STUDY
1. All concert grands through 1883.. The first “wing” grand built by Steinway was in 1856, an 8’ concert grand serial number 791. This study includes all 8’ to 8’9” concert grands built through 1883 (in 1884 the modern version of the model “D” went into production). All had 17 bass notes (unlike the modern “D” which has 20). These were given a large number of style designations, from no style number (the first) through Style 6. Only the Centennial has a capo bar (1875 and later), others have agraffes to the top. Both 85 and 88 note compass.
2. All 7’1” to 7’3” grands through 1886. The earliest had 17 bass notes, all the rest had 21 bass notes, including the model “C” pianos through 1886 (all later “C”s had 20 bass notes). Variously designated Style 1 or 2, only Style 2 beginning in 1872; agraffes to top until 1878 when it was renamed the model “C” and began to use full plate with capo bar. Continuous rim incorporated in 1880. The 1886 “C” was not based on this design, but on a down-sized version of the model “D.”
3. All 6’8” grands built from 1869 to 1878. Except for the 1869 Monitor or Iron grand prototype these were always named “Style 1” but also had the factory name “Monitor” grand. All have 20 bass notes. All have 85 notes, agraffes to top (no capo bar).
4. Early letter-model wing grands, 1876 through the 1880s. We are interested in documenting early letter-model grands with 20 bass notes. This includes early A’s, B’s, C’s and D’s through the 1880s.
In summary, we are interested in all wing grands beginning with the first - #791 - and continuing through 1878 (40,000), 1883 (50,000) and finally 60,000 (1887). While the main study is of 1878 grands and earlier, we are interested in elements of the transition to the current models, through 1887.
A BRIEF ESSAY ON THE EARLY STEINWAY GRAND
1853: Steinway was founded at a pivotal time and place. The industrial revolution was in full swing, and America - the Steinway family’s new home - was a country most receptive to innovation, and less bridled than its European counterpart to business traditions and cultural mores. An increasing array of materials, technological and industrial resources were becoming available to piano manufacturers.
The piano had a leading place in the music world - even in the technology and business world. Any company with the right combination of technological and business savvy would be in a position to exercise leadership in the industry, and this is what the Steinway family did in its first 30 years. This story has been told by Cynthia Adams Hoover in her monograph “The Steinways and their Pianos,” Donald W. Fostle in “The Steinway Saga,” Richard Lieberman in his book “Steinway and Sons” and Edwin Good in his extraordinary “Giraffes, Black Dragons and other Pianos” 2nd edition. Chapter 8 (“The Radical Americans”). All make the historical case for Steinway’s innovative leadership.
A thoroughly documented technological history has not yet been published. The physical and technological documentation of the Steinways of the early period, a contextual comparison of Steinway’s innovations with its contemporaries, and a new interpretation of Steinway’s historical contribution through the 1880s has yet to be written. As the date 1853 becomes distant, commonly accepted claims and myths about the early Steinway become accepted as fact. The piano before 1850 has received great attention and had found a place in period performance practice. The period from 1850 to 1880 awaits the work of researchers and piano restorers/builders. An enormous effort must be made to understand the evolving designs, changing materials and technologies of the Steinway of 1856 to 1886.
The practice of the Steinway company to refer to all early Steinway grands with letter model numbers has been influential. This practice succeeds in doing what a thriving manufacturer should do: focus interest on the current product. It probably began simply because Steinway began to change their model names from style numbers to letters beginning in 1878.
1878 was an important year of change for Steinway, not only because the models began receiving letter designations (A/B/C/D), but because the brand new model “A” was introduced, along with the completely innovative continuous rim (first introduced in the “A.”) But Steinway’s change to letter designations didn’t always coincide with dramatic changes in the pianos; those changes took place more gradually over several years. Here is a summary.
In 1878 the Model “A” was introduced, the shortest piano to date, 6’1”. This was the only “letter” piano not to have a “Style number” ancestor (though it was also given the style number ‘1’). It began with the “A” letter designation, as well as a capo bar and continuous rim.. The previous Style 1 6’8” became the “B”, retained many of the “B” features and sometime in 1878 added a capo bar and continuous rim The previous Style 2 7’2” became the “C” and eventually added a continuous rim and capo bar, but did not go from 21 to 20 notes until 1886; The Style 4 Centennial 8’9” became the “D,” retained its tenor “return” bridge and a 17 note bass section (the first 1856 grand had a 17 note bass section). The 8’10 1/2” modern “D” didn’t become the piano we know today, with two bridges and a 20 note bass section, until 1884. This creates confusion today, because while the A and the B retain their main ancestral features of design, the C and D became very different instruments. And except for the “D” all pianos had agraffes to the top - no capo bar - into 1878; so the ancestors were very different pianos than the letter-designated pianos. The transition to the modern instrument took several years, with some pianos looking more like their ancestors, and others looking forward to current design.
The company’s practice of calling an ancestor by a descendant’s name is understandable. The problem is not that the company follows this practice, but that, with one major exception, a lack of information exists in published sources which could clarify historically accurate model naming. Roy Kehl’s detailed summary of Steinway models organized by model families can be found in “The Piano Book” by Larry Fine; even this incredible summary is often misunderstood. Most users of this list do not read it carefully, and therefore use the family letter designations as their reference.
While Steinway’s long practice of retroactively letter-naming the ancestral “Style No.” grands may seem merely innocuous and harmless, a great degree of confusion and misinformation exists about the early Steinway grand, and correct nomenclature will help clear up some of the confusion. Correct model naming differentiates ancestors from descendants, and helps us to get to an important reality: that the early pianos were truly different from their heirs. It is my belief that as we discover these early pianos anew, their uniquenesses will amaze us, and discoveries of original and carefully restored examples will please us.
It shouldn’t surprise, then, that I hope to encourage the responsible and informed conservation of important, representative early Steinway grands and their components for current and future study. Piano technicians and owners will serve music, science and history by becoming familiar with the field of keyboard conservation and acting responsibly for the sake of music and history. Curators can contribute by conserving the piano of 1850 to 1880, especially the Steinway and it’s significant contemporaries. It is simple, but generally true, that much of the story of the piano’s transition from the Erard of the 1830s to the Steinway of the 1900s is the story of the American Steinway. I don’t have to make that case; Edwin Good has already made it. But the story itself remains one of broad strokes, and most of the details remain those of the business and social history. This project endeavors to tell the story of Steinway’s technological history during it’s formative, seminal years.
A thorough technological study of early Steinways should result in important conclusions. Discoveries may be made which will take their place in the lore of piano history. Much is not yet known about early Steinways, but there is still time to make those discoveries and correct the record.
Let me use two illustrations to demonstrate how why it may be useful to re-examine the standard assumptions of early Steinway grand piano technology. It is generally thought that from the very first, Steinway wing grands used a single piece cast iron plate. We should be sure of this; the issue is important enough for Mr. Good to refer to the 1871 Streicher grand as having a single piece cast plate - the Streicher had not previously used a single casting until Steinway used it in the previous industrial exhibition.. Steinway’s context is important, too; the leading European manufacturer of the time, Erard, had since the 1820s used a multi-piece structure consisting of hitch plate and bars (Erard continued this practice until 1900!); the leading American company, Chickering, was using single castings. It would be interesting to learn that many early Steinway wing grands used string plate and bar structures modeled after the Erard. That, just like it’s European contemporaries, many of these early Steinway wing grands used no continuous cast flange behind the pinblock, but instead merely the fastening flanges at the front of each bar. Like the “Kitchen Steinway” of the 1830s which roughly emulates a Graf, the first American Steinway wing grands emulate the Erard in their basic structural layout, using a hitch plate with bars which interlocked at the plate and had small individual flanges at the pinblock.
Is the early sectional plate design significant? Certainly it demonstrates that the assembled plate castings Steinway used are highly practical for a new piano builder, whether 1857 or 2006! A small builder can more easily build a wing grand with sectional plate technology. Steinway in its first decades of piano building was innovative, and the company’s early use of multi-piece, assembled sectional plate technology supported innovation, it allowed Steinway to more easily make changes in design.
I choose the piano action for my second illustration. It is known that Steinway’s choice of the Erard-Herz repetition action profoundly influenced the piano-building world until this design became the unanimous choice of grand piano builders. What is not generally known (although Good and others refer briefly to it) is that like most of its contemporary builders, Steinway did NOT use the Erard design for many years, preferring to build its own action designs. Henry Steinway Jr. designed and built two modified English actions for the early grands (each of which had its own unique mechanism to achieve for repetition what the intermediate lever accomplishes on the Erard repetition action), finally CF Theodore Steinway developed an ingeniously simple action in 1871 which introduced a mechanism that most likely had never been used in actions before: an adjustable spring to assist touch weight, in place of the inertia-laden key lead. Theodore called the spring a “balance spring,” showing insight into a concept which had not been thoroughly articulated until the 1970s, and not in any formal way until David Stanwood’s studies in the Piano Technicians Journal in 1990. In addition, Theodore Steinway inserted a small spring in the backcheck to increase the variability of checking, supporting a higher check to permit quicker reset of the jack. Theodore not only put this action into the first ancestor of the model “B” Steinway - the Monitor 6’8” grand. The entire endeavor was an effort to simplify, integrate and streamline piano design - not only because it was efficient, but also because Theodore was the most “socialist-minded” of the family, always wanting to build a more affordable piano. The Monitor grand was by no means a piano for the masses; it was a highly crafted, expensive piano, but it was more affordable than any other wing grand Steiwnay built to date, an achievement made possible by a simple and innovative action Theodore specifically designed for it!
Steinway did begin to incorporate the modern Erard-Herz action into their pianos sometime in the early 1860s, while Theodore was to design his action in 1871 and supply the early “B” ancestors (the 6’8” Monitor grands) with it. But the company further obscured for history the unique action designs of Henry Jr. and Theodore by replacing many of the early actions with Erard-Herz actions. Steinway frequently took their non-Erard actions back in the factory and replaced them with Erard-Herz actions! Apparently many piano owners sought this, though I suspect that Steinway also encouraged it (the Henry Jr. actions may have required more frequent service); the consequence was that very few non-Erard-Herz actions remain in Steinway grands, making it more difficult today for us to see the importance of the non-Erard-Herz actions in the early Steinway Grand
Today there is a renewed interest in alternative grand action designs. Henry Jr.s designs should be found enlightening, and the 1871 patent CF Theodore action should be recognized as a pioneering design.
There are so many illustrations and examples of the value of this research: the story of Steinway’s involvement in the rapid changes in piano wire; the design of the Monitor Grand prototype of 1869, the “Iron Grand,”; the design of it’s successor, the model “B” ancestor “Monitor” Style 1 of 1872; the design of the Centennial and its successful integration of two ideas, the capo bar and the duplex scale; the practice of patenting an idea that had been used by the company for many years; the story of a company which showed so much depth and leadership that within a decade after building its first wing grand it had taken the piano world by storm at the 1867 International Exhibition in Paris - and with a piano that was much different in design than the Steinway of today!
I welcome your contribution to the rediscovery of the Early Steinway Grand. Whether you re-discover one of the seven prototype 1869 Monitor Grands, or have old CFT action parts you can ship for our study, research or the building of action models; or hire me to consult and provide recommendations on a piano in your care; or contribute financially or with real property to the Period Piano Center, permitting its beginnings as a museum and research center on the 19th Century piano; I appreciate any way in which you can contribute to this research project.
I am grateful to Mr. Roy Kehl of Evanston, Illinois for his extraordinary study of Steinway production, which my summaries of the early Steinway grand models rely on. His work product includes an unpublished production study of all Steinway pianos, a summary of which is found in Larry Fine, The Piano Book, 4th Edition, pp. 210-213. A copy of the complete production study by Roy Kehl may be viewed by arranging a research visit to the Steinway Archives, which I refer to below. I hope that he will publish this fine study at some future date for all to use and study.
I am grateful to Maureen Drennan of La Guardia Community College, CUNY, Long Island City, NY, for her assistance in my visits to the Steinway Archives. Learn more about these archives at www.steinway.lagcc.cuny.edu/steinway/main.asp.
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Shull Piano Inc
