More Solo Instruments

Yesterday I only managed to get up to the harpsichord so let me continue on a bit. The harpsichord, while a marvelous instrument has a few limitations. Some people find its sound a bit harsh and it has no ability to play notes louder or softer. The reason for this is that the harpsichord takes the movement of a lutenist or guitarist and mechanizes it. Here is how it works:

This is just how the guitar is played, but the difference is that since it is the finger and fingernail that is plucking the string, the guitarist can play louder or softer depending either on how deeply the string is pressed before releasing it, or how quickly it is attacked. Either way imparts more or less energy to the string, making the note louder or softer. On the harpsichord however, the mechanism prevents this. I do seem to hear that some harpsichordists seem able to accent chords and I wonder if it is through some subtle throwing of the key? In any case, this is a very limited effect.

The piano was invented specifically to overcome this limitation. The full name, pianoforte, literally means "soft-loud". Instead of plucking the string, a padded hammer hits the string. This was the invention of an Italian, Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700. The mechanism needed to allow for a small movement of the key to result in a large movement of the hammer and to check the rebound and allow for quick repeated notes was quite complex. While Cristofori's action had most of the principles, others over the next hundred and more years refined the mechanism considerably. Here is what it looks like:

So while the piano is literally a percussion instrument, the strings being hit with a hammer, it is capable of a remarkable range of sounds from very soft to very loud and from delicate shimmers of sounds to ferocious pounding. And, with the added range of over seven octaves, the piano has for a long time been the most versatile musical instrument. Let's listen to some historic pianos. Here is Susan Alexander-Max playing the oldest Cristofori piano surviving, dating from 1720. The music is by Domenico Zipoli.

Incidentally, since the beginning of the "early music" movement, a need has arisen to find a term to describe these historic early pianos that distinguishes them from modern pianos. So we use the term "fortepiano", just reversing the word "pianoforte". Any time you see the word "fortepiano" you know that it is the early piano that is being talked about. Let's listen to some Mozart on one of the instruments from his time. Here is Malcolm Bilson playing a movement from the Sonata, K 333. Notice how much lighter and crisper the sound is from a modern piano:

One important innovation was by Gottfried Silbermann, who invented the damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers allowing all the strings to resonate sympathetically. One of the earliest pieces to take advantage of this was Beethoven's "Moonlight" sonata. Let's listen to the first movement on fortepiano played by Trevor Stephenson:

The piano underwent considerable development in the 19th century, becoming a louder and considerably heavier instrument. One consequence is that it can be very interesting to hear even a composer like Chopin on the instrument he preferred, one built by Sébastien Érard:

I have to bring this to a close now, so let me end with a modern piano and the kind of ferocious music it is capable of playing. Here is Grigory Sokolov with the last movement of Prokofiev's Sonata no. 7:

Solo Instruments

This is a follow-up on yesterday's post about classic ensembles. The other kind of music-making is with single instruments. It is interesting that there are two contrasting modes with solo instruments: one is solitary, meditative and introvert, while the other consists of virtuosic display. But before I get into that, let's look at solo instruments in different cultures.

China has the pipa, a four-stringed lute played for millenia in China and particularly popular during the Tang Dynasty. Here is pipa virtuoso, Liu Fang:

In the 7th century the pipa was taken to Japan and became various types of instruments called the biwa with either four or five strings. Here is Junko Ueda singing a traditional piece while accompanying herself on biwa:

Japan also has the shakuhachi flute as a solo instrument. It is particularly associated with Buddhist meditation.

In West Africa there is the kora, a 21-string harp. Here is Lankandia Cissoko from Senegal with traditional music for kora:

In Eastern and Southern Africa there is the very unusual instrument the mbira or thumb piano that consists of metal strips fixed to a wooden resonating box and played with the thumbs. Here is a collection of mbira music from Zimbabwe:

In Western European music there are a number of important solo instruments. Probably the oldest of these is the organ whose oldest examples go back to ancient Greece and Rome. The Roman water organ or hydraulis has been reconstructed from surviving remains and depiction in mosaics. Here is a modern reconstruction:

But we have no idea of the music that was played on it! For a long time, most music, at least that has been preserved, was for voice. One of the earliest solo instruments was the lute, developed from the Arabic oud. Here is the Syrian master of the oud, Farid El-Atrash:

Before the invention of keyboard instruments like the harpsichord, the lute was the main domestic solo instrument in Europe. Here is an early piece of Scottish lute music:

Here is a much more complex piece, imitating vocal polyphony, by the Hungarian lutenist Balint Bakfark:

The lute, with added strings in the bass, lasted to the end of the Baroque era as witnessed by this Sarabande by Sylvius Leopold Weiss:

The lute was toppled from its throne by the harpsichord, a keyboard instrument with a mechanism that plucks the strings with either leather or quill plectra. The invention of the keyboard was earth-shaking as it simplified and mechanized the production of a note. This meant that while there was some loss of control over the quality of the individual sound, many more notes could be produced far more easily than they could on other instruments. This opened the door to new heights of instrumental virtuosity. There were many schools of harpsichord playing, but probably the most important were the French clavecinistes (from clavecin, the French word for harpsichord) and the German school, especially J. S. Bach. Let's hear an example of each. I am delighted to put up a clip of my old friend from McGill, Hank Knox, playing La Poule by Rameau:

As you can see, the fact that each note is now easy to produce means that the hands can act very independently, enabling much more complex counterpoint. This was exploited by J. S. Bach. Here is the Contrapunctus I from the Art of Fugue showing how a single harpsichordist can play four independent voices.

I was planning on doing the piano, violin, cello and maybe guitar as well, but I see I have gone on very long already! So I will leave that for another day.