CHAPTER XXII
THE RISE OF PIANISM. SACRED MUSIC
160. The Improved Piano.—The inevitable connection between
the improvement of mechanical implements and the
advance of artistic styles is finely illustrated by the reaction of
the experiments in piano-making from about 1760 upon the
entire character of keyboard music. Until that date the piano
was not much more than a curiosity. Inventors had not seriously
attacked its mechanical problems and players found it less
useful than the powerful harpsichords that were common. But
the political disorders in central Europe about 1760 sent many
workmen to England and these, apparently stimulated by the
influence of Christian Bach, began a movement for better
devices that had important sequels. Somewhat later came a
new interest in piano-making in Austria and Bavaria, soon
paralleled also in France. Between 1780 and 1790 competent
instruments, with various forms of action, began to become
fairly plentiful, and before 1800 the supremacy of the harpsichord
ceased.
It is impossible here to give any sufficient account of the gradual process
of improvement in the piano, but some notes upon pioneers will be useful.
Christian Ernst Friederici (d. 1779), a Saxon organ-builder, is commonly said to have made the first 'square' pianos, perhaps before 1760, but no example remains. He was taught by Silbermann.
Johann Zumpe, a German workman, became well known in England about 1765 for the excellence of his small pianos. These had a simple and fairly effective action in which the hammer was thrown, without escapement, by a leather-headed wire jack (popularly called 'the old man's head') and the damper lifted by another ('the mopstick').
Americus Backers (d.c. 1781), a Dutchman in Tschudi's employ at London, soon after 1770 developed the Cristofori action by using a jack that engages a shoulder on the hammer-butt and 'escapes' past it, the movement being regulated by a screw, and by supplying the check to catch the recoil of the hammer. This action was the germ of the so-called 'English action,' later developed by the Stodarts and the Broadwoods. In 1786 John Geib invented the 'hopper' or 'underhammer' in place of the fixed jack.
