How does the touch of today's pianos compare to those of the past?

[pianoplayjl]

Is it possible that the pianos that Beethoven and Chopin play have a lighter touch and action than the typical modern pianos that we play?

If that is true then perhaps that will explain why in my piano it is very hard to play softly and I have to touch my nose against the keys to produce a quiet tone. But then again all pianos are different. I was just wanderingif they have any distinct characteristics of their time that we don't have or Vice versa. Thanks

JL

[iansinclair]

I have -- and currently play daily -- an 1898 Steinway A and a 1924 Steinway M.  I've also played on occasion very modern Steinway Ds.  The A has been refurbished, but still has the original action.

I have also been able to play a really nice fortepiano, such as Beethoven would have used.

Admittedly the range here is not large, but in comparison with the fortepiano, any of the modern pianos has far greater power, but not that much greater a range of dynamics.  And the various Steinways differ very little in that regard, although the 1898 action is much more difficult to regulate evenly than the later ones.  The touch of a fortepiano is quite different, but I wouldn't say it is "lighter" so much as "different"; the real difference is that for a given whack on a key you don't get as much sound.

There is, however, a huge range in lightness of touch and response to the touch (in terms of volume) among pianos -- and the volume produced can be changed by a good technician over a remarkably broad range.

That answer sort of wanders, doesn't it?  Sorry... the pianos Chopin would have had to hand would have been much like ours today, although perhaps a bit less brilliant and resonant.  The instrument Beethoven had to had was the fortepiano, with nowhere near the power and sustain of a modern piano.

IMHO, both of them would have leapt at the chance to use a modern top line concert grand!

[iansinclair]

I might add to the above remarks that any fool can play a piano loud.  It's much much harder to play a piano soft and evenly -- particularly rapidly.

I might also add that the regulation of the action is critical to playing softly.  It takes a really good technician to regulate the action so that soft is possible -- and an even better one to make it so that each key reponds evenly to a soft touch.  This is one area where modern actions are much better than older ones; even the action in my 1898 A drives my technician crazy.

[tannertuner]

If you're having difficulty playing your piano softly, that is an indication that if it isn't completely worn out, your action needs to be regulated - and then you still might need new parts, such as hammers, if the current ones can't be voiced softly enough to please you. Additionally, some action centers might need to be repinned to restore a degree of friction to the action to give you more control. I'm a piano technician of 28 years, and the way I sell action regulation jobs after evaluating an instrument is by breaking the ice with this question, "I bet you're having difficulty playing softly aren't you?"

As action parts settle and compress, they naturally drift "away" from the strings, which means you have to strike the key harder to get the hammer to hit the string - and voila! pianissimo disappears. Regulation is the process of making adjustments to the action to correct for this settling and return the action to its ability to play softly. This doesn't take away from being able to play loudly, it just gives you more control.

Some makers' actions, such as Baldwin, I've found very difficult to make able to control at pianissimo with original parts and key weighting. The Baldwin grand pianos I've worked with have had very heavy touch-weighting, but very light and hard hammers, which would just "fly" at the strings with the lightest touch, and produce a very loud, harsh sound with the same touch that would produce pianissimo on other actions.

As to the question of how modern actions feel versus those of days past, the way actions are weighted off has also changed. In the past, more focus was on adding weights to the keys to regulate the touchweight. Today, more emphasis is placed on geometry, reducing dependency on key weights. And yes, there will be a difference in feel between the two approaches. Also, there have been differences in approach to key depth. Some manufacturers have a very deep response, while others produce plenty of power with a shallower touch. The Steinway spec for key dip has varied over the years, as has the method for measuring it. Some older technicians describe a method which will yield close to .420", even though the modern factory spec has recently been increased from .380" to .400". Doesn't sound like much, but believe it or not, you can feel the difference in that .020"!

As to the instruments that Beethoven, Mozart, Chopin, Schubert or Liszt might have played, the actions were much simpler. The hammers were covered in leather rather than densely packed felt, and so the tone produced was quite different. Material used for the strings was also different than today. They actually repeated quite well, also - perhaps in some cases better than today, again, with shallower key depth. They were not capable of the booming fortississimos of today's grand pianos, and so the touch required for mezzo-forte today would have produced a nice pianissimo on an early 19th century fortepiano. The keys were also narrower, so an octave was not as wide. As late as the 1920s, some keyscales were still slightly narrower than they are today.

So, yes, there are differences. But if you're having difficulty playing softly, and your technician doesn't know how to help you, you might need to try a different technician.