Mikes Music Room – Music Articles

After the position and height of the seat and the position of the player have been determined, the Pose of the fingers must be attended to. They are to be placed, according to their various lengths, on the keys, that is, touching the surface of the keys

After examining the principles regulating the action of the hand and the mechanism of the piano, and knowing that if any of these are ignored or overlooked, no true application of the one mechanism to the other can be effected. It is necessary to begin on the keyboard work of such a nature as will develop, first of all, Independent Movement in each finger. This must be done before any thought is given to the acquirement of strength of finger. Previous to their being trained on the keyboard, the fingers have been accustomed to action of the most unin-dependent nature.

They have hitherto been moved generally in a body; they must now be taught to move one at a time. Their action when applied to the keyboard is, in the matter of direction, no new or unfamiliar one. The novelty consists in their action’s being, (1), in

The second duty of the key is its action on the damper. It has already been stated that, in fulfilling this duty, the key is being kept ” at work ” until the very moment that it rises, the “work” being that of preventing the damper from touching the string, thus allowing the tone to continue sounding.

The damper of the piano is the only means of stopping the string’s vibrations, which would otherwise continue, in many cases, longer than would be necessary or agreeable. In violin-playing, the same stoppage of tone takes place when the player ceases drawing the bow across the strings.

The continuance of the tone, in the case of the piano, depends only negatively on the action of the damper. Positively, it depends on the vibrations of the strings, assisted and reinforced by the large surface of the sounding-board, over which they are stretched.

The key, as long as it is kept down by the finger, exercises a restraining influence on the damper, and the finger may therefore be considered to have some slight extra resistance offered to it by the weight of the damper. If this resistance were great enough to be perceived by the finger while keeping the key down, some extra force would be needed to counteract it; but as the weight of the hand and arm are far more than sufficient to resist the weight of the damper, added to that of the key, no extra pressure on the ivory is necessary to keep the damper away from the string.

Considered from the side of the necessities of the hand, the hold which the hand keeps on the key after the push, must be accompanied by no continuous clinging pressure, as this after-pressure destroys the looseness or elasticity of the muscles, and makes no greater impression on the damper-mechanism, than does a hold of the lightest and loosest description.

The finger-work consists of two elements, namely, the push, necessary to make the hammer strike the string, and the hold, necessary to prevent the damper from stopping the tone. The impulse used in delivering the push should always be of the most momentary duration, as the work done by it

Damper. If a key be pushed down, and then kept down, it will be noticed that the tone continues sounding for a considerable time after the push has taken place, and ceases whenever the key is allowed to rise. This stoppage of the tone is the result of the action of a second piece of mechanism, called the damper. The dampers are small pieces of wood with felt attached to them.

This mechanism is so connected with the key that the latter cannot be moved without occasioning a movement of its own damper. Each key is thus the means by which both a hammer and a damper are moved, the former for producing tone, the latter for stopping it. (In the case of a few of the top keys of the piano, the damper mechanism is wanting.)

The damper lies constantly touching the string, except during the holding down of the key, when it is removed from its place and kept off the string as long as the key is held down. After a push-down of the key, and as long as it is kept down, there are to be noticed (1) the hammer resting at its half-position, and (2) the damper removed from the string. When the key is allowed to rise, the hammer falls completely back, and the damper returns to the string, and, by touching it, stops the tone.

If there were no provision for the stoppage of tone, the effect of any performance would be the same as that produced when the right foot pedal is held down during playing. The putting down of the pedal causing the removal of all the dampers from the strings, and creating in consequence the effect as of each separate sound floating about among all the others.

In the case of the hammer, it was pointed out that its complete work is finished in the shortest possible time, that it is finished instantaneously, and that although the key be kept down (and therefore may be understood to be fulfilling some function), still nothing more must be expected from the hammer.

It will be remembered that the key has two mechanisms depending upon it, namely, that for producing the tone, and that for stopping it. As long as the key is held down, it is doing a part of its work, seeing that as soon as it is allowed to rise a change takes place, or in other words, the tone stops.

It has been already shown that the work of the hammer is completed at the moment of the stroke. It must therefore be the work of the damper which the keeping down of the key is instrumental in furthering. As opposed to the hammer’s work being finished as soon as the key is down, the work of the damper is not completed until the key rises. The work of the damper is to stop the tone; and as that stoppage cannot take place until the string is re-touched by the damper, which touch cannot take place until the key comes up; the work of the damper is therefore not finished until the key is allowed to rise.

The positive action of the hammer takes place when the key is pushed down. The positive action of the damper takes place when the key rises. The negative action of both hammer and damper, namely, their leaving the string, gives the latter freedom to vibrate after the stroke. While therefore both hammer and damper begin their work at the same moment, they complete it at distinctly different times, the hammer instantaneously, and the damper not until the key rises.

All work done between the completion of the hammer’s work and the completion of the damper’s work is done by the sounding board of the piano; but as this intermediate work is altogether beyond control of the finger, it cannot come under any consideration concerning the manner of touching the keys.

The piano, while similar in some of its features too many other kinds of musical instruments, differs materially in several important points from all other kinds. It resembles the Violin, Harp, Guitar, Zither, Dulcimer, &c.,-in its being Stringed. It resembles the Drum, Triangle, Cymbals, Tambourine, Dulcimer, &c., in its being dependent on percussion for the production of its tone; and it resembles the Organ, Clarinet, Concertina, in its being Keyed.

But it differs from all of these instruments in the following important points. Firstly, in its being dependent on the player’s method of finger-push on the key for its quality of tone. Secondly, in its being dependent on rapidity of finger-push for its quantity of tone: and thirdly, in its being dependent on keys for the means of producing percussion. The actual agents of percussion, namely, the hammers, being reachable only through the medium of the keys.

It is probably from a want of appreciation of this last fact, that the piano has come to be considered rather as a keyed instrument than as a stringed one.

The distinctive feature of the piano is, then, the system of its key-mechanism.

Key.