Stuart claims his piano design is a response to the harmonically layered settings of new music practices heralded in the 19th Century by the impressionist composers.The Impressionists’ changed the traditionally linear composition style by placing more emphasis on the colour of sound, a characteristic Stuart says, that relates to the actual behaviour of sound itself, the physics of sound. This compositional interpretation of musical sound continued to be developed in the styles of minimalism and atonal music composers in the 1940- 1960s.The vertical emphasis enabled a departure from the traditions of linear melodic-harmonic progression of the music. The following passage found in an analysis of the minimalist composition Etymalongby Australian composer Ross Edwards, describes the emphasis of experiencing the inner charcteristics and nature of a sound, an inner look at sound itself, separate to its overall compositional context-

……. the overall structure is less important than a contemplative
appreciation of the individual events²⁹ … with attention focused on each
detail as it occurs instead of projecting the mind back and forth in search
of structural associations. ³⁰

A vertical interpretation of sound thus supported the view that composition was made up of explorations of qualities of sound, as we hear in the music of Claude Debussy.

…..discarding conventional methods of modulation, allowing relationships of a sudden, exquisite intimacy between only distantly related keys³¹

…… the composer[Debussy] was exquisitely sensitive to tone color;
a piece like La Mer employs a broad, subtle timbral palette that is,
in many ways, much more spatial/environmental than structural. ³²

Stuart states that it is this continued development of vertical concepts in atonal composition through the 1940s and in the electronic music that emerged in the 1960sthat has influenced his work in expanding the capacity of acoustic piano sound to sustain and decay in a more stable, steady manner.In electronic music the attributes of the sound envelope, the attack, sustain and decay transients are electronically manipulated to produce the tone colour of the sound. Stuart says this fundamental aspect of today’s music production has influenced his ethos in producing a vertically enhanced acoustic piano sound to expand the capacity of the piano soundscape to sustain.

The development of minimalist concepts and atonal music during the
20th century was making a lot of the old wooden instruments incapable
I thought, of actually communicating it effectively. The Standard piano
just was not communicating it effectively because the music needed great
clarity throughout the frequency range, extraordinary sustain , and an ability

²⁹Michael Hannan, “Etymalong for Piano.”School of Arts and Social Sciences (blog),Southern Cross University, 1989,
http://epubs.scu.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1192&context=sass_pubs
³⁰Jonathan Mills, “Shadow D-Zone,” (program notes, blog). See also Eric Tamm reference in Appendix 1a.3, p.276.
http://www.hindson.com.au/ross/prognotes%202/ShadowDZoneNotes.html.
³¹Alfred Cortot,“The Music of Claude Debussy”,French Piano Music (London: Oxford University Press,1932),chpt 1.
³²Mark Samples, Zach Wallmark. “Debussy and Japan”from The Taruskin Challenge, (blog) 6th January 2011,
http://taruskinchallenge.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/debussy-and-japan