section of this introduction, emphasising the expanding range of the piano keyboard compass and its deployment by the influential composers, pianists and musical styles of the day.

To establish a compendium for my understanding of piano sound and design, in the first three chapters of this paper I describe the dimensions of the piano, its nature of sound production, the physics of piano string oscillation and the harmonic nature of sound. These fundamental aspects are examined in order to understand how aspects of the Stuart piano design influence the tonal colour of the Stuart piano sound.

In chapter four I have identified and compared the mysteries and miracles ⁴ of piano tone by evaluating and comparing sounds of the Stuart & Sons piano with the sounds of the modern piano. In this process I observed the science of its sound under the tutelage of acoustic scientist Dr John Bassett ⁵ while consulting a wide range of published research and methodology. During this time I aurally started recognising particular characteristics of the new soundscape and began to document my perceptions of its sound into musical notation thus creating a palette of ‘Stuart’ colours. These, my perceptions of the Stuart piano sound, are documented as music manuscripts and audio extracts in chapter six as a creative conclusion to this research.

The Stuart & Sons piano is presented as a different instrument to the ‘modern piano’ in this research for the comparative study of the two soundscapes. The physical design differences of the both pianos are presented in detail in chapter one. The ‘modern piano’ is a widely used descriptive title that encompasses most pianos made since the 1880s. The piano is a highly complex instrumental design.Since 1700, for approximately 180 years,the development of piano design advanced with the technological development of its materials, particularly in steel. It is also generally accepted that before the late 19th century, piano design was more closely associated with new developments in musical style, than it is today. Subsequently, today’s modern piano design has not been subject to such a progressive development since approximately 1880 ⁶, when the design was standardised, with the adoption by the majority of piano manufacturers, of a specific dimensional assembly. The modern piano is often epitomised by the Steinway piano of 1867 ⁷ which emerged after Henry Steinway’s patent in 1859 of the cross strung grand piano ⁸, which by the 1880s was considered to be the blue print of the standardised piano design.

⁴A wonderful choice of words by Gabriel Weinrich to describe the after-sound period of the sound of a piano tone.
Gabriel Weinreich. “Vertical and Horizontal Motion” in The Coupled Motion Of Piano Strings. (J Acoust Soc.Am1977, Vol. 62, No.6 (1977) also in Five Lectures on the Acoustics of the piano (Royal Swedish Academy Of Music, 1990)
http://www.speech.kth.se/music/5_lectures/weinreic/motion.html (accessed June, 2010).
⁵Dr John Bassett, Tai Poutini Polytechnic,4 November, 2015, N.Z
http://tpp.ac.nz/about-tpp/our-people/tutors/music-and-audio-mainz/dr-john-bassett
⁶Stephen Paulello“Concepts page,” Stephen Paulello Piano Technologies,http://www.stephenpaulello.com/en/concept.
19 June, 2013. (see also Paulello quotation p.18)
⁷Edwin Good, Giraffes, Black Dragons and other Pianos, 2nd Edition. Stanford, California: (Stanford University Press 2001), 210-11.
^{8     2}Good,212. See also Arthur Loesser, Men, Women and Piano A Social history: (New York: Dover,1954),564.