This research assumes that the Steinway sound is ingrained in the consciousness of many musicians and listeners as the sound of the modern piano. There is a familiarity associated with the ‘sound’ of the Steinway most probably because since the 1880scountless of performances and recordings have used the Steinway piano. As well as this, most other piano designers have implemented the elements of its standardised design for over 100 years. The 88 key compass, down-bearing pressure of the strings onto the soundboard, the zig-zag pinned string terminations on the bridge, and copper wound bass strings. A simple indication of this familiarity was observed in the audience surveys, when a higher number of the participants answered the question, “how do you describe the sound of the Steinway piano”with ‘just as I’d expect a piano to sound’.
Wayne Stuart doesn’t agree that the standardised pinned bridge traditional piano in particular the Steinway, should be presented as the ‘standard’, but rather a piano design of-
‘ ……a specific era and ethnic origin. Whereas, contemporary music has a non-specific ethnicity and therefore, must embrace not only different music scales but different harmonic and aesthetic parameters. 236
Throughout my career as a pianist, my experience in assessing piano sound quality has been only in regards to the modern piano. So conducting a comparison of the sounds of the modern piano in this case the Steinway, with the sounds of the Stuart piano provided me with a practical method for acquiring a sense of the qualities of both piano sounds. To understand what is different about the Stuart sound, the ‘familiar’ modern piano sound was compared with the ‘unfamiliar’ Stuart piano sound. Conscious listening, graphical analysis and memory were employed throughout the analysis process where the ‘familiar’ is also scrutinised.
I immersed myself in the specific palette of tonal colours of one particular Stuart piano, No 19, to enable my performances and compositions of music that demonstrated an understanding of its sound qualities. The palette of Stuart sound qualities illustrated in the following pages is intended to be used for reference points of tonal descriptions, as well as to establish evidence of how the Stuart piano sound is different to that of the modern piano sound.
This enquiry is centred on the sound of one instrument, the Stuart & Sons piano identified throughout this research as M19(STU). This piano was made in 2002, it is Stuart No 19, 2.9m long, with a keyboard compass of 97 keys, F0 22.2337Hz to F8 5587.6518 Hz. The tones of the M19(STU) piano were consistently compared to the tones of one Hamburg Steinway concert D grand piano, (STE) No 574500, made in 2005, with a keyboard compass of 88 keys, A0227.50 Hz to C84186.0091Hz . The Steinway is affectionately named the ‘Olley’ in honour of the Australian artist and benefactor, Margaret Olley. See chapter one for the detailed descriptions of both instruments. The methods and processes of
236Wayne Stuart – email interview with author, 20thMay, 2010.
