My favorite practice room on campus is definitely room 420. And it seems that many people would agree, because it’s very rarely available even at 11:30 p.m., which is when I usually decide to begin practicing for the day. The reason I like room 420 is not just vibes, although the vibes are great — it’s quite big and has a lot of natural light, which I often imagine streaming in when I manage to snag it for a midnight practice session. No, the best thing about this room is the piano. It has a depth and precision to its sound that isn’t really present in any other piano on campus. Playing gently or deafeningly or dramatically feels easy. Its dynamic range and richness enable a certain attention to detail and expressiveness that, in my mind, exemplifies why the piano is such a distinct and beautiful instrument.
But pianos have certainly not always sounded like this. Since its invention more than 300 years ago, the piano’s design and sound have changed significantly, especially before the 20th century when the piano became, for the most part, standardized. Bizarrely, as I’ve started reading about the instrument’s technological evolution, I’ve learned that technical developments in how the piano was made are rarely contextualized as part of the historical moment in which they happened. These changes, which often caused changes in the instrument’s sound, are attributed to the preferences of individual composers, and the broader artistic and ideological dynamics of the time, which were certainly shaping the kind of music being written, are often ignored.
One of the most interesting phases of the piano’s development, which still feels relevant today, was during the 19th century, as Romanticism was beginning to overtake the Classical paradigm in music and art across Western Europe. Romantic composers not only attempted to reject the traditions and conventions established in the past few decades but wanted to embrace a new understanding of the individual (often themselves) and the world through emotional intimacy, imagination, and subjective experience that may not be entirely logical. Previous Classical composers like Mozart were especially concerned with form and order. If you’ve ever listened to a Mozart sonata, you’ll notice that it follows a pretty rigid scheme in terms of length, organization, and even chord progression. Of course, he does sometimes bend the “rules” (which is always noteworthy) but for the most part, the logical formula of such Classical music remains consistent. This approach to composition was very much in dialogue with the Enlightenment ideology of the time which emphasized a certain rationality to the world and the individual and tended to shy away from being too emotionally indulgent. This is of course a generalization of pre-Romantic classical music, and composers like Mozart were definitely capable of writing passionate music (especially when willing to venture into a minor key), but the attachment to a specific rational logic as guiding a piece of music was clearly something to which Romanticism was responding.
Importantly, the piano of Mozart was not a great tool for conveying the kind of drama that later Romantic composers like Chopin, Liszt, and Brahms had in mind. Both the instrument’s dynamic range and physical size were quite modest and it was more difficult for a pianist to precisely control how each note was articulated. As the desires of composers changed, so did the technology of the piano. One of the most significant innovations, in 1825, was the replacement of the soundboard’s wooden frame with one of cast iron. This allowed the piano to have thicker strings with higher tension, giving it a fullness, subtlety, and possibility for dynamic variation that was unprecedented. Developments and variations in the strike point (where the hammer hits the string) throughout the 19th century also contributed to the increased depth and color of sound that defined the Romantic piano, while its expansion to 88 keys in the mid 1800s allowed greater contrast between the high and low registers. These technological changes allowed composers to express on the piano a delicacy, intensity, and emotional complexity (characteristic of Chopin and Brahms), that would previously have been technically quite difficult and historically quite out of place.
One might say that these technological innovations were inevitable and would have happened regardless of the intellectual and artistic moment. Or, conversely, that such technologies only came about because the changes they provided were demanded by composers and audiences. However, while I certainly agree more with the latter position, given that Romanticism was a diverse and sweeping movement that came to characterize many different kinds of art across Europe, the answer may not be so simple. There were definitely many reasons why the piano developed as it did, including the increasing accessibility of materials during the Industrial Revolution and thus ease with which innovations could be realized on a mass scale. What seems most important is the interplay between two stories of evolution that at first glance may seem isolated but in reality, have always been in dialogue with each other. Although the Romantic piano was clearly a product of its time, its legacy has lasted over a century. The pianos of today very closely resemble those of the late 1800s and the Romantic aspirations that fueled and were fueled by its development are, in many ways, still with us today.
