George Winston (born 1949) is an American pianist who was born in Michigan, and grew up in Miles City, Montana, and Mississippi.   He is a graduate of Stetson University in Deland, Florida [2] and lives in Santa Monica, California. Many of his pieces, self-described as “Rural Folk Piano”, evoke the essence of a season and reflect natural landscapes. He performs in the new age genre. He also is known for his tribute album of Vince Guaraldi’s compositions for the Peanuts animations.

George Winston was first recorded by John Fahey for Fahey’s Takoma Records. The album Ballads and Blues disappeared without much notice. However, in 1979, William Ackerman talked with Winston about having Winston record for Ackerman’s new record label - Windham Hill Records. At first George Winston played some slack-key guitar pieces he liked and then he played some of his nighttime music on the piano which became the basis for the record Autumn, which Ackerman produced. George Winston has described the music on Autumn as “Christmas carols for Halloween”. Autumn was well-reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine in 1980 and it suddenly became the best-selling record in the Windham Hill catalog, a position it held for many years.  His albums December and Winter into Spring both went platinum (million-plus sales in the United States). Forest won a 1996 Grammy Award for “Best New Age Album”.

Piano is the general name given to a musical instrument classified as a keyboard, percussion, or string instrument, depending on the system of classification used. The piano produces sound by striking steel strings with felt hammers that immediately rebound allowing the string to continue vibrating at its resonant frequency. These vibrations are transmitted through the bridges to the soundboard, which amplifies them.

The piano is widely used in western music for solo performance, chamber music, and accompaniment. It is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal. Although not portable and often expensive, the piano’s versatility and ubiquity has made it among the most familiar of musical instruments.

The word piano is a shortened form of the word pianoforte, which is seldom used except in formal language and derived from the original Italian name for the instrument, gravicèmbalo col piano e forte (literally harpsichord with soft and loud). This refers to the ability of the piano to produce notes at different dynamic levels depending on the speed with which a key is depressed.

Seattle, WA - July 4, 2007 - “Cybermonsters”, our beloved admin here at pianoplayer.com will be joining Cirque Du Soleil in 2008 to open their new resident show in Macau, China. CM has been a long fan of the music of Cirque and considers it to be the best music in the world to his ears.

We wish him well. Visit Cybermonsters website at www.ConradAskland.com 

Although there were various crude earlier attempts to make stringed keyboard instruments with struck strings, it is widely considered that the piano was invented by a single individual: Bartolomeo Cristofori of Padua, Italy. It is not known exactly when Cristofori first built a piano, but an inventory made by his employers, the Medici family, indicates the existence of a piano by the year 1700. The three Cristofori pianos that survive today date from the 1720s.

Like many other inventions, the piano was founded on earlier technological innovations. The mechanisms of keyboard instruments such as the clavichord and the harpsichord were well known. In a clavichord the strings are struck by tangents, while in a harpsichord they are plucked by quills. Centuries of work on the mechanism of the harpsichord in particular had shown the most effective ways to construct the case, soundboard, bridge, and keyboard. Cristofori, himself an expert harpsichord maker, was well acquainted with this body of knowledge.

Cristofori’s great success was in solving, without any prior example, the fundamental mechanical problem of piano design: the hammers must strike the string, but not remain in contact with the string (as a tangent remains in contact with a clavichord string) because this would damp the sound. Moreover, the hammers must return to their rest position without bouncing violently, and it must be possible to repeat a note rapidly. Cristofori’s piano action served as a model for the many different approaches to piano actions that followed. While Cristofori’s early instruments were made with thin strings and were much quieter than the modern piano, compared to the clavichord (the only previous keyboard instrument capable of minutely controlled dynamic nuance through the keyboard) they were considerably louder and had more sustaining power.

Cristofori’s new instrument remained relatively unknown until an Italian writer, Scipione Maffei, wrote an enthusiastic article about it (1711), including a diagram of the mechanism. This article was widely distributed, and most of the next generation of piano builders started their work because of reading it. One of these builders was Gottfried Silbermann, better known as an organ builder. Silbermann’s pianos were virtually direct copies of Cristofori’s, with one important addition: Silbermann invented the forerunner of the modern damper pedal, which lifts all the dampers from the strings at once.

Silbermann showed Bach one of his early instruments in the 1730s, but Bach did not like it at that time, claiming that the higher notes were too soft to allow a full dynamic range. Although this earned him some animosity from Silbermann, the criticism was apparently heeded. Bach did approve of a later instrument he saw in 1747, and even served as an agent in selling Silbermann’s pianos.

Piano-making flourished during the late 18th century in the Viennese school, which included Johann Andreas Stein (who worked in Augsburg, Germany) and the Viennese makers Nannette Stein (daughter of Johann Andreas) and Anton Walter. Viennese-style pianos were built with wood frames, two strings per note, and had leather-covered hammers. It was for such instruments that Mozart composed his concertos and sonatas, and replicas of them are built today for use in authentic-instrument performance of his music. The pianos of Mozart’s day had a softer, clearer tone than today’s pianos, with less sustaining power. The term fortepiano is nowadays often used to distinguish the 18th-century instrument from later pianos.

Upright

Upright pianos, also called vertical pianos, are more compact because the frame and strings are placed vertically, extending in both directions from the keyboard and hammers. It is considered harder to produce a sensitive piano action when the hammers move horizontally, as the vertical hammer return is dependent on springs which are prone to wear and tear. The grand piano hammers return by gravity, hence their return will always remain more consistent than the vertical hammers, thus giving pianists better control of their playing. However, a well-regulated vertical piano will probably play smoother than a grand piano that has not been regulated for years, and the very best upright pianos now approach the level of some grand pianos of the same size in tone quality and responsiveness.

One noticeable advantage of the grand piano action has over the vertical action is that all grand pianos have a special repetition lever in the playing action that is absent in all verticals. This repetition lever, a separate one for every key, catches the hammer close to the strings as long as the keys are played repeatedly and fairly quickly. In this position, with the hammer resting on the lever, a pianist can play repeated notes, staccato, and trills with much more speed and control than they could on a vertical piano. Because of this, piano manufacturers claim that a skilled piano player can play as many as 14 trill notes per second on grands but only seven on uprights. For recent advances, see Innovations in the piano.

Other Types

In 1863, Henri Fourneaux invented the player piano, which “plays itself” from a piano roll without the need for a pianist.

Also in the 19th century, toy pianos began to be manufactured.

A relatively recent development is the prepared piano, which is simply a standard grand piano which has had objects placed inside it before a performance in order to alter its sound, or which has had its mechanism changed in some way.

Since the 1980s, digital pianos have been available, which use digital sampling technology to reproduce the sound of each piano note. The best digital pianos are sophisticated, with features including working pedals, weighted keys, multiple voices, and MIDI interfaces. However, with current technology, it remains difficult to duplicate a crucial aspect of acoustic pianos, namely that when the damper pedal is depressed, the strings not struck vibrate sympathetically when other strings are struck as well as the unique instrument-specific mathematical non-linearity of partials on any given unison. Since this sympathetic vibration is considered central to a beautiful piano tone, in many experts’ estimation digital pianos still do not compete with the best acoustic pianos in tone quality. Progress is being made in this area by including physical models of sympathetic vibration in the synthesis software.

The modern equivalent to the player piano is the Yamaha Disklavier system, which uses solenoids and midi instead of pneumatics and rolls. Silent pianos, which silence the piano and convert it to a digital instrument are a recent innovation and are becoming more popular.

Pianos have had pedals, or some close equivalent, since the earliest days. (In the 18th century, some pianos used levers pressed upward by the player’s knee instead of pedals.) The three pedals that have become more or less standard on the modern piano are the following.

The damper pedal (also called the sustaining pedal or, erroneously, loud pedal) is often simply called “the pedal”, since it is the most frequently used. It is placed as the rightmost pedal in the group. Every string on the piano, except the top two octaves, is equipped with a damper, which is a padded device that prevents the string from vibrating. The damper is raised off the string whenever the key for that note is pressed. When the damper pedal is pressed, all the dampers on the piano are lifted at once, so that every string can vibrate. This serves two purposes. First, it assists the pianist in producing a legato (playing smoothly connected notes) in passages where no fingering is available to make this otherwise possible. Second, raising the damper pedal causes all the strings to vibrate sympathetically with whichever notes are being played, which greatly enriches the piano’s tone.

Sensitive pedaling is one of the techniques a pianist must master, since piano music from Chopin onwards tends to benefit from extensive use of the sustaining pedal, both as a means of achieving a singing tone and as an aid to legato. In contrast, the sustaining pedal was used only sparingly by the composers of the 18th century, including Haydn, Mozart and in early works by Beethoven; in that era, pedalling was considered primarily as a special coloristic effect.

The soft pedal or “una corda” pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. On a grand piano, this pedal shifts the whole action including the keyboard slightly to the right, so that hammers that normally strike all three of the strings for a note strike only two of them. This softens the note and modifies its tone quality. For notation of the soft pedal in printed music, see Italian musical terms used in English.

The soft pedal was invented by Cristofori and thus appeared on the very earliest pianos. In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the soft pedal was more effective than today, since pianos were manufactured with only two strings per note, just one string per note would be therefore struck — this is the origin of the name “una corda”, Italian for “one string”. In modern pianos, there are three strings per hammer and they are spaced too closely to permit a true “una corda” effect — if shifted far enough to strike just one string on one note, the hammers would hit the string of the next note.

On many upright pianos, the soft pedal operates a mechanism which moves the hammers’ resting position closer to the strings. Since the hammers have less distance to travel this reduces the speed at which they hit the strings, and hence the volume is reduced, but this does not change tone quality in the way the “una corda” pedal does on a grand piano. However when this pedal is depressed on the vertical, it changes the action creating what is called lost motion, that is the jack is now further from the hammer butt, and now has to travel further to engage the hammer. This lost motion changes the touch and feel of the playing action, and as a result many pianists never use the soft pedal on a vertical. Some of the best old vertical pianos in the early 20th century used what is called a ‘lost motion compensator’, a mechanism that would remove the lost motion when the soft pedal was depressed. Since the grand piano soft pedal simply shifts the action sideways, it does not change the touch and feel of the action, another advantage grand pianos have over vertical pianos.

Digital pianos often use this pedal to alter the sound to that of another instrument such as the organ, guitar, or harmonica. Pitch bends, leslie speaker on/off, vibrato modulation, etc.

The sostenuto pedal or “middle pedal” keeps raised any damper that was raised at the moment the pedal is depressed. This makes it possible to sustain some notes (by depressing the sostenuto pedal before notes to be sustained are released) while the player’s hands are free to play other notes. This can be useful for musical passages with pedal points and other otherwise tricky or impossible situations. The sostenuto pedal was the last of the three pedals to be added to the standard piano, and to this day, many pianos are not equipped with a sostenuto pedal. Almost all modern grand pianos have a sostenuto pedal, while nearly all upright pianos do not.

On verticals, the middle pedal is merely a bass sustain pedal, that is when it is depressed, the dampers lift off the strings only in the bass section. This pedal would be used only when a pianist needs to sustain a single bass note or chord over many measures, while playing the melody in the treble section. Given its limited use musically, few pianists even bother to use this pedal. Some grand pianos use this bass sustain type pedal rather than using a true sostenuto pedal, often an indication the grand piano was cheaply made (although some of the better old grand pianos had this pedal).

A number of twentieth-century works specifically call for the use of the sostenuto pedal, for example Olivier Messiaen’s Catalogue d’oiseaux. This pedal is often unused in modern music.

Some upright pianos have a practice pedal or celeste pedal in place of the sostenuto. This pedal, which can usually be locked in place by depressing it and pushing it to one side, drops a strip of felt between the hammers and the strings so that all the notes are greatly muted — a handy feature for those who wish to practice in domestic surroundings without disturbing the neighbours. The practice pedal is rarely used in performance.

The rare transposing piano, of which Irving Berlin possessed an example, uses the middle pedal as a clutch which disengages the keyboard from the mechanism, enabling the keyboard to be moved to the left or right with a lever. The entire action of the piano is thus shifted to allow the pianist to play music written in one key so that it sounds in a different key.

Pianos were, and still are, popular instruments for private household ownership, especially among the middle and upper classes. Hence, pianos have gained a place in the popular consciousness, and are sometimes referred to by nicknames including: “the ivories”, “the joanna”, “the eighty-eight”, and “the black(s) and white(s)”, “the little joe(s)”. Playing the piano is sometimes referred to as “tickling the ivories”.

Over time, piano playing became a more strenuous and muscle-taxing activity, as the force needed to depress the keys, as well as the length of key travel, was increased. The tonal range of the piano was also increased, from the five octaves of Mozart’s day to the 7â…“ (or even more) octaves found on modern pianos.

In the first part of this era, technological progress owed much to the English firm of Broadwood, which already had a strong reputation for the splendour and powerful tone of its harpsichords. Over time, the Broadwood instruments grew progressively larger, louder, and more robustly constructed. The Broadwood firm, which sent pianos to both Haydn and Beethoven, was the first to build pianos with a range of more than five octaves: five octaves and a fifth during the 1790s, six octaves by 1810 (in time for Beethoven to use the extra notes in his later works), and seven octaves by 1820. The Viennese makers followed these trends. The two schools, however, used different piano actions: the Broadwood one more robust, the Viennese more sensitive.

By the 1820s, the center of innovation had shifted to Paris, where the Érard firm manufactured pianos used by Chopin and Liszt. In 1821, Sébastien Érard invented the double escapement action, which permitted a note to be repeated even if the key had not yet risen to its maximum vertical position, a great benefit for rapid playing. When the invention became public, and as revised by Henri Herz, the double escapement action gradually became the standard action for grand pianos, and is used in all grand pianos currently produced.

Some other important technical innovations of this era include the following:

* Use of three strings rather than two for all but the lower notes
* The iron frame, also called the “plate”, sits atop the soundboard, and serves as the primary bulwark against the force of string tension. The iron frame was the ultimate solution to the problem of structural integrity as the strings were gradually made thicker, tenser, and more numerous (in a modern grand the total string tension can approach 20 tons). The single piece cast iron frame was patented in 1825 in Boston by Alpheus Babcock, combining the metal hitch pin plate (1821, claimed by Broadwood on behalf of Samuel Hervé) and resisting bars (Thom and Allen, 1820, but also claimed by Broadwood and Érard). Babcock later worked for the Chickering & Mackays firm which patented the first full iron frame for grand pianos (1843). Composite forged metal frames were preferred by many European makers until the American system was fully adopted by the early 20th century.
* Felt hammer coverings, first introduced by Henri Pape in 1826, gradually replaced skillfully layered leather hammers; the more consistent material permitted wider dynamic ranges as hammer weights and string tensions increased.
* The sostenuto pedal (see below), invented in 1844 by Jean Louis Boisselot and improved by the Steinway firm in 1874.
* The over strung scale, also called “cross-stringing”; the strings are placed in a vertically overlapping slanted arrangement, with two heights of bridges on the soundboard, rather than just one. This permits larger, but not necessarily longer, strings to fit within the case of the piano. Over stringing was invented by Jean-Henri Pape during the 1820s, and first patented for use in grand pianos in the United States by Henry Steinway Jr. in 1859.

Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins.
Duplex scaling: Treble strings of a 182 cm. grand piano. From lower left to upper right: dampers, main sounding length of strings, treble bridge, duplex string length, duplex bridge (long bar perpendicular to strings), hitchpins.

* Duplexes or aliquot scales; In 1872 Theodore Steinway patented a system to control different components of string vibrations by tuning their secondary parts in octave relationships with the sounding lengths. Similar systems developed by Blüthner (1872), as well as Taskin (1788), and Collard (1821) used more distinctly ringing undamped vibrations to modify tone.

Today’s upright, grand, and concert grand pianos attained their present forms by the end of the 19th century. Improvements have been made in manufacturing processes, and many individual details of the instrument continue to receive attention.

Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use.

The square piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side, it is variously attributed to Silbermann and Frederici and was improved by Petzold and Babcock. Built in quantity through the 1890s (in the United States), Steinway’s celebrated iron framed over strung squares were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe’s wood framed instruments that were successful a century before, their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, with performance and sonority frequently restricted by simple actions and closely spaced strings.

The tall vertically strung upright grand was arranged with the soundboard and bridges perpendicular to keys, and above them so that the strings did not extend to the floor. Diagonally strung Giraffe, pyramid and lyre pianos employed this principle in more evocatively shaped cases. The term was later revived by many manufacturers for advertising purposes.

The very tall cabinet piano introduced by Southwell in 1806 and built through the 1840s had strings arranged vertically on a continuous frame with bridges extended nearly to the floor, behind the keyboard and very large sticker action.

The short cottage upright or pianino with vertical stringing, credited to Robert Wornum about 1810 was built into the 20th century. They are informally called birdcage pianos because of their prominent damper mechanism. Pianinos were distinguished from the oblique, or diagonally strung upright made popular in France by Roller & Blanchet during the late 1820s.

The tiny spinet upright was manufactured from the mid 1930s until recent times. It saved space by using a “drop action” arranged below the level of the keys.