Music: Keyboards

To most U. S. piano makers, business in recent years has been just one long C# minor adagio lamentoso. Sales, which were level at 320,000 units a year in the decade before 1925, dwindled to 25,000 in 1932, a monetary drop from $204,000,000 to $18,000,000. Obvious reason: the radio. Then began a slow upturn. U. S. piano sales last year were 44,000; this year they may reach 60,000. And last week when 2,000 people gathered in Chicago for three conventions, the National Association of Music Merchants, the National Association of Sheet Music Dealers, the National Retail Musical Instrument Dealers Association, even the piano men began feeling allegro giocoso. President Edwin R. Weeks of the Music Merchants blithely buried the Jazz Age, declaring that “dreamy, tuneful melodies” are now the thing. President Robert A. Schmitt of the Sheet Music Dealers said: “People are singing again in family music groups. They have kicked out the ‘Hotcha man.’ They are playing the piano instead of the phonograph.”

Vertichord. On exhibition in connection with the conventions were a new kind of piano called the Vertichord, and a new piano action invented by William Finholm.

Put on the market last month by Hadclorff Co. of Rockford, Ill., the Vertichord is the logical expression of the movement which caused makers long ago to scale down grand pianos to baby grands, uprights to pianettes. Measuring 45 in. high, 60 in. wide and 25 in. deep, the Vertichord is essentially a grand piano upended, combining the long strings and large sounding board of that instrument with the compactness of an upright, the grace of a spinet. Cost of the Vertichord: $295 to $445. Similar instruments are being marketed by other firms: the Vertical Grand, the Betsy Ross Spinet, the Spinet Grand.

Finholm Action. The action of a piano is the arrangement of arms and levers which transmits impulse from the keyboard to the hammers on the strings. Instead of manufacturing their own actions, most U. S. piano makers buy them readymade. Biggest action manufacturer is Pratt, Read & Co. in Deep River, Conn. In Chicago last week Pratt, Read & Co. was showing the revolutionary action which it bought from William Finholm after that young inventor had turned down a small offer from Steinway & Sons. The Finholm action, approved by most music men who tried it in Chicago last week, is less complicated than the standard one which he hopes it will supersede. Chief feature is that it does away with eleven pounds of the lead which is used to weight all piano keys, especially those in the bass. No cure-all for music students, the Finholm action nevertheless lightens such pianistic labors as the octave tremolos and runs in display pieces. When put in wide production it may decrease the cost of piano making, may be installed in old pianos for about $100.

Harpsichords. In Manhattan’s Lewisohn Stadium one night last week swart Pianist-Conductor Jose Iturbi turned on a little-known facet of his exuberant talent. A harpsichordist for 26 years who has studied with the most publicized exponent of that ancient instrument, Mme Wanda Landowska, he tinkled bravely through a Haydn concerto, conducting the orchestra on the side as all performers did in the harpsichord’s heyday, the first half of the 18th Century.

The harpsichord developed from the hand-plucked psaltery. Its strings are plucked with quills. First mentioned in print in the 15th Century, it became an elaborate affair with as many as three keyboards and 25 pedals to give a great variety of tone quality and volume. Nevertheles the harpsichord with its thin, clear tone required a much more delicate touch than the piano, invented in 1711. Bach knew of the piano but thought it an unmusical contraption. He wrote such great works as the Goldberg Variations for the harpsichord. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was actually intended to tinkle along on the harpsichord but in his last sonatas he was the first composer to utilize the vast dynamics of the piano.

Besides Mme Landowska, who teaches her pupils a somewhat hard, dry touch, contemporary harpsichordists include John Challis of Ypsilanti, Mich., Lewis Richards of the University of Michigan, Ralph Kirkpatrick of Leominster, Mass. A good harpsichord today costs anywhere from $900 to $2,500.