Music: New Piano

Strange sounds filled Manhattan’s Carnegie Hall one afternoon last week. The occasion was a recital by Pianist Hans Earth, to show the development of the pianoforte of the past, present, future. It began with the 1750 period and the harpsichord; the instrument played was an exact model of Handel’s and Beethoven’s, with plectrums made of real crows’ quills and leather. Then came a group for the modern grand piano which differs from the harpsichord in that it has padded hammers which produce tones by striking (rather than plucking at) tightly stretched metal strings.

But it was the quarter-tone piano—the piano of tomorrow, according to Pianist Earth—which amazed. Pianist Earth, young Leipsic-born U. S. citizen, long felt himself limited by the conventional twelve-tone scale (in the keyboard the seven white full tones and the five black half tones). With the help of one George L. Weitz and the Baldwin Piano Co. he in vented a quarter-tone instrument which has a second keyboard, is double the thick ness of the standard piano, has to be played from an extra high stool. He wrote music for it (North Wind, Shadows of a Cathe dral, Shadows of a Spanish Dancer) , devising a system of notation in which raised quarter tones were signified by a sharp-like figure with one vertical crossbar in stead of two, raised three quarter tones with three vertical crossbars; lowered quarter tones by flat-like figures with re versed humps, lowered three quarter tones by double-humped flats. Pianist Earth feels, as do many who have heard him on the Pacific Coast, that this quarter-tone invention provides music with a far greater color range. Some critics praised him last week, foresaw a whole new school of composition resulting from his scheme. Many reserved comment. None scorned.