Music: Claviphone

When Ludwig II, Bavaria’s mad king, wished to honor his friend Wilhelm Richard Wagner on his sist birthday in 1864, he thought a piano would make a nice gift. But something really original in the way of a piano! He commissioned Carl Bechstein, who had been in the trade in Berlin for just eleven years, to make one. Today, visitors to Villa Wahnfried in Bayreuth are always shown the large square desk, with drawers, built-in ink-stands and space for a beerstein, which turns out to have a piano inside it. And in Bechstein’s house in Berlin (not far from the sumptuous Bechstein salon in new. smart West End) rests the white marble bust of Richard Wagner which the composer sent in gratitude.

Ludwig II would have given his right ear to have invented the ingenious piano which Bechstein put on the market last week. Combination piano, spinet, harmonium, phonograph and radio receiver, it is no madman’s dream, no impractical curiosity, but a precise, scientific musical instrument, substituting electrical apparatus for the standard piano sounding-board. The electrical engineering is the work of Walther Nernst, German physicist: electrical equipment by Siemens & Halske A. G.; pianobuilding by C. Bechstein. “Claviphone” is one of the names suggested for it. Principle is. simply, that microphones pick up the vibrations, fundamental tones and overtones of the strings and transmit them to a loudspeaker. Encased in a box of standard shape but small size (4 ft. 7 in. long—a concert grand piano is 9 ft. long), the strings are stretched in radiating groups of five instead of the usual criss-cross pattern. Fewer strings for each note are needed: high notes on the “Claviphone” require two. while on a standard piano three are necessary for the proper volume. To each group of five strings is attached a microphone; to each microphone a condenser which regulates the tone. Hammers are smaller than in standard instruments.

In the right-hand side of the piano, in a space left empty by shortening the strings, is an amplifier. To it is attached a loudspeaker. These may also be used for phonograph or radio reception (with pick-up or aerial). A dial by the keyboard regulates the volume of sound in eleven degrees of loudness. If the loudspeaker is turned off, the “Claviphone” tinkles like a spinet. Turned on full force, it will fill a large hall. Once you have set the dial for a certain volume, you may vary the volume further and more finely by pressing the left pedal. The right (sustaining) pedal is like that of a standard piano, will hold a tone until it dies away. A second row of dampers, controlled by a lever, makes the tone sound like that of a reed organ.

Upper registers of the “Claviphone,” it is claimed, are an improvement over those of an ordinary piano, long a problem to engineers. Says Inventor Nernst: “My friend Einstein, who, you know, is very musical, says they [high piano notes] sound like porcelain getting smashed. . . .

I approached the problem altogether from the viewpoint of physics. . . . Though I trained my ear listening to good music at Bayreuth and elsewhere, unlike Einstein, I am essentially unmusical.”

The “Claviphone” sells in Germany for about $650. This month the first one will arrive in the U. S., will sell for $1,000 or less, depending upon whether U. S. electrical equipment can be ‘substituted for Siemens & Halske’s.