concert grand longevity

Horace Greeley hgreeley@leland.Stanford.EDU
Thu Jan 22 11:50 MST 1998


Allen,

It will be tremendously interesting to see the range and domain of
answers to this post.

Most of my (professional) life has been spent working on large pianos,
and, I think that the most consistent thing about them is their lack
of consistency.

In thinking of longevity, I tend to think that, as a whole, your anonymous
colleague is correct.  But, this is a tremendous simplification.  Particularly
as to instrument which have been constantly _used_ as concert instruments
(as opposed to those which happen to be of such and such a size), my 
sense is that the combination of actual use and issues best described
as "Cartesian perceptions" combine with whatever may or may not be
going on structurally to "prematurely" age a given instrument.  Said another
way, in the days before tax laws made depreciation so terribly attractive,
there were sound (sorry), musical reasons why instruments were retired
from full-time concert service.

At a place like Oberlin, or any active performance institution, a given piano
may experience 400+ performances in any semester.  The only pianos which
may exceed this are the ones actively in use in some "C&A" type bank.
In these cases, the pianos are not just used, they are constantly pushed
to their absolute limits.  Thus, one must expect that everything about them
wears accordingly.  For example, I have long stressed to peformance
venue-type clients the importance of conceiving of hammers and strings
as disposable parts.  With all of the tuning, voicing, shaping, etc., these
are simply shot in 5 years or so.  (Yes, I admit that many instruments go
much longer.  On the other hand, if these really are concert instruments,
and they really are being maintained as such...)

>From what you have given (below), I am not sure that I would start with
bridge work.  What kind of shape is the board in?  When was the piano
last restrung?  (I think treble sections should be redone about every 2 
years, depending on expectation of performance.)  Don't laugh, but
how do the two instruments compare visually?  Is the currently preferred
one "prettier", somehow?  This is certainly _not_ to suggest that the bridge
may not need attention - loose bridge pins?, poor notching?, etc., just
that there may be more to the picture.  For example, too much bearing
will produce a "choked" quality tone just as quickly as too little...

Idle thoughts from a currently swampy mind.

Best to all.

Horace




At 12:37 PM 1/22/98 -0500, you wrote:
>A colleague recently made the comment that concert grands don't seem to
retain
>good tonal characteristics for as many years as smaller pianos - his theory
>being that because the soundboard is bigger it's sort of "hanging out there"
>more with less overall support and vulnerable to weakening or losing it's
>tonal character somehow for some reason.
>
>My interest in what other folks have to say about this is more than just
>academic. One of our concert grands here "used to" have much more sustaining
>quality than it does now,  and over 
>the years has developed a kind of choked quality (in spite of recently
>installed new hammers which I had high hopes would improve things) which has
>relegated it to the status of "second-string" in the concert hall it's in
>(which it shares with a fine sounding and much more popular piano.
>
>The other possibility we're considering is bridge work - recapping etc. But I
>wanted to lob this concept out about concert grand longevity and see what
>people think of the notion, and whether any of you have suspected (or
>confirmed or maybe don't agree with) the theory.
>
>Thanks in advance,
>
>Allen Wright
>Oberlin Conservatory
>There is a 
>
>
>
Horace Greeley

Systems Analyst/Engineer
Controller's Office
Stanford University

email: hgreeley@leland.stanford.edu
voice mail: 650.725.9062
fax: 650.725.8014


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