[CAUT] sostenuto history - Montal

[Fred Sturm]

Well, it's in French, and was reprinted in 1976 or so (long out of  
print). At some point it was translated into German.  To the best of  
my knowledge it was never translated into English. The title is  
approximately "How to Tune Your Own Piano" (by my memory - don't have  
it by me - the actual French title is L'Art d'Accorder Soi-meme son  
Piano) with a long "tail" of subtitles - "according to the true art  
blah, blah blah, with methods for making repairs, the theory of  
acoustics, and a history of the instrument, or things to that effect.
	My French is good enough that I can read it with little trouble. If I  
live long enough and find the spare time, I might translate at least  
some excerpts, if not the whole book. Just what I need, another  
project <G>. But it's one that appeals to me, so this will probably go  
on the "to do" shelf that I actually plan to get to, rather than the  
"wouldn't it be nice" shelf.
Regards,
Fred Sturm
University of New Mexico
fssturm at unm.edu



On Jul 28, 2008, at 6:42 PM, Dan Reed wrote:

> Thanks Fred...
>
> What is the title of the book by Montal?
>
>
> Dan
>
> Dallas, Tx..102 in the shade
>
> On Jul 28, 2008, at 2:58 PM, Fred Sturm wrote:
>
>> 	For any interested, I got a copy of Claude Montal's book (an early  
>> predecessor of Braid White's Piano Tuning and Allied Arts, one  
>> might say, perhaps the first attempt to lay out the practical  
>> principles of piano tuning and repair), and it was published in  
>> 1836 (not 1856 as reported in my last post), and says nothing about  
>> a sostenuto pedal. Further research at Groves on-line (a major  
>> music encyclopedia) reveals that Montal exhibited a sostenuto  
>> system in 1862 in London. And the same article names three others  
>> who had supposedly come up with devices along the same lines prior  
>> to Montal. So there you have it, the inception of the sostenuto  
>> pedal, which probably would have disappeared along with the bassoon  
>> and sourdine pedals and the like had it not been for Steinway  
>> adopting it. FWIW.
>> 	Montal's book is fascinating. He was writing before the time of  
>> the double escapement, when the single escapement was what you  
>> found on better pianos, and yet what he has to say seems so  
>> familiar in so many ways. The profession has come a long way, but  
>> remains to a large degree precisely the same as it was 150 years ago.
>> Regards,
>> Fred Sturm
>> University of New Mexico
>> fssturm at unm.edu
>>
>>
>>
>>
>