In 2013 I built a copy of the 1783 Stein fortepiano in Leipzig for the Institut Européen de Musique Ancienne in Vannes, France. The piano has two alternative keyboards and actions from which the player can use: an action with solid leathered hammers as the original has, and a second action with the Silbermann/Cristofori type of hollow wooden hammers but with no leather capping; a type of action Stein is said to have made around 1780. This short article explains the background.

Through a translation of an article of 1709 by Maffei, describing Cristofori’s pianos, the invention of the piano became known in Germany. Gottfried Silbermann of Freiberg –who must have seen an original Cristofori piano or one by his follower Ferrini – followed Cristofori’s action design in a number of instruments he made around 1750. The hammers of these ‘Piano et Forte’ as he called them each had a capping of elk leather. The sound of Silbermann’s pianos was described as ‘kugelrund’ (as round as a bullet). Several of his pupils (among them his nephew Johann Heinrich Silbermann in Strasbourg and Friederici in Gera) build instruments in his style. Especially Heinrich’s instruments were well known: there were at least four of his pianos in Paris in 1761, one of them belonging to the Grand dauphin.

Johann Andreas Stein was a pupil of the Strasbourg Silbermanns in 1748/49 although he was probably not influenced by the Silbermann piano action until later. In any case, Stein’s earliest surviving fortepiano, the piano in the 1777 vis-à-vis harpsichord-piano in Verona, has many aspects in its design that must have been derived from pianos by a Silbermann (perhaps those of Gottfried, a generation older, or those of Johann Heinrich, Stein’s contemporary). The features that betray this influence include the inverted wrest plank, the type of dampers and the hammer rail. The action of the piano in Stein’s 1777 instrument is however of a very different design from the action of the pianos by the Silbermanns. There are solid, bare wooden hammers with no covering and there is a ‘moderator’ (the Pianozug): strips of leather or cloth (the original has not been determined, but leather seems more likely) can be inserted between the hammers and the strings, giving the instrument a more muted sound. This feature is not derived from Silbermann and comes from another style, as important for the development of the 18th-century piano as the Cristofori/Silbermann style.

Pantaleon Hebenstreit, a court musician in Dresden, invented a giant dulcimer or Hackbrett. According to Charles Burney who saw the remains of one of these instruments in 1772, it was over 9 feet long and had - when in order -186 strings of catgut. He used two sorts of hammers: one sort of bare wood and the other bound with wool. The strings were not damped; Hebenstreit used his hands to dampen the strings, as does a harpist. His performances caused quite a stir all over Europe. Louis XIV was very impressed and announced that the instrument should be named after its player and called it ‘Pantaleon’.

Not surprisingly, instrument makers invented Pantaleons equipped with a keyboard and some sort of hammer action. There are already several descriptions and advertisements of ‘Bandelons’, ‘Pantalons’ etc. in the late 40’s of the 18th century, especially in Saxonia. These clavichord-shaped instruments would be called square pianos today.  Johann Sebastian Bach was involved in the sale of a very expensive square piano in 1749 to a Polish nobleman.

These early square pianos often had several registers, some of them inspired by Hebenstreit’s instruments: there were bare hammers like Hebenstreit’s hammers and a stop to imitate the sound of the wool-covered hammers Hebenstreit also used. This stop was called a Pianozug or ‘moderator’, the stop mentioned above that inserts leather or cloth between the hammers and the strings. On these small pianos there was often a second moderator using thin silk. The strings were often undamped as in the Pantalon, but a batten covered with some padding could be lowered to dampen all the strings, the equivalent of Hebenstreit’s hand. Some instruments had individual dampers that could be applied when required, the reverse of today’s use in which the dampers are disengaged when required. Other stops included the buff stop, with which a strip (or individual blocks) of buff leather were brought to bear on the strings, giving a pizzicato effect, and a harp stop that lowered a fringe of cloth down to mingle with the strings, usually used without dampers, like a harp. These stops could be combined and the total number of possible combinations and permutations was often used as a selling point. Franz Jakob Spath from Regensburg sold an instrument to the Elector of Bonn in 1751 capable of thirty of these so-called Veränderungen. Thirty different combinations can be achieved with five different stops.

When Stein settled in Augsburg in 1751, Pantalons had already been advertised there. Stein may have come to Augsburg with new ideas he had learned and developed from his time with Spath in Regensburg. In any case, by 1769, he had certainly built organs, clavichords, harpsichords and pianos, perhaps Pantalons and possibly wing-shaped pianos too. From the description of his 1769 Poly-tono-Clavichordium – a combination of a harpsichord and a separate wing-shaped piano below it – it is clear that the sound was not damped unless the player used a knee lever ‘to make the staccato’, presumably to engage a single damper or a set of individual dampers. The piano in the 1777 Verona vis-à-vis, made eight years later, has individual dampers (like Silbermann’s) but they are normally engaged. Using a knee lever they can all be disengaged. It has bare solid wooden hammer heads.

The next instrument by Stein to have survived is a 1780 fortepiano privately owned near Innsbruck. Unfortunately the hammers, dampers and moderator have been replaced. The original levers inside the keywell - now partly made ineffective - indicate the moderator was disengaged when the knee levers were pushed in. The next instrument, the 1781 Claviorganum in Gothenburg is a combination of a single-stop chest organ with a fortepiano on top. The piano originally probably had bare hammers of the Cristofori/Silbermann type (except that they were of wood rather than card or parchment) and a moderator. Both can be operated only by hand stops.

There are no other pianos by Stein known today from between 1777 and 1781, but there are six fortepianos by Johann David Schiedmayer. He was Stein’s pupil from July 1778 until August 1781 so his instruments may be considered to represent something of the development of Stein’s pianos when Schiedmayer left in 1781. Until at least 1801, Schiedmayer copied Stein’s action as it exists in the 1781 Claviorganum without altering it. Schiedmayer’s fortepianos almost certainly originally had bare, hollow hammers. The argument for this is that the modern leather on the hammers of his instruments does not look original but more importantly all five of Schiedmayer’s instruments  have a moderator that is normally engaged; the player must use the knee lever to disengage the moderator. Contemporary descriptions of Schiedmayer’s fortepianos mention that with the moderator disengaged the sound was like that of a harpsichord, enough to accompany an orchestra of 50 players, suggesting the sound made by bare hammers. With the dampers disengaged as well, the sound was incredibly loud. All of Schiedmayer’s surviving pianos have had their hammers leathered later, but one (that has sadly been lost) is reported to have survived into modern times. If Schiedmayer’s conservative pianos probably imitate the state to which Stein had developed the piano by 1781, the sound on Stein’s pianos was probably that produced by bare hollow wooden hammers with a moderator with leather tabs engaged, with an option to disengage the moderator, producing a much louder and brighter kind of sound.

A report of a concert given in Florence in 1786 on a fortepiano by Vincenzio Sodi, echos much of the description of the Schiedmayer: by pushing in both knee leavers, disengaging the dampers and the moderator, the piano would produce ‘il gran forte’, loud enough to be accompanied by whatever (large) an orchestra. Sodi copied Stein’s case shape and action and may have seen one of Stein’s instruments at the court of Archduke Leopold.

Five fortepianos of 1783 by Stein survive. The earlier ones have the hollow wooden hammers, but these are leathered and the absence of a moderator suggests that these instruments had leather on the hammers originally.  The later pianos by Stein of 1783 -also lacking a moderator- have solid lime hammers, originally probably covered with only one or two layers of oil tanned leather, and no moderator.

Hammer of a fortepiano by Heinrich Silbermann (privately owned in Switzerland).

Hammers of Stein’s 1777 vis -à-vis.

It seems that in his early instruments, Stein combined aspects of Silbermann’s fortepianos with features of the small pianos, the Pantalons. The ‘normal’ sound was probably the sound of bare wooden hammers with the moderator on, but by 1783 Stein had abandoned the Veränderungen and retained only the sound  produced by solid, leathered hammers with no extra stops except the knee lever for disengaging the dampers all at once when required.

Was Mozart familiar with the sound of bare wooden hammers? It seems likely. His father acted as a broker for Friederici, so Mozart may have played Fortbiens, the pianos by Frederici built in the Pantalon tradition. Mozart certainly knew the instruments of Spath. In his famous letter of October 17, 1777, saying that Spath’s instruments had been his favourites but now he gave his preference to Stein’s, Mozart was most likely referring to Spath’s Pantaleon-Clavecins (of which two examples are known) and not to Spath’s Springerflügel (what we call today a ‘Tangentenflügel’), an instrument which according to reports from the time was only invented around the mid eighties. When Mozart visited Augsburg in 1777 he gave a concert (together with Stein and Demmler) on Stein’s pianos. Was the 1777 vis-à-vis still there? Probably not, it is a spectacular type of instrument and yet it is not mentioned in Mozart’s letters or in the newspaper article announcing the event. The newspaper simply states thanks to a lucky circumstance (Stein had three pianofortes ready) the ‘Clavier Concert a 3 Clavecin’ was to be played on three pianofortes. After Mozart had settled in Vienna in 1781, he used Countess Thun’s Stein piano several times. She must have ordered her instrument between 1777 and 1781, so we may assume it had what appears from the 1780 and ’81 instruments to have been Stein’s normal disposition of the time: bare hammers and a moderator.