By Paul Corbin
One of Australia’s last-remaining piano makers has recently crafted the first-ever nine-octave piano in New South Wales. Wayne Stuart crafted the 108-key grand with Tasmanian Huon pine, and, measuring a gigantic three metres in length, it took 18 months to build by hand.
But do we really need a nine-octave piano? Stuart thinks so – and so do we.
Playing piano is difficult – although rewarding – and adding twenty notes means increasing difficulty. Rather than a problem, however, we see this as a challenge.
History and concerns
Take two small brightly-coloured objects and put them on the first and last note of a standard keyboard. Now look at the centre of the keyboard (between the E and the F under the brand name). Normally, you can see the two objects in your field of vision without having to look sideways. Now take these two objects and place them against the side arms, outside but still visible. That distance corresponds approximately to a 108-key keyboard. Look at the centre of the piano again. Now the objects get out of your field of vision. With a 108-key keyboard, you cannot see the last notes. You have a horizon of keys in front of you. That is the main criticism from pianists to extended keyboards.
It is true that additional keys are disturbing; it would be a lie to tell the contrary. Nonetheless, I do not think this is a problem at all, quite the opposite. Playing the piano is a hard job, I admit it. Adding twenty notes means adding difficulty. These notes need a time of adaptation, but it is worth the effort.
In order to compensate for that difficulty, Pape, Bösendorfer, and Petrof had added removable systems that hid the extra notes they added for composers – as if apologising. It is true that a wider variety of pianos were in demand in the 19th century, and adaptability is a valuable skill for us to preserve. However, it’s also vital that the manufacturer increases the ambitus on both sides for symmetry (between the 44th and the 45th note on a standard piano). If you put all the extra notes in the bass, you end up with an unbalanced piano, as is the case with the Bösendorfer.
Among other concerns for a keyboard of 108 keys is that people’s arms are too short for such a large range – but a 1m 60-tall person can play one easily. At any rate, would a composer be vicious enough to write at both ends of a 108-note piano?
There are many musical instruments whose price is notably proportional to their ambitus. This is the case, for instance, of percussion instruments (glockenspiel, marimba, celesta…), harps, or accordions, whose price is determined, among other things, by their tonal range, their registers, the number of ranks or the number of bass notes. Some wind instruments have an extra key, piston valve or barrel in accordance with their price, in order to extend their range in the bass register. It was also the case for some piano manufactures in the 19th and 20th centuries. On the Érard catalogue of 1932, we can see a model 4 upright piano (1m 27) with seven octaves, a model 0 baby grand (1m 80) with 71⁄4 octaves, and a concert model No. 3 (2m 60) with seven 1⁄2 octaves; same for Ibach. A few years earlier, Pleyel used to follow the same principle with pianinos. Until recently, some brands still offered 85 notes on small pianos. Bösendorfer offers three types of keyboards: 88, 92 and 97 according to the model and the price.
Maybe the piano should follow this path today? For the same brand, the bigger the instrument would be, the more notes it would have. Is it normal to have to same tonal range on a baby grand as on a concert model? Should not the price take into account the extension of the ambitus, as it is the case in many musical instruments? To me, pianos’ keyboards should extend towards 108 keys as their size and price increase.
A composer’s opinion
In order to complete this article, I found it interesting to seek the point of view of a most concerned person. Artur Cimirro is a Brazilian composer, art critic and pianist. He was the first composer in the world who ever composed works for 108-note pianos.
For which purpose do you use additional notes?
First of all, I use them because I precisely don’t consider them as additional. When they sit before the 102 keys of a Stuart & Sons, the first thing that pianists do is to press the first and the last key of the keyboard. It seems as if they tried to solve a problem that they don’t understand. Why? Because they are not composers. The debate on these “additional” notes only concerns composers (and technicians of course), not pianists.
Were you inspired by the 102 keys of Stuart & Sons or did you use to compose your pieces before knowing those pianos?
My first compositions were written in 1998, and they only require 88 notes. In 2002, I made a transcription of the famous Flight of the Bumblebee by Korsakov. Because of different techniques I used for that piece (octavated notes, for instance), it was logical to reach the last E*. Later, I changed all the octaves into thirds to make that transcription playable on a standard 88-key piano. Finally, I put the top E again in the latest edition.
Then, in 2006, I started my Sonata Opus 3 that requires the contra C and the top E-flat of the keyboard**, and it is only in 2011 that I heard about
the Stuart & Sons pianos for the first time. Three months after the director’s invitation, I went to the manufacturer to visit it. Just before my leaving, I had composed two pieces requiring 102 keys. In 2012, I visited the factory
a second time and it was at this moment that I heard about the new type of string (XM) which allowed to build pianos that wouldn’t have 102 keys, but 108. I immediately made changes in my scores and after a few days’ work,
the first piece for 108-key piano: Eccentric Prelude No. 1, Opus 20. Since that day, some of my other compositions use the whole ambitus and I plan on writing more.
Are you convinced of their interest and necessity?
Absolutely, I hate the sensation of composing for a “half-instrument”, and this is what I feel when I think of 88 notes only. With 108 notes, you have the piano in its practical standards, so this is the standard of the future. Of course, I can compose a piece requiring only 88 keys, I have already done so in some of my compositions, but I prefer to compose a new piece without a minimum nor a maximum of notes in mind.
At the same time, I do not believe that we need more than 108 notes for composing since this is the practical limit of the piano. Thus, I think that everything is in its right place. Cristofori’s first forte-piano only had 49 keys (four octaves), and the ambitus gradually increased because it was still very far from its limits. In 1844, when Boisselot & Fils made the first sostenuto pedal, the idea was not welcome, and it was only thirty years later that it was used in Steinway pianos. Today, some people still find it difficult to understand how to use it correctly.
When Beethoven was unhappy with the limits of the pianos of his time, he still wrote his scores with the notes that were missing, and new pianos were built in accordance with this. Today, it is the same but with different pianos and composers.
Other composers such as Liszt, Herz, Pixis, Brahms, Busoni, Ravel, Scriabin… struggled to explore the limits of the piano, and today we have the opportunity to discover the true limits of this instrument in its most complete ambitus. This is a wonderful thing! All those who disagree do not know it yet, but they are doomed to fail, and soon they will be six feet under.
Conclusion
When I happen, despite myself, to come across some “music” in a supermarket, in a public place, in a taxi, at the hairdresser’s, etc., I often think that a three-note piano would be more than enough.
What’s the use? Here is certainly what many readers will wonder when they read this article. I have also wondered the same thing and this is legitimate. However, today I can answer that, on the contrary, it is necessary, more than ever, to give this instrument a new boost. Since it was created, the piano has always evolved together with its ambitus and I am still convinced that its evolution can continue only if the ambitus extends, too. Maybe one day, pianists will admit that 88-note pianos are restrained and limited instruments…
This article does not claim to establish a new standard, it would be utopian to think so. How could the piano have 108 notes tomorrow when the vast majority of piano makers have not even gone through the stages of 102, 97, 92 or even 90? Its aim is to inform pianists, technicians, composers and all persons in relation with the piano that it is possible to extend its tonal range and that it is necessary to do so. By writing these lines, I can simply claim to have said so.
Still, I hope and I firmly believe that a new 97-note standard (contra F to top F), as understood by Pape, is wholly conceivable in the future. Unfortunately, today, the piano follows a logic of standardisation. For an idea to spread, it has to be standardised. The advantages of those 97 notes are that they can be placed on any model of piano, from the upright ones (starting from 1m 20) to the concert grands, that they do not complicate the building very much and that they allow to extend the keyboard in an intelligent and reasonable manner. I sincerely hope that I will be able to see that standard developed during my professional career.
All conditions are now gathered to build pianos with a larger tonal range. Here is some interesting musical progress that will leave no pianist or composer indifferent. All this is relatively new, I admit it. The technical means to get there are very recent and this article comes just after. It is important that all this information get clearer in people’s minds. Don’t we have the opportunity to blow the dust off the situation in which this instrument has been stuck for far too long? Just like you, I am a technician, I do the same job as yours and my main professional motivation is for the profession and for the piano world in general to be going well. I am not interested in megalomania, overgrowth or exploit for the sake of exploit. I have struggled to write this article in the most sincere way, with the sole purpose to serve my profession and music.