unlisted Clinkscale as outside 1820-1860 timeframe
Restored by Emanuel Rey, Sydney, N.S.W
Description
Nameboard: brass inlaid “Patent Erard London”
Number: 726
Compass: 7 octaves AAA-a4, 85 notes
Keyboard: single unreversed manual
Keyboard materials: naturals ivory, sharps ebony
Pitch: A415Hz
Tuning: equal tempered
Action: Erard double escapement (1821 patent) English grand action
Hammer coverings: felt
Bridge: divided at C#-D
Strings:
- bass bridge: AAA-FF (9 notes), unichord overspun,
- bass bridge: FF#-C# (8 notes), bichord overspun,
- treble bridge: D-a4 (68 notes), trichord steel
String gauges: 13-22 incised on wrestplank to wrest pins
Agraffes: A-e1 (66 notes)
Capotasto bar: f1-d4 (29 notes)
Dampers: underdampers; (64 notes) AAA-b1
Frame: timber with Hezves hitchpin metal string plate and five iron reinforcing bars
Pedals: L: una corda. R: damper lift
Case: Italian burr walnut
Case lid: burr walnut as for case
Keyboard lid: cylindrical, burr walnut as for case
Music desk: burr walnit detachable
Dimensions(mm): 2540l x 1375w x 340h (ex lid)
Legs: three hexagonal tapering walnit legs with acanthus leaf capitals and casters
Repertoire: late Liszt, Wagner, Busoni
Provenance: purchased Sydney private ballroom
Commentary
Like the other major early French fortepiano makers (Pleyel, Pape, Freudenthaler), Sebastian Erard was German, born Erhardt in Strasbourg, Alsace, in 1752. Trained in Paris as a harpsichord maker, he built his first square piano in 1777 and his first grand piano in 1796, on returning from London, whither he had fled to escape the Terror.
Sebastian spent the years 1808-1814 ??ancying the London factory, leaving his brother Jean-Baptiste in charge in Paris, so that from the year in which Jean-Baptiste’s son Pierre took over in London, allowing Sebastian to return to Paris. On Sebastian’s death. Pierre (1794-1855) became sole owner of both factories, his widow succeeding on his death. Both Paris and London factories were producing large numbers of harps and English action fortepianos, both squares (of which the Schureck Early Keyboard Collection possesses one of 1814 (see No.29 below), similar to those made for Marie Antoinette in 1787 and later for Napoleon at Malmaison) and grands, examples of which were made for Haydn (1801), Beethoven (1803), Napoleon (1810), George IV (1829) and Queen Victoria (1845). The Schureck Collection contains one such (see No. 28 below) made in Paris in 1841 and awaiting restoration, as well as the above London model. By 1845, London Erards were seriously eroding the sales of Broadwood, with whom they shared the Royal Warrant and from whom they snatched, in a controversial decision, the gold medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851; a further gold medal was awarded at the Paris Exhibition of 1855.
Erard was a great innovator. By 1809 he had invented the agraffe, a strengthening device giving downward bearing on the strings, and in 1821 he patented one of the greatest technical advances in the history of the piano, the double escapement grand action, making rapid key repetition reliable for the first time; all modern grand actions are developments of this, so that in a sense all modern grands are descended from Erard.
Though Liszt on occasion played Viennese action instruments (the Dannhauser group portrait of 1840 shows him playing a Graf to Rossini, Paganini, Dumas, Hugo, George Sand and Marie d’Agoult, and he is known to have used a Bosendorfer at an 1872 charity “command performance” in the presence of Kaiser Franz Joseph), he clearly preferred English action pianos. His first public concerts in 1824 (Paris, 7 March; London, 21, 29 June) were played on “Sebastian Erard’s New Patent Grand Piano Forte”, and a lithograph by Leprince of the same year shows him seated at an Erard square; his satisfaction is evident in the dedication to Sebastian Erard of his Huit Variations, Op. 1 of 1825.
Liszt gave the first public piano recital, i.e. concert devoted exclusively to solo piano, in Paris in 1839, and continued to prefer the reliable, robust Erard instruments throughout his “virtuoso” Paris period (1839-1847). His example was followed by other klaviertigers such as Thalberg (1812-1871), Rosenhain (1813-1894), Dohler (1814-1856), Henselt (1814-1889), Wolff (1816-1880) and Dreyschock (1818-1856); Chopin (1810-1849) alone preferred Pleyel pianos, though paid tribute to the consistency and reliability of the Erard action, and used an Erard grand, with those of Broadwood and Pleyel, on his London tour of 1848.
Anonymous sketches of Liszt’s music room at the Altenburg during his Weimar period (1848-1861) show an Erard grand, together with Beethoven’s 1817 Broadwood, which he had acquired from Spina in 1845, and a grand with a pedal board by Alexandre of Paris. Wagner, perhaps on Liszt’s advice, accepted the gift of an Erard grand in 1858, and used it until his death; though most of Wagner’s too little known piano music had been written by this time, it is quite possible that the Wesendonk Lieder (30 November 1857-1 May 1858) were composed, at least partly, at this instrument.
The Erard company, so technically innovative at the outset, retained straight stringing and timber frames until the end of the nineteenth century, thus falling technologically behind Steinway and the German makers who followed them in adopting cross-stringing and cast metal frames. Liszt’s commitment to Erard remained firm until around 1870, from which time he was given a new grand each year by Bechstein, whose first grand (1856) had been inaugurated by von Bulow with Liszt’s sonata in b minor.
Production declined to the point where the London factory was closed (1890); the Paris branch then belatedly introduced new models, reluctantly and too late to recapture lost markets, and was, in spite of Paderewski’s enthusiastic advocacy, finally amalgamated with Gaveau in 1960.
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