An Organ-Piano

Abstract

WHEN recently in Paris I was shown—I believe at the pianoforte factory of M. Herz—a piano with appliances for producing prolonged sounds like those of an organ, which appeared to me to be based on thoroughly sound scientific principles, and which was so great a success that, although the invention had only been perfected a very few weeks before, the firm were receiving orders for the new instruments much faster than they could execute them. The attempt to combine organ sounds with those of a piano has often before, I believe, been made, but usually, if not always, I am told, by combination with the piano arrangements of real organ appliances, the result being, of course, extreme difficulty in obtaining perfect harmony between notes produced by two such totally distinct methods. In the present instance the organ as well as the piano notes are produced by precisely the same means, the principle consisting in producing the organ or prolonged sound by a succession of extremely rapid blows of a hammer upon the same strings as produce the piano note. It will not be difficult, I think (notwithstanding my want of familiarity with such subjects),to make your readers understand exactly how this is accomplished. They will observe that if the pianist were able, instead of merely holding down a key, to produce upon it an extremely rapid succession of blows, far exceeding in rapidity anything which the finger can possibly effect, a prolonged note would be produced, and especially so if the number of blows given was so great as to be practically inseparable by the ear. Now in the instrument of which I am speaking this object is accomplished by means of a series of additional hammers (one to each string) mounted upon watch-spring levers, all of which are carried by a bar of brass lying across, but above and clear of the strings. To this bar is attached a rocking lever which is set in very rapid motion by means of an apparatus worked easily by a pedal. I was not shown the exact nature of this apparatus, but there are so many forms of small engines worked with immense rapidity by compressed air, any one of which would answer the purpose, that no great importance attaches to this point. The modus operandi is simple enough: the pianist works the pedal, and thus sets the transverse bar with its series of hammers into excessively rapid vibration. By holding down any key of the instrument, the string belonging to it is brought within range of its corresponding hammer, and is struck with corresponding rapidity, giving out what sounds at a short distance like one prolonged note, which lasts as long as the pedal is worked and the key is kept down. It is easy to see that by this means it is in the power of the pianist to produce either piano or organ notes at will, and although while standing close to the instrument the mode of production of the note could be detected, at a short distance the effect was precisely that of combined piano and organ sounds with the immense advantage of absolute concordance and harmony between the two.