Evolution of the Viennese Fortepiano — Alfons Huber Interview | Op. 10
Fortepianos championed by classical composers such as Beethoven and Mozart came from a rich tradition of piano making in Vienna. Guest Dr. Alfons Huber explains fortepiano history and why these pianos disappeared after the classical era.
In this episode, you’ll:
Learn about Viennese fortepianos from the leader of the restoration workshop at Vienna's Collection of Historic Musical Instruments
Discover what classical composers and pianists expected from their instruments — and what these instruments can teach modern pianists
Understand what fueled the evolution from the Viennese fortepiano to the modern piano
Hear an excerpt of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on a fortepiano
For the best experience, please watch the video at the top of the page.
Episode Transcript and Timestamps
DANIEL ADAM MALTZ: Grüß Sie from Vienna, Austria. Welcome to Opus 10 of Classical Cake, the podcast where we discuss topics relating to Viennese classical music and Austrian culture while enjoying one of Vienna's delicious cakes. I'm your host Daniel Adam Maltz.
We are at the Kunsthistorisches Museum's Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, one of the most important instrument displays in the world. In addition to a large number of Renaissance and Baroque instruments, they also house a collection of Viennese fortepianos from the 18th and 19th centuries.
There was a rich tradition of piano building in Vienna. These Viennese fortepianos had different characteristics from the pianos built in other European regions and were wildly different from the modern piano that we know today.
My guest today, Dr. Alfons Huber, is leader of the restoration workshop at the collection. He has also published numerous articles on restoration and historical keyboard instruments. He is one of the foremost experts on Viennese keyboard instrument restoration. Dr. Huber, thank you for joining me.
DR. ALFONS HUBER: You’re welcome.
Featured Cake: Nuss Kuss [1:07]
MALTZ: Our cake today is a Nuss Kuss.
This treat has multiple layers of hazelnut crisp with hazelnut cream frosting snaking on top.
The cake is bordered by delicate bars of milk chocolate.
Let's dig in.
This is good.
HUBER: And this is paper?
MALTZ: Chocolate.
HUBER: The walls are chocolate?
Oh yes. Very delicious.
Education [1:37]
MALTZ: So how did you get into instrument restoration?
HUBER: By accident.
First, I wanted to become an organ maker. And to understand what the organist wanted to play, I started with the study of church music. I played the organ for 10 years, but in between I know that I am [dyslexic] and I had always big problems with reading and with crossing arms, so it didn't work.
And, after two years, my professor said I must decide either to practice eight hours a day or to change my goal. And I changed my goal.
And, at the same moment, and I got knowledge of this new study in Vienna. A new course was founded at the Academy of Fine Arts, also in restoration of musical instruments. Peter Kukelka, was my teacher. He was a very fascinating, a little bit ambivalent personality, but I'm very thankful to him — among others — for the thinking in older measures. It's a very important detail. It's one of the fruits of the contact with him.
And this study took five years, then I was two years a freelancer. And in April 1983, I started here in the museum.
MALTZ: And were you always restoring keyboard instruments or all sorts of instruments?
HUBER: I'm the jack of all trades and master of none. Many, many years, it was for me the source of bad feelings. I always could define very well what I am not. I am not a trained harpsichord maker. I'm not a piano maker. I'm not a lute maker. I'm not a violin maker. I was nothing, but I was responsible for everything.
And on the one side, it was frustrating. And on the other side, I was forced to be always very slow and very careful. Because my basic feeling was I have no sense. This [cautioned] me from very big mistakes. And the problem with modern teaching is that you project your present, your actual knowledge to the former times.
The keys to understanding classical music [3:59]
Joseph Haydn’s clavichord in the Haydnhaus, Vienna.
HUBER: One of my philosophies was if you want to understand a certain period, you must begin to study two or, better, three generations before. And you must forget everything which came afterwards. And I have observed that only few persons follow this rule.
MALTZ: I also think of the extreme importance of understanding the era around… it can't just be ‘I love Beethoven,’ it has to be what era shaped Beethoven. But in the type of thought around him, and the time, and everything that is shaped around it… it is crucially important to understanding.
HUBER: I think that every student who is studying the classical era must play — for one year — the clavichord. Because without the clavichord you never will understand Mozart and especially Haydn.
Haydn, for example, I played Haydn as a student on the modern piano and I [didn't] like it. For me it was very boring. In the meantime, I've built around 20 clavichords from 1400 to 1800. And, when I started to play Haydn on the clavichord, I immediately understood… one single tone on the clavichord is different than a single tone on the fortepiano. On a good clavichord, you can influence the tone after the touch. For example, the suspensions in Haydn's minuets in the slower movements. You can't describe it.
MALTZ: Everything was conceived on the clavichord.
HUBER: Yeah, and I have read it in his biography. That as an old man he started early in the morning and he improvised every day, three to four hours before lunch and when he had a good idea he wrote it down and he was inspired by the clavichord.
Also, some orchestral music smells for me sometimes… Oh, that's a typical clavichord passage.
Differences between English action and Viennese action [6:05]
MALTZ: There were two main types of fortepianos: the Viennese and the English. Today we're going to focus on Viennese fortepianos but, to clarify for the audience, what are the main differences between the two?
HUBER: To be correct, this differentiation between English and Viennese fortepiano didn't exist at the beginning. Piano making started all over Europe, mainly with a Stößer-Mechanik ‑ what we call today English action.
There are three important instruments by Anton Walter and the best known is Mozart's own fortepiano, which is preserved in Salzburg.
All three earliest preserved Walter instruments have changed actions and obviously the hammer rail is cut out and he changed it, from Stößer-Mechanik, to what we call today Viennese action.
The reason is that the Viennese action or German action, Stein’s invention, is very, very vivid and accurate and it follows much more the intention of the fingers. Loudness is not the goal. It’s not a problem. It's not a theme. Loudness is not a form of quality.
If we speak louder, what is better? I can speak interestingly or poetically, lyrically…
MALTZ: You can communicate anything.
HUBER: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, and as music took place mainly in smaller rooms for private interest, just for fun, you need not loudness because there's more room.
We don't shout if we speak with each other.
PRODUCER: Unless you’re American. [Laughter]
HUBER: If I make a résumé of the Viennese piano makers, they were organ makers. The title of the profession was organ and instrument maker and instrument was the keyboard, the string keyboard.
So they built organs and clavichords and harpsichords and for the pianos and they started with the Stößer-Mechanik, the English action. After 1782 or [1783] the knowledge of the new action came down the Danube from Augsburg. Andreas Stein was very famous before and he became much more famous with the new action until he died in 1792.
The Viennese adopted the new action and kept the old one. Schantz, for example, and Anton Walter in the square pianos kept the Stößer-Mechanik and with the Flügel (fortepianos) they preferred the better Viennese action.
Loudness [8:47]
MALTZ: The modern piano evolved from the English lineage of piano making. So why did the Viennese action all but disappear?
HUBER: After 1813, loudness became the goal. And, you can reach loudness only by more mass of the hammers and mass of the strings. Thicker strings, more tension, and heavier hammers. And that's the point where the Viennese action can’t follow.
MALTZ: So it was as halls got bigger and bigger and tastes change. These English pianos needed to fill the space.
HUBER: The main reason was the loudness.
Evolution of Viennese fortepianos [9:26]
MALTZ: So your collection here at the museum has Viennese pianos from roughly the 1780s all the way up to 1958. Can you walk us through how these instruments changed over time?
HUBER: The story which you can read in many books… First was the clavichord: it was very soft and very primitive. Then, comes the harpsichord: it was a little bit louder. And then, thanks God, we got the pianoforte. And now we have a Steinway and it is the loudest and the best.
This story is wrong and stupid.
In the 1770s, all instruments lived peacefully together. I would say that during Mozart's lifetime, the main focus was to keep the lightness of the key touch of the harpsichord and combined with a hammer action which reacts like in the clavichord.
The pianists expected the lightness of the action. In the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, you'll see the lady. The music is running from heaven through the arms into the keyboard. Without any force. That's the goal. No force, simply movement and playing by itself.
For almost 20 years they were happy with their five octave instrument. And, and around 1800, they invented [manganese] as a content in the metal alloy. And that's the point where you can reach C4. Then the six octave instrument came on stage and in the bass they could have reached contra C but the music that doesn't make sense with contra C in this time.
Fortepiano with seven pedals by Franz Dorn, circa 1815.
So we are now around 1800 and here again, the fascinating thing was colors. And in this time… it started probably in the late 1790s to have more pedals. The most fascinating thing was the Janissary stop. So we have a piano by Franz Dorn, not dated, around 1815. It has seven pedals and you have the bassoon, and the piano, and the pianissimo, and shift pedal, and the damper pedal, and harp, and double moderator and the bells, and the drum.
It was also to play arrangement of operas or it was the time of Napoleon and to have description of battle: Wellingtons Sieg by Beethoven arranged for fortepiano and can make all this noise which makes the pianos untuned. The drum makes it immediately untuned.
In around 1820 is the next step. Music was played in bigger halls for more people. This was the start of more loudness, of more solo concerts, of virtuosos running around in Europe and playing in Paris and St. Petersburg and in Berlin and Vienna, and impresarios who wanted to make money. And if you have a place for more people, you can get more money.
And this is a process. This is not a decision by one person, but it is a progressive process which the end of this process is Carnegie Hall (built in 1891) or Grosser Musikvereinssaal (built in 1870) with 2,500 people hearing one person playing piano.
Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata [13:00]
MALTZ: You restored a Schantz piano from 1795. Ludwig van Beethoven wrote in a letter that a Schantz would be the ideal instrument on which to play his famous Moonlight Sonata. What do you think are the unique characteristics of the Schantz that made him feel this way?
HUBER: It was a time of experiments and the masters at this time struggled for the best sound. What is the best sound for this? Speaking and articulating, poetic sound very close… The piano was compared with the sound of the human voice and of the sound of woodwind instruments. The goal of the piano makers was to make a speaking, singing piano.
Our Schantz piano has a peculiarity which is really unique. It not unique by Schantz but the other masters, too. But it has no gap spacer. This instrument was restored in the past several times and, when we restrung the instrument — this experience, I can still have it in mind — this instrument, it sounds different… why? And then I [imagined] that it has no gap spacer.
The gap spacer is an iron bar between the reverse of the breast plank and the belly rail. It keeps in distance the base for the action, but every part [that] touches the soundboard sucks energy from the soundboard. And that's exactly what happens with the gap spacer. The gap spacer sucks energy of this area of the soundboard.
Most instruments — also Walter's instruments — have a weak area at the right side of the gap spacer between let's say F1 to F2 around C2. The quality of the sound has a little damage. Yeah, and it's my theory. I can't prove it. The Schantz piano in the middle is entirely free.
Restoration and “original sound” [15:53]
MALTZ: When doing a restoration, do you use new parts or do you source original parts from the appropriate era?
HUBER: This question is my favorite. It touches my favorite field. Many of our visitors expect original sound.
It is not the purpose of a museum to keep original sound. Original sound doesn't exist. It's an illusion. Or, if original sound ever exists, then it’s if a modern maker has understood the idea of the old maker and repeats in all details —which is impossible — what has been done 200 years before, then this instrument produces original sound.
The purpose of a museum is to keep and to demonstrate authentic information. And sound coming from an old instrument is the result of an instrument where in all details, we have understood inherent necessities or the practical constraints. During a restoration, the main goal is to keep all original parts. And, if we change parts, ribs, soundboards strings, leathers... what you hear afterwards is fantasy. And many, many recordings and concerts with original sound is simply illusion.
And the best example we have here in the collection… it is a famous instrument. Clara and Robert Schumann [got] it for their wedding by Conrad Graf. It is a Conrad Graf in the possession of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde.
When Robert Schumann died in July 1856, Clara decided [upon] renovation. And what have they done? They put away the original leathers and put felt instead of leather. And the treble, which was too soft and too weak, they put thicker strings, exactly the wrong way. To become more modern, they used thicker strings. And in this state, the instrument is in the state from September 1856.
So it has nothing to do with Schumann, but Brahms received it afterwards. Oh, it's the Brahms piano now. But Brahms wrote a letter to Clara Schumann… 'What should we do with Robert’s piano? It is really very old… 30 years old and it is not more than a good memory.’ So, it's also for Brahms… it was not the beloved, inspiring instrument. It a worn out old piano.
And many recordings… ‘Oh, Schumann as he heard it.’
To be honest, I am fascinated by the old instruments: They tell us something. But, to be honest too: people expect original sound — we are a hospice for old pianos.
We have Maria Callas and if she sings at her 80th birthday, it is not the colors we thought. But, there is a sort of wisdom and experience also in the in the old voice. And, old instruments sometimes have it, too.
Suggested Resources to Learn More [19:20]
MALTZ: Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert composed their music to be played on Viennese fortepianos.
Visit Vienna's Collection of Historic Instruments to get fresh insights into their music. While you're there, you can also enjoy their extensive collection of string and wind instruments.