Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 2.djvu/724

712 The idea suggested by the vague character of the Estense 'piano e forte,' that there were perhaps attempts to construct a hammer action before Cristofori, we find strengthened by the known fact, that two men in two different countries outside of Italy, were endeavouring, at the very time of his success, to produce a similar invention to his. The names of Marius and Schroeter, the former a French harpsichord-maker, the latter a German musician, have been put forward to claim the credit of the absolute invention on the strength of certain experiments in that direction. Marius, in February 1716, submitted, perhaps a pianoforte, and certainly four models for actions of 'clavecins à maillets,' or hammer harpsichords, the description and engravings of which were published, nineteen years later, in No. 172, 173, and 174 of 'Machines et Inventions approuvées par L'Accadémie Royale des Sciences, Tome Troisième. Depuis 1713 jusqu'en 1719. A Paris ,' and are to be found in extenso in the works of Rimbault and Puliti. Both overstriking and understriking apparatus had occurred to Marius, and his drawings included the alteration of an upright harpsichord, and the addition of a register of hammers to an horizontal one—rude contrivances of which no subsequent use was or could be made. His object in introducing hammers was an economical one—to save the expense and trouble of constantly requilling the harpsichord. Schroeter must be dismissed less summarily, owing to the frequently repeated statement that he was the actual inventor of the pianoforte; reasserted perhaps for the last time, but with a fervid advocacy in which the bias of patriotism is conspicuous, by Dr. Oscar Paul in his 'Geschichte des Klaviers,' p. 82. But had Schroeter not been a man of good education and some literary power, his name would not have been remembered; it must be distinctly understood that he was a musician and not an instrument-maker; and he never made a pianoforte or had one made for him, or he would have told us so. He claimed to have devised two models of hammer-actions between 1717 and 1721, which he afterwards neglected, but years afterwards, in 1738, being vexed that his name was not connected with the rising success of the pianoforte, he addressed a letter to Mitzler, which was printed in the 'Neue eröffnete musikalische Bibliotek' (Leipzig, 1736–54, vol. iii. pp. 474–6). He repeated his claim, with a drawing of one of his actions (then first published), in 1763, in Marpurg's 'Kritische Briefe liber Tonkunst' (Berlin, 1764, vol. iii. p. 85), showing, although Gottfried Silbermann had been dead ten years, and Cristofori thirty-two, the animus to which we owe these naïve and interesting communications. The particulars of Schroeter's life must be relegated to a separate notice. [See .] it will suffice here to state that in 1715, when Schroeter was only sixteen years old, being entrusted with good pupils in Dresden, he found that their study upon the expressive clavichord was thrown away when they came to show off before their friends upon so different an instrument as the inexpressive harpsichord. Shortly after this, there came to Dresden the great dulcimer virtuoso, Pantaleone Hebenstreit, whose performances astonished Schroeter, and at the same time convinced him that it was by hammers only that the harpsichord could be made expressive. At this time, like Marius, he could hardly have known that pianofortes had not only been invented, but had for some years been made in Italy, although the intercourse prevailing between that country and Dresden might have brought the knowledge to him. But the inferiority of Schroeter's action to Cristofori's at once exonerates him from plagiarism; and the same applies also to Marius, whose ideas were of even less value mechanically than Schroeter's.

Schroeter gives us no description of his overstriking 'Pantaleon': we may conclude that he suspected the difficulties, not to this day surmounted, of an action in which the hammers are placed above the strings. Of the understriking action, his 'Pianoforte,' he has given us full particulars and a drawing, here reproduced—

For his second drawing, a later fancy of no practical value, it is sufficient to refer to Paul or Puliti.

But no sustained tone was possible, owing to the position of the damper, which resumed its place the moment the hammer fell. The rapid repetition of a note, after the old fashion of harps, mandolines, and dulcimers, would have been the only expedient to prolong it. Marius's defect was the opposite one; he had no dampers whatever. But Schroeter had the great merit of perceiving the future use of iron as a resisting power in pianofortes; he invented a widerstandscisen, or resisting iron, a bar of metal here marked t, which was placed transversely over the wrestplank, rested firmly upon the strings, and formed the straight bridge. We do not know to whose piano this was applied, and it can hardly have been a part of his original conception. It is more likely to have occurred to him from observation of the defects in pianofortes, as did his scheme of stringing by proceeding from one string to a note in the bass,