Piano Video Lesson: What is a Straight Strung Piano?

Hi, I'm Robert Estrin. This is LivingPianos.com and VirtualSheetMusic.com with a question: What is a straight strung piano? Have you ever heard of that term before?

Well, we have an example with this 1875 Erard. And you'll notice that, on pianos since the turn of the century and earlier, actually around the 1880s, it became pretty standard fare for the strings to cross over one another, an overstrung piano, as it's called, which is what pianos have been for over 100 years. But before that, from the very origins of the piano, dating back to the years of the harpsichord, the strings would go straight, and they didn't cross over one another.

So why did they go and cross them over, anyway, and what are the benefits or detriments to each? Well, for one thing, the crossing over enables longer string length with a shorter piano. So this is a long piano, so of course it's going to get a glorious tone. But if you have a really small piano, baby grand, which became more popular later on, being able to get any kind of decent tone could be very difficult if you don't cross over the strings to get more string length. More than that, where the bridges are placed on the sound board will also change the tone, to some extent.

So you'll hear a sound out of this piano, which is the sound that Liszt and Chopin heard, because the pianos they had didn't have cross stringing, for the most part. And yet, it is a beautiful sound that you get out of a piano like this. You can reference my video on this piano to hear more of it and see how you like straight strung pianos.

Thanks so much for joining me. Robert Estrin here at VirtualSheetMusic.com and LivingPianos.com.

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