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Weighing in on the piano

WBUR reports on a professor at the New England Conservatory who puts little weights on a piano's keys before playing it.

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The piano technique of silently depressing one or more keys and then striking other keys -- which causes the silently depressed keys to ring in harmonics -- was first used by composer Arnold Schoenberg exactly a century ago (February 19, 1909, to be exact) in the first of his Three Pieces, Op.11.

The effect is marked in the score as "Die Tasten tonlos niederdruecken!" but is usually referred to the "piano harmonic" ("Klavierflageolett").

Those three piano pieces are also notorious in that they are considered the first atonal compositions for any instrument, and hence are really the first compositions of the 20th century.

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Invented in the mid 1800s and also known as "the mystery pedal," the sostenuto pedal sustains only the notes that are pressed at the time it's pressed. You can get harmonic effects using it too if you silently press the keys, then sostenuto that fucker.

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http://1smootshort.blogspot.com

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Yes, the sostenuto was part of the standardized piano in the 19th century, but I know of no notation for its use in this manner that would predate Schoenberg.

Before Schoenberg, the sostenuto pedal was used periodically for sustaining struck notes, not for sustaining un-struck strings; I know of no use of the sostenuto pedal for the latter until 1940 (here I am thinking of the fourth of Carl Ruggles "Evocations", although its use was a little bit different).

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