History
The essential function of the soft pedal was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the inventor of the piano. On some of his pianos, it was possible to move the hammer mechanism so that the hammers struck just one of the two strings per note. Cristofori's mechanism was a hand stop, necessitating a free hand for its use. By Mozart's time (see Fortepiano), mechanisms had been invented that permitted the same function to be carried out by a knee lever (located below the keyboard), and in the late 18th century the pedal mechanism familiar to us today was introduced.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, the piano had evolved to have three strings on most of the notes. The soft pedal of this time was more effective than today, since it was possible to use it to strike three, two or even just one string per note—this is the origin of the name "una corda", Italian for "one string". In modern pianos, the strings are spaced too closely to permit a true "una corda" effect—-if shifted far enough to strike just one string on one note, the hammers would also hit the string of the next note. See Piano history and musical performance.
Read more about this topic: Soft Pedal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“It’s a very delicate surgical operation—to cut out the heart without killing the patient. The history of our country, however, is a very tough old patient, and we’ll do the best we can.”
—Dudley Nichols, U.S. screenwriter. Jean Renoir. Sorel (Philip Merivale)
“They are a sort of post-house,where the Fates
Change horses, making history change its tune,
Then spur away o’er empires and o’er states,
Leaving at last not much besides chronology,
Excepting the post-obits of theology.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)