History of Piano Tuning – A NEED FOR TUNERS

Prior to the advent of the piano, most musicians tuned their own instruments.   This was a necessary part of owning one; to call someone in to tune a harpsichord would have been as preposterous an idea as calling someone in to tune a violin for a professional violinist.   A combination of factors made the harpsichord far easier to tune than the piano: there was generally only one string per note, and where there were more they were easily isolated by use of the stops, while the strings were at a far lower tension than those of the piano.  At first ownership of the instruments was limited to richer families who employed musicians, or to musicians themselves – either way, the musicians ended up tuning the instruments.  However, the setting of temperaments proved more difficult, particularly Equal Temperament: the Pythagorean comma meaning that pure intervals alone being used would result in a ‘wolf’ interval, wherein the beats ‘left over’ from tuning the pure intervals accumulated in one very discordant interval – generally that between F^# and B.  Equal temperament took over from mean tone tuning, making all keys pleasant to play in rather than a restricted number, but was more difficult for the amateur to tune, and as more and more amateurs were beginning to own instruments, tuning was becoming a task carried out by professionals.

Rimbault mentions the tuning of equal temperament in the chapter ‘On Tuning’ in his 1860 History of the Pianoforte:

[Equal temperament] is now universally adopted throughout Europe.  Its inestimable advantage is that it enables us to employ all the 12 major and minor scales with equal freedom, and without a fear of offending the ear in any of them more than in another; thus giving unlimited room of play to all the wonders of modern harmony. 

Loesser wrote of claviers that:

[They] do not present the perpetually acute problem of the stringed or wind instruments – namely, that of making the true pitch.  A key marks it ready-made, and any infant can press down a light lever.  It is true that a clavier must be tuned in advance, but the spread of the instrument among the minimally musical led to the curious consequence that the tuner and the player were more and more rarely the same person.  It is hard to imagine the most primitive player of a fiddle or guitar who did not know how to pull up his own strings to their proper pitch, but among clavier tinklers this incompetence became the rule.  The complication of the tempered tuning may have added to the difficulty. 

Loesser was referring to the late 18th century, when ownership of the clavier (a generic term for a harpsichord) was becoming far more widespread in families for the furthering of a daughter’s education and, more importantly, eligibility for marriage.

By the time of Queen Victoria’s accession to the throne, Britain was consumed by piano fever.  As early as 1800, the piano’s battle with the harpsichord seems to be nearing its end: Rosamond Harding notes that “for pianoforte” in large print on sheet music precedes the worlds “or harpsichord” in smaller letters by this time, implying the piano’s burgeoning supremacy.

Even the Broadwoods themselves are known to have been involved in tuning: Broadwoods have in their possession a painting from around 1744 which portrays Burkat Shudi tuning a harpsichord said to have been made by the firm for Frederick the Great. Rimbault mentions that ‘The Mess^rs Broadwood possess an interesting portrait of the Founder of their firm in the act of tuning the King of Prussia’s harpsichord’.

Piano tuning was a recognised job in the piano factories by the beginning of the 19th century, and two of Broadwood’s journeymen fought a duel on Primrose Hill in 1809 over the tuning of a piano – with no result. By 1834 Henry Fowler Broadwood was running the business, having taken ‘instruction in tuning, in which branch of the pianoforte industry his father, James Broadwood, excelled’. In 1838 Henry’s uncle, Thomas Broadwood, wrote to him about a wealthy client’s complaints regarding a Victoria grand piano which ‘does not and will not stand in tune played or not played on, although he has got an experienced Tuner to Tune it …’.  Thomas sent Merison, ‘not being able to spare Murray or Wilkins as well.’ This would imply that Broadwoods had a relatively large tuning department of at least three men by this time.

The square pianos of the mid 19th century could reasonably be expected to remain in tune for around a month to six weeks in the British climate, but extremes of humidity and temperature could lead to even more frequent calls from the piano tuner.  These later square pianos were no longer the delicate instrument they had been – they had six octaves now rather than the original five, and were 5′ 7˝” wide, five inches wider than the earliest Broadwood square of 1770.  The metal hitch-pin plate had become standard, allowing higher tension on the strings and giving rise to a bigger, brighter sound.  However, this instrument could never equal the tone of the new grand pianos and was gradually eclipsed: Broadwoods ceased production of square pianos in 1866.

John Broadwood had been working on the grand piano as long as 1783, and his friend, Robert Stodart, had used the word ‘Grand’ for the first time on a patent application in 1777.

The job of the piano tuner had been created by a gap in the market, a demand caused by the number of amateurs owning instruments requiring maintenance, and leading to a need for visits from a tuner.   Early pianos were of a light construction yet battling with ever-increasing demands of tension from piano players who wanted ever louder and brighter-sounding instruments.   Whilst the up-to-date pianos fared better, with stronger frames and heavier hammers being introduced, then, as now, tuners were having to deal with older pianos.  Piano music itself was changing and making new demands on the instrument, yet people with old instruments were buying new music and requiring performances of which their pianos were not really capable: and then, as now, the client was expecting the tuner to work miracles and transform their dated instrument into the latest one.

The advent of the bigger square pianos and of the grand pianos definitely discouraged all but the bravest piano owner from tuning their own instruments and the career of piano tuner was born.

The growth in private ownership of pianos had created the need for tuners: when only a few people owned pianos, typically the major makers such as Broadwood and Longman and Broderip would have sent out tuners from their own services and tuning department.  But once ownership became more widespread, demand for tuners grew faster than the piano firms could supply them.  Loesser cites remarks from a German writer, Bartold Fritz, in his bookAnweisung wie man Claviere Clavecins and Orgeln in allen zwölf Tonen gleich rein stimmen könne … which he published in 1757 in Leipzig:

… there are persons who live in the country and cannot always get hold of a tuning master.  There are music lovers in cities who would like to undertake this exercise … there are a lot of teachers … who have never had instruction in proper tuning …

He goes on to say that: