Americus Backers - Role in Development of The Grand Piano

Role in Development of The Grand Piano

We know from the history of the Broadwood family that John Broadwood and his fellow Scot Robert Stodart – both apprentices to the harpsichord builder Burkat Shudi (Anglicized) – would spend evenings at Americus’s Jermyn Street home and workshop, helping him to perfect his escapement for his pianoforte action based on, but differing in several important factors, from Silbermann’s design that was in turn developed from a crude and inaccurate sketch in a published article by Francesco Scipione, marchese di Maffei who had visited Italy to view Cristofori’s original.

Americus’s innovation was the addition of an ‘escapement’ to Silbermann’s realization of a string striking action design. Unlike Cristofori’s design (to which of course Americus had no access) which interposed an intermediate lever between the lever that the key lifts and the striking hammer, Americus placed an upstanding wooden ‘jack’ pivoting from this lever acting directly on a leather clothed notch in the hammer butt. An adjustable screw mounted underneath the hammer flange support rail, known as a ‘set-off’, impacts upon the jack, disengaging it from the hammer which is thus launched into free flight before it strikes its course of strings.

This 'escapement' allows the hammer to fall away from the strings after striking them allowing them to vibrate freely as long as the key is held down producing a long sustained note until the felt damper depending from a lead weighted wooden block is allowed to fall onto the strings by lifting the finger from the key, stilling them and cutting off the note when desired. The hammer head is caught by a ‘check’- a felt clothed wooden block mounted on the lever by a solid wire. This check is so placed to catch the hammer in a position where the jack can re-engage with the butt to propel it once again towards the strings before the key is fully released. This allows for rapid note repetition common in the ornamentation of music designed to disguise the short duration of treble notes that is typical of the plucked string harpsichord and the early piano whose light, low tension stringing has not the power we expect from a piano of today. (Despite the power and longevity of treble notes in a modern grand, its finely crafted complex action allows up to twenty note repetitions per second, which performance and skill of execution is tested in works such as those of Granados and Albeniz).

Americus fitted his striking action into a harpsichord case whose long bass strings would provide long note duration compared to the square pianos of Zumpe and his contemporaries, showing off a completely new prowess and capability with which musicians and composers could experiment and develop into new forms of keyboard music. (The term Grand Pianoforte for this design was not coined until Robert Stodart patented and used it to adorn the nameplate of a 1777 model bearing his name as manufacturer.)

Americus’s other innovation was to mount his instrument on a dedicated three-legged trestle stand. The two front legs of this stand incorporated linkages to the instrument from two pedals. The left pedal when depressed caused the whole keyboard and action to slide to the right against a return spring mounted inside the case. This caused the hammers to strike only one of the strings in its normal trichord and is now generally known as the ‘una corda’. (In Cristofori’s original design and in the Viennese pianos of the 18th Century, the una corda was operated by a knee lever since many pianos, like harpsichords, were not supplied with a dedicated stand and might be mounted on a convenient chest or cupboard).

The right hand pedal operated a mechanism that lifted all the dampers away from the strings, Americus’s own original idea that was not copied by the Viennese piano makers until much later.

So, in summary, the Backers piano in harpsichord case was the first of what has come to be known as the 18th Century English grand piano. We do not have an exact date for the very first instrument to be offered for sale. Its earliest appearance in public was in 1770 according to John Paul Williams’ “The Piano, An Inspirational Guide to the Piano and its Place In History”.

Following hot on the heels of the Backers instruments came offerings from John Broadwood, succeeding his master, and from Robert Stodart striking out in business on his own. It is quite clear that these and subsequent models by Clementi and other entrants into English piano building are derived directly from Americus’s original. Hence the English Grand Pianoforte tradition comes about as a direct result of the prototype Americus Backers.