◄Previous: 3.1 The authenticity debate

# 3.2 Investigating early instruments

Among the most important sources for a study of historically informed performance are the instruments on which music was played in earlier generations. Historical instruments have fascinated musicians for at least the last two centuries and many collections have been formed which are curated and displayed for the benefit of performers, music historians and the public.

While some curators allow the instruments in their collections to be maintained in working order and used for performances, others ensure that their instruments are kept in cabinets and left as they were found for fear that important historical evidence will be destroyed if they are restored. So, for example, if old piano hammer coverings are removed, information is lost for ever about the way in which the material was stretched over the wood beneath, even if the old hammer coverings are kept after they have been removed.

In the case of very rare instruments in particular, many think that they should remain unrestored as a resource for future generations of researchers, who may develop new questions about them which can only be answered from untouched examples.

## Mozart’s pedal piano

For the final years of his life, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) owned a piano which was placed above an independent pedalboard played with the feet, as on an organ. The piano survives, but the pedalboard does not. The pedalboard had its own strings, which were independent of the piano above it, and reinforced the bass of the music, making it sound rather less delicate than many imagine Mozart’s music would sound like.

## Activity 5 Video of Mozart’s pedalboard

Timing: Allow around 20 minutes to complete this activity.

Watch this video, which will help you to understand the instrument and its characteristics. The instrument is a reconstruction made according to the available evidence.

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Video 2
Transcript

The evidence used to reconstruct this instrument was wide-ranging. It included:

- a concert handbill
- a letter from Mozart’s father to Wolfgang’s sister, Nannerl
- a few notes in one of Mozart’s music manuscripts
- comments by Mozart’s pupil, the English composer Thomas Attwood, in an undated letter
- comments in his memoirs by the Swedish visitor to Mozart, Joseph Frank
- the inventory of Mozart’s possessions made after his death.

Details of the design of the reconstructed pedalboard are deduced from the descriptions of the instrument in documents, as well as the physical limitations of the space available beneath Mozart’s piano. Other relevant instruments from the period are also taken into account, so it seems likely that the reconstructed pedalboard roughly resembles the one used by Mozart. Once the evidence has been carefully studied, not too much is left to conjecture. As for the music played on it, there is evidence that tells us something about what Mozart played on the instrument, but there is also a further layer of evidence in broadly contemporary documents that suggests other sorts of music he might have performed on it. Precisely which notes Mozart played with his feet is unknown, so this aspect of a reconstructed performance remains a matter of conjecture (Maunder and Rowland, 1995).

Returning to the problematic aspects of the term ‘authenticity’ outlined earlier, you will hopefully readily see how much conjecture can be associated with the ‘reconstruction’ of early performances. In this case, not only does the relevant instrument not survive, but neither do specific instructions about what pieces of music were played on it. HIP is indeed a problematic musical subdiscipline!

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OpenLearn - Introducing music research
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