4 ms·

Larry Fine's Piano Book is an interesting read. The take-home lesson is that pianos are far more fragile than they look. They are continuously falling apart. Po

Larry Fine's Piano Book is an interesting read. The take-home lesson is that pianos are far more fragile than they look. They are continuously falling apart. Poor humidity and temperature control takes its toll on them, the soundboard wears out, the tuning pegs wear out, all of that felt most definitely ages and wears out and stiffens, they're full of moving parts, and even letting them get too far out of tune will damage them long-term. Most of those eighty-year-old instruments really aren't worth keeping, and if you want your instrument to live to be eighty in good condition you need to budget for ongoing maintenance, and then eventually get the thing torn down and rebuilt. It's like owning a car. It's hard, though, because I remember playing with my late grandmother's piano when I was around five years old, and now it's probably in a landfill somewhere. On the other hand, I still have my grandfather's slide rule, which he took to meteorology school at MIT during World War II. The secret is to choose highly portable mementoes of a bygone technological era. ;)

fredley 14y ago
This is very true. Honestly, even the best-kept instrument degrades significantly over time. When's the last time you saw anything but a brand new instrument in a big concert? There's a reason you never see pros playing treasured vintage instruments the way a violinist would. Aside from their historical or ornamental value as furniture, old pianos are pretty useless.
- StavrosK 14y ago
  > There's a reason you never see pros playing treasured vintage instruments the way a violinist would. I don't understand. Violins are instruments too. Did you just mean pianos, or others too?
  - pnathan 14y ago
    Pianos don't improve with age. A decently constructed instrument in the violin family will, as will (to a lesser extent) brass instruments. I don't have a particular set of citations, it's just musician lore.
  - ximeng 14y ago
    I assume he means piano by "instrument", and "would play a vintage violin" by "would".
- UrLicht 14y ago
  Compared to pianos, violins are really, really simple machines. You have strings, a bridge, a sound box with some holes in it and a couple of posts inside, some tuning pegs and that's about it. A single key on a piano has way more parts, and most of them move. The design and construction of string instruments like violins is pretty much a solved problem. Yes there is variation in the way the wood is shaped and carved, which gives you the different grades of quality, but the basic engineering problem of "how do you make a violin" is solved. Because a piano is much more complex there is a lot of room for continual innovation in both materials and construction. This might be the reason that you don't see people performing on old pianos - the newer ones are just technologically superior. That and it just takes so much effort (and money) to maintain a quality piano. That being said, there is a legion of both pianists and violinists that will tell you (incorrectly or not) that the sound of an instrument improves with age. Something about the fibers in the wood being affected by vibration. [Edit: maintenance cost as a factor]
- gjulianm 14y ago
  That's not true. My grandmother has a old piano in her house. I think her father bought it used in the 1920s or 30s. It's an "Ortiz&Cussó", a brand created in 1898 and, based on some findings in the web, that piano could have perfectly one hundred years. And it even survived the 700km travel when my grandmother moved to another city. It has lost a lot of volume, some keys are "bited" and some strings get easily out of tune. But, believe me, it still sounds great. The lower range of notes beats most pianos I have heard (and played). It needs maintenance, but it's not useless. I think a piano can last a lot of time if you take care of it.
- mduerksen 14y ago
  To those who say that violins improve with age: That just might be a myth, according to this study[1]. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109 More entertaining version: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/1444828...
  - Panoramix 14y ago
    Here's a rebuttal to that: http://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/o4ei0/regarding_the_latest_strad_vs_modern_studya_long/c3ehd1v http://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/o4ei0/regard...

fredley 14y ago

This is very true. Honestly, even the best-kept instrument degrades significantly over time. When's the last time you saw anything but a brand new instrument in a big concert? There's a reason you never see pros playing treasured vintage instruments the way a violinist would. Aside from their historical or ornamental value as furniture, old pianos are pretty useless.

StavrosK 14y ago
> There's a reason you never see pros playing treasured vintage instruments the way a violinist would. I don't understand. Violins are instruments too. Did you just mean pianos, or others too?
- pnathan 14y ago
  Pianos don't improve with age. A decently constructed instrument in the violin family will, as will (to a lesser extent) brass instruments. I don't have a particular set of citations, it's just musician lore.
- ximeng 14y ago
  I assume he means piano by "instrument", and "would play a vintage violin" by "would".
UrLicht 14y ago
Compared to pianos, violins are really, really simple machines. You have strings, a bridge, a sound box with some holes in it and a couple of posts inside, some tuning pegs and that's about it. A single key on a piano has way more parts, and most of them move. The design and construction of string instruments like violins is pretty much a solved problem. Yes there is variation in the way the wood is shaped and carved, which gives you the different grades of quality, but the basic engineering problem of "how do you make a violin" is solved. Because a piano is much more complex there is a lot of room for continual innovation in both materials and construction. This might be the reason that you don't see people performing on old pianos - the newer ones are just technologically superior. That and it just takes so much effort (and money) to maintain a quality piano. That being said, there is a legion of both pianists and violinists that will tell you (incorrectly or not) that the sound of an instrument improves with age. Something about the fibers in the wood being affected by vibration. [Edit: maintenance cost as a factor]
gjulianm 14y ago
That's not true. My grandmother has a old piano in her house. I think her father bought it used in the 1920s or 30s. It's an "Ortiz&Cussó", a brand created in 1898 and, based on some findings in the web, that piano could have perfectly one hundred years. And it even survived the 700km travel when my grandmother moved to another city. It has lost a lot of volume, some keys are "bited" and some strings get easily out of tune. But, believe me, it still sounds great. The lower range of notes beats most pianos I have heard (and played). It needs maintenance, but it's not useless. I think a piano can last a lot of time if you take care of it.
mduerksen 14y ago
To those who say that violins improve with age: That just might be a myth, according to this study[1]. [1] http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/01/02/1114999109 More entertaining version: http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/144482863/double-blind-violin-test-can-you-pick-the-strad http://www.npr.org/blogs/deceptivecadence/2012/01/02/1444828...
- Panoramix 14y ago
  Here's a rebuttal to that: http://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/o4ei0/regarding_the_latest_strad_vs_modern_studya_long/c3ehd1v http://www.reddit.com/r/classicalmusic/comments/o4ei0/regard...