Rossini’s pianoforte and the letter in Rossini’s hand mentioning it
That this instrument was acquired by Rossini during his stay in Bologna is clear from an unpublished letter of 2nd August 1846 to Camille Pleyel, discovered in Padua in about 1970 by Piero Buscaroli, the well-known scholar of the history of music and author of several important studies and monographs. The letter consists of a single sheet written on both sides, belonging to the dispersed Pleyel papers and recorded as being received on 16th August 1846. In it there is a clear reference to the serial number - 11695 - of the piano that Rossini had ordered from the Pleyel company and paid for. This hitherto unknown letter remained among Buscaroli’s personal papers until the late spring of 1999, when it was brought to the attention of Gianni Tangucci, then the artistic director of the Teatro Comunale of Bologna, and of Flavio Ponzi, during the early stages of preparation for a performance of Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle on period pianofortes (which took place on 29th February 2000).
Subsequently, the letter was listed in the catalogue of an auction of important music prints and manuscripts to be held at Christie’s in Rome on 14th June 2000 at their sale rooms in Piazza Navona. Described by the experts at Christie’s as a very important document, referring to “the existence of one of the most significant pianos of the nineteenth century”, it was then withdrawn from the sale at the request of its owner who generously passed it to F.Ponzi, who now has this letter written by Rossini in his possession.

The Pleyel instrument no. 11695, to which the letter explicitly refers, was discovered in Bologna by F. Ponzi some ten years before. Rescuing it from destruction and loss, he carefully restored it and it is now preserved in a temperature and humidity-controlled environment.

The piano is a typical example of a Romantic-period Pleyel, having an intense, rather dark and somewhat blessé tone. The plain and elegant external design of the instrument, unaltered until around the end of the century, is now ornamented by three brass handles, two of which serve to secure the lid. This soberness of line was one of the characteristics of Pleyel instruments: O.Comettant, in a book on Pleyel (Paris, 1890), explains this by saying simply that the value of such instruments lay “dans leur sonorité”.

The rouleau of the keyboard is noticeably concave, in order to facilitate the kind of hand movements required for virtuoso piano-playing; a elegant nameplate is signed in ink with the Pleyel trademark. The instrument has four metal braces lying longitudinally, attached to transverse bars and fitted into an S-shaped metal frame. The hitchpins, to which the strings are attached, are fixed to this S-shaped frame. The total overall tension exerted by the strings is about 9,600kg. The strings are attached individually to the pins with the so-called French knot, a system believed by many to have been the only one to have been used throughout Europe during the whole of the nineteenth century. The layout pattern is that of normal straight stringing.

The grain of the spruce sheets that make up the sound board of this small grand, lies transversely, rather than longitudinally as was more common. A very delicate curved stiffening rib, glued to the sound board at the other end from the bridge bearing the upper strings (lined up with the first curving longitudinal soundbar), visibly defines that part of the sound board whose function is to increase resonance.

This design, characterised by of the same width throughou, was tried out by other famous instrument designers, such as Wornum and Pape, and aimed at creating a sound board where a construction of maximum stability and durability did not compromise the evenness of the acoustic response.

The barring (the system of soundbars that simultaneously gives stability to the gluing of the sound board and maintains the balance between the interconnected system of bars-sound board-bridges and the opposing tension of the strings, ensuring at the same time an effective distribution of the tonal response) consists of eleven transverse soundbars crossed longitudinally by two long curved bars (a construction inherited from the harpsichord and the early pianoforte), the thickest of which delimits the resonating section of the sound board.

A particular feature is that the transverse soundbars become gradually lighter from the central point, where they are thickest, to the sides, where they are thinnest. They do not have the typical mouldings (or baffi designed to have a sudden reducing effect on the rigidity of the edges of the soundbars. These characteristics may have have a role in minimising any over-emphatic responses by the sound board, and thus contribute to the particular timbre of this instrument.

The hammer system belongs to a transitional phase, lasting for many decades at the Pleyel manufactory, between the use of leather and that of felt.

The hammers are characterised by continuing variations (significant to a greater or lesser extent), in the form and composition of the materials. Here thick buffalo leather is used beneath a second under-layer of thin doeskin, covered with wool felt of a thickness of about 0.38 gr. mm3. At times a first layer of leather was laid beneath the above-described underfelts. We must not forget that at least starting from 1840-1845, the layer of leather underfelts was garnished, in the Pleyel hammers, with two different types of felt, both of which relatively soft, but having a different density and composition. The first type, greyish in colour and having a density of about 0.30 gr./mm3, was made up of a mixture of rabbit and hare fur. This material had been patented by H. Pape in 1826, and was used in Pleyel grand piano’s about from 1829. The second type, documented by the hammers of this piano, is wholly made of wool, whitish in colour, and has a greater density (around 0.38 gr./mm3, as I said before). It should be pointed out that in 1840 a patent were issued in Paris, by E.H. Billion, for the felting of the hammers wholly made from sheep’s wool.

These hammers allow for a vast range of nuances within the range of the lower dynamic registers (from mp to ppp), evidencing in the forte a warm and intense tone, clarified in the acute register by silvery and fluty nuances.

The English-style action has a single escapement: although less flexible than the contemporary double repetition Érard system, this type of action (that continued to be the only one used in Pleyel grand pianos until 1856), is characterised by a greater immediacy in the control of the touch - something valued by Chopin among others. This immediacy, combined with the rich expressiveness that can be achieved with this type of action, lends itself particularly well to compositions moving between different dynamics in the soft register. The dampers, of extraordinary lightness and delicacy, are designed in such a way that the dampening only comes into effect after a slight delay. This results in a variety of different phonic effects, requiring the pedal to be used in a particular way.

The Pleyel manufactory was one of the most innovative of the nineteenth century. Camille Pleyel, director of the factory from 1824 to 1855, played an essential role in the musical climate that characterised Paris in the Romantic period: it was to him that Chopin dedicated his Twenty-four Preludes.

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