A prepared piano is a piano that has had its sound altered by placing objects (preparations) between or on the strings or on the hammers or dampers.
The idea of altering an instrument's timbre through the use of external objects has been applied to instruments other than the piano; see, for example, prepared guitar.
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Richard Bunger wrote a book The Well Prepared Piano in which he explains how John Cage prepared his pianos and even which pianos are suitable, because of the deviation of string lengths within different brands. Bunger also clarifies why the preparations were done in such ways; in other words, which adaptation creates which sounds (harmonics obtained, timbrel effects, etc.). The timbre of the instrument changes dramatically when preparations are introduced. Much of the technique is related to the harmonic positions of the strings. For instance a preparation on 1/2 of the string length causes a different sound than on 1/3. In other words, the preparations don't cause a random sound as often assumed.
John Cage coined the term prepared piano and was undoubtedly the composer who made the technique famous. He credited Henry Cowell and, to a lesser extent, Erik Satie, for contributing to the idea, but it is unclear if Cage was aware of many other precedents described below.
Since the later days of the harpsichord (17th–18th century), stringed keyboard instruments could have registers, for instance giving a drier or more ample sound when the instrument's stop was pulled (a stop in the meaning of a similar disposition for organs, known as organ stops).
When the first pianos were invented around the beginning of the 18th century, the only "coloring" of the sounds produced by the instrument resulted from how the individual keys were pressed (loud = forte, or softly = piano, giving the name to the instrument: fortepiano). A type of register, first implemented with a stop above the keyboard, which became a standard device for pianos in the second half of the 18th century, was engaging or disengaging the muting of the strings after the release of a key. Only by the end of the 18th century, the muting mechanism was triggered with a pedal, after an intermediate period when this register was operated by the pianist's knees.
But the idea of harpsichord-like registers lived on: in the early 19th century some pianos were provided with a reed stop, which lowered a strip of paper onto the strings. This led musicologists such as Tom Beghin to believe that the technique of placing a strip of paper on piano strings would probably have originated before it was standardised as a register operated with stops, and that, for instance, Mozart's Alla Turca can safely be played with a piece of paper on some of the strings as a historical interpretation (see http://www.klara.be/html/klara_cds.html or http://streampower.belgacom.be/vrt/klara/beghin_mozart.mp3 for an audio example of this Alla Turca played on a prepared rebuilt authentic Mozart piano, in Tom Beghin's interpretation).
Around the turn of the nineteenth century, Turkish music was so popular that piano manufacturers made special pianos with a Turkish stop, also called the military or Janissary stop. The player would press a pedal that caused a bell to ring and/or a padded hammer to strike the soundboard in imitation of a bass drum. The Turkish stop was popular for playing the famous Mozart Rondo alla Turca, K. 331.
In the piano version of his Piège de Méduse (1913 or 1914) Erik Satie's score called for placing sheets of paper on the piano strings in order to imitate the mechanical sound of a monkey puppet that figured in the play.
In his 1925 work for two pianos and large orchestra, Heitor Villa-Lobos added to his score instructions to the pianist to insert pieces of paper between the strings and the hammers to attain a certain sonority.[1]
In the 1920s, a new invention was presented, the Luthéal, which extended the register possibilities of a piano to its maximum, producing cimbalon-like sounds in some registers, exploiting harmonics of the strings when pulling other register-stops, and also some registers making other objects, which were lowered just above the strings, resound. But that instrument became obsolete before it became popular, partly due to most of the mechanics of the instrument being too sensitive, needing constant adjustment. The only pieces in the general repertoire to feature the Luthéal are L'Enfant et les Sortilèges (1920–5) and Tzigane (1924) by Maurice Ravel, performances of which tend to substitute an upright piano, either prepared with paper or straight.
Another precedent to the prepared piano was an experiment by the French composer Maurice Delage (1879–1961): his Ragamalika (1912–22), based on the classical music of India, calls for a piece of cardboard to be placed under the B-flat in the second line of the bass clef to dampen the sound, imitating the sound of an Indian drum.[2]
In the 1920s, American composer Henry Cowell coined the term string piano "to describe direct manipulation of piano strings, such as by plucking them with fingers or stroking them with a brush.
Cage first prepared a piano when he was commissioned to write music for "Bacchanale", a dance by Syvilla Fort in 1938. For some time previously, Cage had been writing exclusively for a percussion ensemble, but the hall where Fort’s dance was to be staged had no room for a percussion group. The only instrument available was a single grand piano. After some consideration, Cage said that he realized it was possible “to place in the hands of a single pianist the equivalent of an entire percussion orchestra ... With just one musician, you can really do an unlimited number of things on the inside of the piano if you have at your disposal an exploded keyboard” (Cage and Charles, 38).
More recent composers to use prepared pianos include Sophie Agnel, Koka Nikoladze, Michael Staley, Hiromi Uehara, Philip Corner, Roberto Carnevale, Carson Kievman, Jason Moran, Marina Leonardi, Stephen Scott, and Matteo Marchisano-Adamo (http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/matteomusic2).
The phrase prepared piano is also sometimes applied to other kinds of preparations. The tack piano is a piano that has been altered by inserting thumbtacks or small nails into the striking end of each hammer, so that the instrument will produce a more percussive sound and brighter timbre. The resulting tone often resembles the sound of a very old and derelict piano. The tack piano has been used primarily in honky-tonk-style piano playing, or to make a piano sound like an antique piano that might have been heard in a saloon or brothel around the early 20th century. The application of tacks is generally discouraged by piano technicians as the tacks can drop off the hammers and lodge in the strings or jam the mechanism, or the fact that placing tacks inside felt hammers renders the felt unvoicable and, therefore, ruins the hammers. On normal pianos, felt coverings on the hammers will harden and compress with use (though not usually for at least several decades, unless it is a heavily used concert piano), yielding a characteristic bright, tinny sound. This can be cured by softening the hammers with a device consisting of multiple needles called a "voicing needle". Where the felt is too far gone, the hammers can be replaced.
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