Pedaling the Piano: A Brief Survey from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

Anton Rubinstein once characterized the damper pedal as "the soul of the piano." 1 Nonetheless, its historical use (along with that of the other piano pedals) has remained relatively unexplored. A major obstacle has lain in the incompleteness of the markings that have come down to us. Until relatively recently the majority of composers have been reticent about notating pedal indications, perhaps due in part to the difficulties encountered by themselves and also by engravers in spacing the bulky signs precisely; but perhaps due even more, from the composer's vantage point, to the inevitability that each performer would have to adjust the pedaling to take into account his or her sense of tempo, dynamics, and textural balance, as well as the particular instrument played, and the setting or milieu in which any performance were to take place. Twentieth-century grand pianos are equipped with damper, una corda, and (on some makes) sostenuto pedals that provide changes in the amount and timbre of the tone; however, in the past the mechanisms for creating tonal change and the manner in which these mechanisms were employed varied with the development of the instrument as well as with the changing styles of the music.