Soft pedals

A device for reducing the hammer blow from two strings to one is found at the very beginning of the piano's history on Cristofori's pianos. It is doubtful whether performers on these instruments thought of this device in the same way as later pianists, however: it was simply a remnant of harpsichord design akin to the mechanism which allowed a choice of one or two 8′ registers. A similar mechanism has nevertheless persisted to the present day in the form of the una corda pedal.

Few hints as to the use of the una corda, or of any other type of soft pedal, stop or lever are to be found in eighteenth-century literature until the 1790s, and the evidence of the instruments themselves is somewhat ambivalent. On English grands, for example, the una corda was standard from Backers onwards (see Chapter 2). On ‘Viennese’ pianos, however, the situation was less clear. Walter included the moderator on his instruments; nevertheless when he introduced knee levers in place of hand stops, presumably for ease of use, the sustaining device benefited from the new system earlier than the moderator (see above, p. 18). Stein was more conservative, to begin with at least; there are no soft levers or stops on his earlier pianos (see above, p. 18). All this suggests that eighteenth-century pianists had only a limited need of any such device.

The three most important soft levers/pedals on grand pianos between c. 1790 and c.1830 were the lute, moderator and una corda. For the sake of clarity a brief description of each is given here.