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From: rdh@portia.Stanford.EDU (Roland Hutchinson)
Newsgroups: comp.music
Subject: Re: piano vibrato
Summary: German Klavier==piano OR clavichord
Message-ID: <7620@portia.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 13 Dec 89 02:57:23 GMT
References: <1432@skye.ed.ac.uk> <6912@merlin.usc.edu> <2746@optilink.UUCP> <49451@bbn.COM>
Sender: Roland Hutchinson <rdh@Portia.stanford.edu>
Reply-To: rdh@portia.Stanford.EDU (Roland Hutchinson)
Organization: Stanford University
Lines: 27

In article <49451@bbn.COM> harlan@labs-n.bbn.com (Harlan Feinstein) writes:
>
>What I'm seeking is not an answer to how to get a piano vibrato _sound_,
>but rather a sincere answer to how to do this without electronics.  Someone
>told me that it was possible. 

Could it be that whoever suggested vibrato was possible on the piano 
had been confused by a faulty translation from German into English 
somewhere along the line?

The word Klavier often meant "Clavichord" in 18th-century German; in modern
German it means "Piano" (or specifically "Upright Piano"; a grand is
a Fluegel).

A kind of vibrato (called Bebung) is a normal part of clavichord
technique.

Roland Hutchinson
Department of Music
Montclair State College
Upper Montclair, NJ 07043

INTERNET: r.rdh@macbeth.stanford.edu
BITNET: r.rdh%macbeth.stanford.edu@stanford

(That's right.  I teach in New Jersey and read email in California.
Isn't science wonderful?)