This may account for the decision to use illustrations instead of photographs, as well. While it's difficult to crop, airbrush and blur industrial photography to reveal some things and conceal others without being obvious about it, a pen-and-ink drawing can be prettily staged to illustrate just so much, and no more. Aesthetically, this may have appealed to the thespian in Chapin; on the business and legal levels, it almost certainly appealed to the company.

The book opens with a brief history of the modern piano, which is generally traced to seventeenth-century Italy and the "arpicembalo che fa il piano e il forte" (trans: harpsichord that can play quietly and loudly), credited to Bartolomo Cristofori, a Paduan harpsichord maker employed in the Florentine court of a Medici prince. Before this, the only keyboard instrument that produced sound by striking strings was the clavichord. However, asserts Chapin, the story of the piano really begins with the hammer dulcimer, the physics of which Cristofori adapted to a keyboard instrument.

Incidentally, Chapin recounts this instrument (along with a brief mention of the zither) notwithstanding the dismissive remarks of Jeff Fitzgerald, AAJ's Resident Genius and the Dean of American Jazz Humorists�, who is on record as saying that since these two instruments "have made no significant contribution to jazz, to hell with 'em." [ Ed. Note: see "Ebony and Ivory and Ted and Alice" ]

And with all due respect to the estimable Mr. Fitzgerald (not to mention Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney), it's not about ebony and ivory anymore. Beyond color description, these are now only figurative terms. Although Chapin repeatedly stresses how little has changed with regard to the manufacturing process and materials used in a Steinway, the one notable exception, we learn, involves the keys themselves. In 1975, an international treaty outlawing the use of animal products derived from endangered species prohibited the use of elephant ivory for commercial purposes. It reflects well upon Steinway & Sons that while this change was mandated for all piano makers, the company instituted it on its own volition in the 1950s, a decision that drew much criticism when eco-politics was not nearly so powerful—or fashionable.

The decision was not driven purely by environmentalism; pragmatism entered into it as well. Another plus-minus involves ivory and the running love/hate relationship piano makers like Steinway have had with it. Like human teeth, elephant tusks swell and contract with the vagaries of weather, accounting for a great deal of the surface delamination one frequently encounters on older pianos. Also like human teeth, ivory is quite brittle, which is why it is rare to see an older piano without at least some of the leading edges of its keys chipped off. On the other hand, ivory absorbs sweat well, resulting in a better grip for the fingers.

The issue is now moot; it is illegal to even import a piano with ivory keys into the United States unless one can prove that the ivory is at least 100 years old. Chapin quietly remarks that certain Siberian entrepreneurs recently offered Steinway an "unlimited" amount of fossilized mastodon tusks, an offer it politely declined. One can only hope that its competitors are practicing the same sort of ethical responsibility. Steinway uses a synthetic substitute it has developed called Ivorene, and the black keys are plastic, as well.

However, that's as far as it goes. Chapin, like many, has always been fascinated by the "tiny levers, springs, pins, screws, knobs, plates, bushings, bearings, hinges, and flanges" that go into the workings of a piano's action. In fact, he tells us, as a boy he threw pencils into the family piano just so he could watch his uncle dismantle it. But despite the evolution of its increasingly sophisticated engineering over many years of experimentation, many recent innovations have "flopped," Chapin writes. "Modern materials," he says, "especially plastics, have not yet found a permanent place in a Steinway's action."

Both musicians and the listening public have shown signs of a growing weariness with the plastics and circuit boards of modern instruments. Nostalgia for the craftsmanship of an earlier era has engendered a renewed interest in handmade instrument and natural materials. Anyone with an appreciation of woodworking and carpentry, regardless of musicality, will be fascinated by the discussion of the various woods used in a piano and the reason each is chosen. Yellow birch, sugar maple, sugar pine, yellow poplar, and Sitka spruce are the raw material for mechanical components and structural pieces. A wide variety of exotic hardwoods, including bubinga, cherry, ebony, bird's-eye maple, mahogany, rosewood, sapele, teak and walnut are used for sheathing veneer.

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