We are showcasing one of the recently restored instruments of the university collection in a concert this coming week, alongside our usual fare of harpsichord and fortepiano works...

... and this is an old 1799 Square piano (English style, Broadwood) that the had been found in a university basement, and over the last four years had been slowly been restored. It is a beautiful looking instrument, but it has had to have a LOT of work done on it... and even still, there are some issues that we will just have to deal with in the coming concert. Thankfully, we are only showcasing a couple of small pieces on the instrument, as we know that it is severely limited in terms of what it can do.

The faceplate of the instrument has the wrong date on it... I'm not entirely sure why that is, or how they know that... but the restorer and the university assure us that it is actually from 1799 and not the 1832 that is on the faceplate!

So, this evening's chore was to tune the instrument. It hadn't been tuned since it was delivered back to the university, and it had dropped quite a bit in pitch... and the temperament was pleasantly described as all over the bloody place.

... and as of this evening, I now have a new LEAST favourite instrument to tune. Thankfully, the restorer will do the tuning on the concert day... because this was really quite tedious to do. As you can see the tuning pins are off to the left... a fairly long distance away from where you have to place the wedge to stop one of the doubled strings from striking. And those strings are crazily close together! I used to think that fortepianos were a pain to tune, but this is MUCH MUCH worse... and if you are a right handed... and needing to use your right hand for the tuning hammer and then switching to move the wedge... well, this is an excercise in irritation as you have to constantly shift from one end of the instrument to the other without losing your place either in the string ranks or the tuning pins.

... and did I mention that all the strings are about a few millimetres apart from each other! And as you go further towards the bass end, you are getting even further away from each other!?!?!?!!?

Anyway, something that I was hoping would just take a bit under an hour ended up taking about two hours... and the pitch won't hold, but I will have to train it back up tomorrow again. Sigh...

... and there are sticking keys, and a damper that doesn't trigger, and also a hammer that hits multiple strings. A little laundry list of things for the restorer to look at when he comes back.

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