Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold
Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold was a piano maker in Paris in the early 19th century.
Petzold was born 2 July 1794 in Lichtenhayn, a village in
The enlarged soundboard Petzold introduced in square pianos at the 1806 French National Exposition received little notice. Its purpose was to increase the amount of sound, but the arrangement increased the height of the strings and required greater action leverage than the English square action could provide. Petzold substituted a variation of an English grand action with a crank escapement and individual hammer flanges, but the heavier blows it allowed required heavier stringing, which in turn required stronger frames. These changes gave his squares an unprecedented fullness and capacity for expression, and indicated the direction of subsequent changes that would take place in the art of constructing, as well as writing for and performing on pianos.
Notes
- ^ This was a vertically strung, full size upright with underdampers operated by a crank from the keys. (Harding. p248); Fetis mistakes it for a kind of upright grand.
References
- Fétis, F. J. (1867, 1880) Biographie universelle des musiciens. Didot frères, Paris.
- Harding, R. (1978) The Piano-Forte. Gresham Books. Old Woking, Surrey.