250 Years in the History of Broadwood Pianos

The year 1978 marked the 250th anniversary of the firm which has the longest history of piano making in the world. The firm's first instruments were not pianos, however. Burket Shudi, whose name was originally spelt Tschudi, was born on the 13th of March 1680 at Schwanden Blarus, Switzerland. He was a joiner by trade but deforestation forced many men there into the new trade of cotton weaving. Shudi came to London in 1718, working as a cabinet maker. At some point he joined the harpsichord maker Tabel, and then started up on his own in Meard Street in 1728. A harpsichord made by Shudi in 1729 still survives today, showing he had simplified the spelling of his name by then. He was helped in his career by Handel and became maker to the royal family. A Burket Shudi harpsichord, number 94 and dated 1740, went to Windsor Castle and another went to Frederick the Great. He moved to Great Putney Street in 1742. John Broadwood started working for Shudi in 1761. He was born in Cocksborn Park, Haddington, Scotland in 1732 and died in 1812 in London. He gained Shudi's favour and in 1769 married Shudi's daughter Barbara. In the following year Shudi took him into partnership and the firm of Burket Shudi and Johannes Broadwood operated in Carnaby Street, Soho. Shudi appears to have often worked with about four other men turning out some 18 instruments a year. By 1793, the year the firm stopped making harpsichords, they had made 1,155 of them.

The Venetian swell worked by pedal was applied to their harpsichords in 1769 and was Broadwood's invention, although something of the sort had been used on the continent slightly earlier. Many well-known composers were familiar then as now with the firm's products. Mozart played one of their harpsichords in London in 1775 and Haydn owned a Shudi and Johannes Broadwood harpsichord number 176, dated 1775.

Their single manual of 1770 cost between 35 and 40 guineas, 50 guineas with Venetian swell, and 80 guineas for a double-manual with swell. Shudi died in 1773 but a year or so before Broadwood and his apprentice Robert Stodart are thought to have worked out the details of an idea by Backers of 1771 for a grand action, probably collaborating with Backers. Broadwood did not begin to make grands himself until 1781. This action became known as the "English" portion of the "English direct" action. It was direct because the jack was centred to the key and worked directly against the notch with no intermediate lever. Authorities differ as to when Broadwood made his first square piano. Some say 1771, others 1772. It was probably modelled on those by Zumpe who had also worked for Shudi. The "old man's head" or "mop-stick" action was very simple with no escapement. The hammers were knocked up to the strings by pads of leather fixed to the ends of thick brass wires inserted into the backs of the keys. Like the clavichord the wrest pins were at the right-hand side and the hitch pins at the back. There was either a single hand-stop for raising all the dampers or two hand-stops for raising the brass and treble sections independently.

In 1780 Broadwood reconstructed the square piano, moving the wrest plank and the hitch pin block to the right and fitting an action with under-dampers that were not pushed up to the strings by springs but were counter-weighted. The range of the piano was five octaves and it was patented in 1783. Broadwood began making grands in 1781 with the English action which, with little modification, the firm continued using for over 100 years. There was a sustaining pedal and for something like half a century it was a divided pedal, each half raising its own section of dampers.

The player could depress the pedal easily if he wished. The dampers were the stick types similar to the harpsichord jack but with no plectrum and with a stop rail above. Some authorities, including the Oxford Companion, state that Merlin patented the una corda pedal in 1774 and that Broadwood invented the sustaining pedal in 1783, so I was fascinated a few years ago when I heard there was a Backers grand of 1772 in the Russell Museum, Edinburgh with two pedals. One of our students at the Royal National College for the Blind was nearby and in 1976 he kindly agreed to visit the museum. He reported that it has two pedals, one on each front leg pointing inwards. The right is a sustaining pedal, the left an una corda, so we may conclude Americus Backers was the first to use them. The piano is the oldest grand in working order in Britain; its number is 29. On his deathbed in 1781 he commended his invention to his friends Robert Stodart and John Broadwood. In 1781 Broadwood shipped to Paris a harpsichord and piano for Clementi's continental concert tour taking in Strasbourg, Munich and Vienna. John Broadwood became sole proprietor of Shudi and Broadwood in the following year. In 1783 he was experimenting with a box-like soundboard, possibly along the lines of the violin principle, and I should think there must have been a sound post or sound posts between the two boards. There is a Broadwood grand of 1787 with the number 203 at the Colt Clavier Collection which I have been privileged to see, probably the oldest by its maker to survive. Although most sources think metal was rarely used in the construction of pianos until a little later than this time, there were small pieces of metal between the wrest plank and belly head just about at the points where the breakers would be expected to be found on later models.

In 1778 Broadwood asked for advice on string tension and length from two experts in physical science at the British Museum. This resulted in the divided bridge for grands taking the place of the continuous bridge which had previously served for both treble and bass, and the adoption of the ninth proportion of the string's length for the striking position, allowing some latitude in the treble. Not all makers took up the divided bridge and it was usual for Viennese pianos to have the undivided bridge up until 1820. The divided bridge had to be implemented of before cross-stringing could be realised. Broadwood extended the compass to five and a half octaves in 1790 as a note in the company's books from 1793 tells us: "We have made some five and a half octave grands these three years past. The first to please Dussek which being liked John Cramer had one." Three years later they made pianos with six octaves for Dussek, going down to the bottom C. Dussek was the first to play with his right side towards his audience, and being rather good looking they had the benefit of his attractive profile. Haydn must have thought much of the English pianos, for after visiting London in 1794 he took back three Broadwood Pianos with him to Vienna. The firm of Broadwood & Son was founded when the oldest son James Shudi joined the firm. Before the end of the century there were 454 piano makers in London. Broadwood produced about 6,000 squares and 1,000 grands between 1780 and 1800. The Industrial Revolution was in full flood and the firm was the first to adopt some of the new methods of production, including a form of assembly line with workmen assigned particular jobs, and it introduced steam power probably early in the nineteenth century. About the turn of the century they were making some 700 pianos annually as against their nearest Viennese rival's 50. Also about this time they became manufacturers to His Majesty and Princesses. The earliest tuning fork I can find for C is one they were using with a pitch of 107 CPUs, about half a semitone lower than British Standard Pitch of today.

Broadwood's business was thriving and instruments were sent far and wide. A letter of about 1800 says: "The instrument most fashionable here is the Grand Pianoforte sold retail at 70 guineas in plain case and ornamented at 85 guineas. We send many to St. Petersburg and Moscow but we believe that none have found their way to Copenhagen, if you will permit us to send such a one." Another letter of 1802 sounds as if it had been written yesterday, "We hope to be able to send you a small Pianoforte this or next week. At present, from the great and unexpected demand, we have none to sell." Customers did not always pay up even in those days. They wrote to a Dr. Baker of Derby: "if you do not pay within a few days you will be arrested." When, in 1802, Broadwood's were offered a harpsichord in part exchange for a piano they replied: "from their almost total disuse they are unsalable," which shows how completely the harpsichord had fallen from favour within only thirty to forty years. By 1804 James Shudi Broadwood had drawn sketches for a cabinet or fairly large upright which he gave to Southwell, the maker from Dublin. Three years later Southwell made a piano derived from the sketches, fitting it with the sticker action of his own invention. There was fire on the 20th of March 1807 at the Clementi factory, with an estimated capital loss of some £40,000 for which the insurance accounted for £15,000. Broadwood, Clementi's chief rivals, came to his aid, helping him to fulfil orders, and Broadwood's workmen collected enough money among themselves to re-equip Clementi's men with the tools of their trade.

Thomas joined his brother James Shudi in 1807 in his father's firm and it became Broadwood & Sons. During the following year, on discovering that the framework was distorted by the increased tension from the strings caused by the greater compass, and in an effort to achieve stability, James Shudi added three metal bracing or tension bars in the treble of their grands. They also brought out a transposing piano. Under protest in 1810 they made a grand with a swell like Shudi's harpsichord of 1769. Four metal bars were used in 1818, the year Thomas Broadwood wrote to Beethoven, offering him a piano. Beethoven wrote back in February, "I shall regard it as a altar upon which I will place the choicest offerings of my mind to the Divine Apollo." He was very appreciative of the six-octave grand given him, preferring the bigger tone of the English piano. One wonders how it survived the journey after being shipped to Trieste in the spring and taken to Vienna by mule over mountain passes and roads no better than rough tracks. It did need attention and Cipriano Potter, an English pianist in Vienna at the time, was able to put it into working order. The piano still exists. Incidentally Potter returned to London in 1821, became the first professor of the piano at the Royal Academy of Music and was appointed its second principal in 1832, where he remained until 1859. I wonder how many heads of colleges and academies today could turn their hands to straightening up such a piano. It seems Broadwood's lowest pitch was A-433 in 1820. In 1821 Samuel Herve, one of the firm's workmen, hit on the idea of filling up some of the space in pianos with metal plate. He applied the first metal hitch pin plate to their squares while the grands apparently had three to five tensioning bars in combination with the hitch pin plate. Cramer welcomed Moscheles to London and invited him to share a concert and to contribute the last movement of a sonata. It was probably after this concert, for which a Broadwood was used, that Moscheles wrote the following:

"The strong metal plates used in building these pianos gives a heaviness of touch but a fullness of vocal resonance to the tone." It's not clear to me how the bracing bars and metal hitch pin plate could alter the touch. It rather reminds me of a client of mine who assured me that a piano with ivory-covered keys always sounds better than one with plastic. During the next year, 1823, we find Moscheles borrowing Beethoven's piano when he played in Vienna. By now it was not in very good condition and Conrad Graf agreed to put it in good order again. After visiting Beethoven in 1824 the London harp maker Johann Stump said of the piano: "What a spectacle offered itself to my view! There was no sound left in the treble and broken strings were mixed up like a thorn bush after a gale." Beethoven's deafness necessitated heavy playing and whether he could hear anything at all towards the end is doubtful. In 1825 Erard, the great rival firm of the time, obtained a patent in England for a method of fixing iron bars to the wooden braces by means of bolts passing through holes cut in the soundboard. The iron frame of a modern grand is attached in a similar way, and although Broadwood used bars as early as 1808, controversy was to arise later as to who was first in the field. Broadwood took out a patent for solid bars in combination with a fixed metal string plate in 1827, sometime after their invention. In 1825 they fitted a curious check action in a square piano with a projection below the hammer like a beak. Rising prices are always with us and it is interesting to compare Broadwood's price list of 1815 with that of 1828. The 1815 list reads as follows:

"Six-octave Grand £40.10; six-octave ornamented Grand £46; six-octave upright Grand £46; six-octave Cabinet £33.2; six-octave ornamented Cabinet £48; six-octave Cabinet with additional keys £31; Square with rounded corners and compass C to C £22.15; Square with double-action £18.3; Square with single-action £17.6; Square (elegant) £26." Now the list for May 1 1828: "Square F to F in plain case 36 guineas. The same type banded with rose-wood 41 guineas. Square in plain case with circular ends 38 guineas. Square banded with rose-wood with circular ends 44 guineas. New patent six-octave F to F with metallic plate £55. A charge of 4 guineas to be made for fixing drawers to either of the above. Cottage six-octave F to F square front 50 guineas; Cottage Superior with six-octave and square front 55 guineas; the same with cylinder front 55 guineas. Cabinet with six octaves 65 guineas. Cabinet elegant, 70 guineas. Cabinet with six octaves in rose-wood case 75 guineas." In the second list we see the Cottage mentioned and the dropping of the single-action square. This was the "Old Man's Head" type superseded by the "Double-Action" which had a hopper at the back of the key like the sticker. During Queen Victoria's reign, 1837-1901, on the falls of their grands, uprights and on the name-boards of their squares can be found "Manufacturers to Her Majesty and the Royal Family."

In 1846 we find Walter Broadwood directing Alfred James Hipkins to instruct their tuners in the use of equal temperament. In 1844 Hipkins found that the tuners were having trouble relinquishing a variety of the meantone tuning system. Equal temperament had long since demonstrated the advantages of being able to play in all keys and was used before this date, particularly by German makers, while organ-builders preferred the older method for longer. When Chopin toured in Scotland in 1848 a Broadwood grand was often hired, costing, even in London, 20 guineas. Hipkins was the tuner, and he preferred equal temperament, so there is a good chance the piano used by Chopin was in equal temperament. For at least one of his recitals, Chopin was paid 150 guineas. Hipkins was impressed with Chopin's playing and immediately afterward bought the music to find out what he had listened to. Earlier in Vienna Chopin enjoyed playing on pianos by Graf with wooden frames, so it is not surprising that Hipkins says: "He especially liked Broadwood's Boudoir Cottage Pianos of that date, only two strings but a very sweet instrument, and he found pleasure in playing on them." We have in our little museum at the RNC a Broadwood Cottage Grand of 1848 with a definitely much sweeter tone than the Erard which Chopin often played. A thing which strikes one is the short prop-stick often employed at this period allowing the top to be lifted to a height where it has given me more than one nasty bang on the face. A year before Chopin's last visit here they had invented their special concert iron frame with diagonal tension bar and transverse tension bar. This type of frame was used until 1895. On the bass end of their grand soundboards of this period is inscribed: "Notice to Tuners. Patent pin piece screw pins. Pins being screwed into the metal and wood must not be struck with the hammer. Should a string break take the coils off without drawing the pin then turn the pin one eighth and one sixteenth, cut the new length of wire of three inches behind the pin and insert the end in the drilled hole." From 1849 to 1854 their medium pitch was A-445.9. We quite frequently hear music on pianos of that time at a lower pitch, even on the radio, and are told sometimes that it conforms with the pitch used. Around the middle of the century about one third as many instruments were being made in France as compared with the total production in England, which was calculated at 23,000. Of these Broadwood made 2,300 and Collard 1,500 annually. By 1851 Broadwood's factory was the biggest of its kind in the world. The building was three storeys high, 300 feet long, with 300 work benches, a separate steam-engine house and a weekly payroll of £1,000. There were 600 pianos permanently out on rentals from 12 shillings to £2.12.6. a month, ten delivery trucks with much business on credit, and sometimes there was an annual write-off of £10,000. Many books written about the piano give different dates for the invention of the iron frame, with Babcok's patent for a square grand of the 17th of December 1826 being the favourite. Hipkins stated in 1851 that Broadwood had been the first to make grands with a complete cast-iron frame. It seems hard to believe but apparently in 1880 Brinsmead, Broadwood, Erard, and Steinway used a pitch of A-455455.3, although a New York tuning fork of Steinway is said to have a pitch of 458. So I'm afraid if we really must have authenticity in all things, then before Liszt, Brahms, etc. can be performed on pianos of the age, there are going to be a lot more broken strings. During his London visit of 1886 Liszt was persuaded to write to Broadwood commending the tone of one of their instruments that he heard at Grosvenor Gallery: "No pianofortes last so well as Broadwood's." Indeed they were well-made to judge by the great number still on most tuners' rounds in working order. Henry John Shudi Broadwood in 1888 made the first barless steel frame employing rolled boiler steel of graduated thickness in place of the cast iron frame. It had a fine reputation in the trade, and some say it was the best grand in its various sizes ever made. Sadly because of the shortage of materials during the First World War it went out of production. By 1894 they had made 195,420 instruments. Their Concert Grand was 8 ft. 6 in., the Drawing Room Grand was 7 ft. 9 in, the Semi 7 ft. 3 in., the Boudoir 7 ft. 1 in., and the Short Grand 6 ft. 3 in. The firm became a limited company in 1901 and moved from Great Puttney Street in 1904 where they had been since Shudi's time of 1742.

They were one of the few firms to make their own player actions, patenting it under the name "Artist Tone." The later models could transpose an accompaniment six semitones and sold for £84, while other makes could cost up to £3125. King George V and Queen Mary toured the factory at Bow Street in 1926 and the following year they bought a Broadwood for Buckingham Palace and the Queen bought one for Sandringham. In 1931 they, along with other makers, experienced difficulties, and Challens agreed to make their pianos under licence. While the Second World War was on, not many pianos were made in Europe and the British Government issued a regulation that production should be concentrated so Broadwood, Marshall and Rose, and Rogers approached Welmar where they made pianos at Clapham. Broadwood began making their own pianos after the war with Kemble's, producing some uprights more recently. After forty years Broadwood's moved from Hanover Street to 12 Edgware Road. Under new management and a new coat of paint in 1976 they introduced a new upright at the Frankfurt Fair called the "Omega." Part of their newsletter of July, 1977, reads: "Here are a few details of our new grand piano the Model 250 as displayed at the August Trade Fair: length 6 ft. 10 in., the scale is based on the superb Model 246, with new bass and treble bridges, and a completely new under-bracing designed to give greatest ability making the instrument ideal for concert, hire or home use. The casework has been comprehensively re-modelled with special emphasis on music desk and lyre layout, resulting in a grand piano for the 1980s but brilliantly incorporating all the traditional features which have made Broadwood a household name for centuries." It was due for release the following year, 1978, but the one shown in London at the British Musical Instrument Trade Fair during August was being supplied to the Queen in her Jubilee year so it is not surprising that the frame was painted silver. I am sure we all wish them success with the new venture and congratulate them on their anniversary.

W. Edward Wilkins.

Copyright © 1977, W. Edward Wilkins.