Having reached home, you will possibly be haunted so completely by some theme in the opera that you will reproduce it on your piano. And what a marvel you have at your hand - a complete orchestra (if the piano be a good one), an instrument that has advanced so enormously on the harpsichord you heard that, beyond the common possession of a keyboard, the two seem ages apart, in a way that Mozart, in his most optimistic moments, could never have dreamt of. In short, in the course of this one evening you have traversed the whole range of the evolution of the piano.
Few people have done more to obliterate the similarity between that harpsichord and your piano than the Brinsmeads, as I shall attempt to show. Even between the pianos which they turned out when they started and on the instruments that are ranged row on row in their gleaming cases at Wigmore street there is an enormous difference, as great, indeed, as the transformation of the world as we know it from the England of pre-Victorian times when William the Fourth still reigned, and while Victoria was still the pretty Princess of Kensington Palace. Sixty years of enormoous advance in science could not have left the primitive piano of 1836 unaffected. Those sixty years have brought forth master mechanicians of every type : among them the house of Brinsmead to the third generation - father, sons, and grandsons - each handing on to the other the gift of accumulating experience, until to-day they turn out the best pianos you may meet.
It was in 1836 that John Brinsmead started business, and, strange to say, he lives to see the marvellous fruit that his original ingenuity nurtured. Mr. Brinsmead put brains and conscience into his business, and in the end he had also to put in his sons, Thomas and Edgar, to bear the burden of the expansion which followed his notable endeavors. For the business was bound to increase. People found that a Brinsmead was an excellent article, and naturally recommended it ; while each generation was presented by its predecessor with a newer type of the firm's work. Besides this expansion by means of recommendation, there has been the gradual increase of prosperity which has enabled all classes to avail themselves of the artistic side of life ; so that the piano has penetrated to the stratum of the Board School child, whose very fees have been thrown on the rates. That is why there is no end to the making and selling of pianos ; for while the old ones last for an indefinite period, new ones of better make are constantly needed to satisfy the demands of the widening audience which the spread of money and the raising of ideals following on compulsory primary education have created.
To a firm like the Brinsmeads, with the energy of youth (based ever on experience), with ingenuity and enterprise, this constant expansion has been an incentice to keep in the very front, so that at the present time, they occupy the most honourable position, their pianos sounding everywhere - in the palaces of the Queeen and the Pope, in the spacious saloons of a P. and O. boat, and in numberless private houses of every degree scattered throughout the length and breadth of the empire.
The actual work of making the pianos is carried out at Kentish Town under the direction of Mr. Thomas James Brinsmead, the elder son of the founder of the firm ; the more purely business side of the enterprise is superintended in the spacious repository in Wigmore Street, Cavendish Square, by Mr. Edgar Brinsmead, one of the most remarkable figures in the modern commercial world. Some idea of the extent of the operations of the Brinsmeads will be gained from a glance at the Kentish Town Works, which adjoin the London and North-Western Railway Company's station. There you will find a perfect forest of wood, over a million feet of it, from every part of the world - oak, cedar, mahogany, rosewood, spruce, walnut, teak, beech, ash, poplar, and the like, waiting to be sawn and planed and polished, and converted into pianos.
The mere manipulation of this great forest of wood involves a carefulness which is difficult for the layman to grasp. Just consider that the wood has to be thoroughly seasonsed, not by artificial drying, but by long exposure to the air for three or four, or even eight years, and the interest on such stock alone is a very heavy item, to say nothing of the original cost of the material. Fine American walnut and mahogany, for instance, are worth over tenpence per foot.
But when you have said all this, you have only begun making your piano. Just consider that the action, keys, and pedal work alone are composed of 6,637 separate pieces in each piano, and you can see that the modern piano is more marvellous than Pandora's box. Where the Brinsmeads make an additional gain on other manufacturers is in their possession of some very valuable patents affecting the sounding-board, action, frame, and stringing and tuning apparatus. The first is really the lungs of the instrument, and is of the utmost importance. Here it is that the exceptional quality of the wood employed comes in. Then take the action. The ordinary piano produces a staccato sound. Not so the Brinsmeads', for they have invented the "perfect check repeater." Another notable innovation is the way they have delt with the string-frame. Remembering that the string-frame has to stand a strain of no less than nineteen and a half tons in a Brinsmead upright iron grand, and you will understand that the back must be made with extraordinary care to prevent something giving way. Here their "perfect wrest plank" comes in. Its excellence is shown by the fact that out of thirty thousand in use not one has ever split.
Such are some of the essentials of the good piano, and the Brinsmeads have thrown so much individuality into their work that their instruments might bear the motto of the old regiment, "Second to None." It is this excellence that has brought them the supreme recompense - the Legion of Honour - that is to say, the highest distinction that has ever been conferred on a pianoforte maker - and also more than fifty gold medals and other similar distinctions, the latest being granted at the Australian Exhibition at Brisbane last year.
The details of the whole delicate are are carried out with the same care and the same ingenuity. To wander through the spacious shops at Kentish Town and watch the whole process is extremely interesting. The plank-maker having prepared, veneered, and backed his planks, stores them for re-seasoning. Then the back-maker in due season unstores them, and manipulates them with bracings, bolts, screws ; and the iron front is pinned in position. Then you are ready to deal with the sounding-board, with its complicated strings, all fitted to a nicety, involving a practical knowledge of acoustics ; and there are the keys and hammers, the blocks and cloths, and the thousand and one little odds and ends to fit up.
But no written description can convey an adequate idea of the laborious but beautiful process of evolving the piano from raw material. Suffice it to say that we have now reached a point where the mechanism is equal to the musician, be he ever so exigent. What the future may bring forth no man may say. For the present, you may take it that a modern Brinsmead is fit for the work demanded of it by composers and executants as well.
