Forum: from another thread, the use of the Sostenuto pedal came up which I wrote up seperately.. Here it is:

Tuning and Other Uses for the Sostenuto Pedal

You can use the Sostenuto pedal while tuning (with or without strip mutes) intervals wider than an octave. For example, you can use it to compare a double octave and octave and fifth or to sound any combination of related notes to achieve a balanced compromise. If the piano has no Sostenuto pedal, you can still use the damper pedal in the same way as you would the Sostenuto, that is, sound the notes first and while holding, press the pedal. You'll hear a little more "noise" that way than with the Sostenuto but still be able to hear clearly what you want.

In a vertical piano, if you strip mute the treble, you usually slide the strip mutes under the dampers and thus they are held open while you're tuning the treble and so you don't need a pedal. When you get to the end of the dampers in the treble in grands or verticals, you don't need the Sostenuto pedal thereafter to tune widely spaced intervals.

More uses for the Sostenuto: Some musical instruments have a key that you never or rarely use when playing, it is more of a service key. Similarly, you may think of the Sostenuto as such an item. Very few musical compositions call for the Sostenuto, so if it isn't working properly, the pianist may never notice but the technician should. I think of it more as the technician's pedal. You can use it when concentrating on fine tuning unisons. Hold the damper open with the pedal and lightly sound the note as it decays rather than letting the damper stop it. It will help you perceive the slightest beat.

Also, you may use it similarly in regulation or diagnosis of a problem. In regulating very fine and close let off, for example, it holds the damper out of the way while you get your exacting regulation. In diagnosis such as a double striking hammer or "sticking key", it takes away the "help" a damper may be giving the action so you can spot the trouble.

Great tip Bill. I can't beleive I haven't tried it before. Really helps clean up those unisons.

I have used the sostenuto for sounding f2 against the a4 fork to help set a4 - someting that takes three hands for me without it.

While there are certainly many pianists who believe so, this is completely wrong. The sustenuto pedal is a valuable way of expression in many compositions, from Bach to Chopin to Debussy.

I've never heard of any specific indications other than in some late 19th Century compositions. Maybe you could enlighten us.

Grainger calls for it a lot. Sessions uses it in his first sonata.

An example of where it would be useful is the b minor Capriccio of Brahms. If you follow Brahms pedal markings, of which there are only two, the sostenuto pedal would be more appropriate than the damper pedal, but Brahms did not have a sostenuto pedal. However, most people do not play it as Brahms wrote it, and use a lot more pedal.

This reminds me of the time I saw Andreas Schiff perform the Moonlight sonata in concert. The score says "con pedale", not "step on it". But that's exactly what he did, sat down put his foot on the pedal an never took it off until the end of the first movement. It was the worst performance of this music I have ever heard.

The most famous piece requiring the sos pedal would be the Rach prelude in C# minor. Other than that it's not used very often with the commonly played repetoire.

That's what I would have said. I also know of a piece by Tchaikovsky and know that Debussy indicated it sometimes but not where specifically. These uses for other composers are fine if the pianist knows what he is doing but especially for Bach, he never even had a piano let alone a Sostenuto pedal. Most people I know never use it at all that I am aware of. Some press it down and observing that it does "nothing" call to have it "fixed". Time for "free" telephone diagnosis if you ask me.

I use the sostenuto pedal all the time when I tune but virtually never while playing (only for DeBussy's "Reverie"). I would truly hate not having one during tuning.

I'm very glad to see that you do use the Sostenuto pedal this way! I only hope that your signature, "Well-Tempered Forum" also means that you have discovered what wonders well tempering can do for Debussy.

Actually, it was DeBussy that led me down that path in the first place. I've always had incredibly sensitive ears and my music instructor in high school said I had the best sense of pitch she'd ever encountered. I'm not convinced there's truly such a thing as "perfect" pitch, but I've no doubt some are more accurate than others. It was while playing DeBussy that I first felt that a good even temperament tuning just sounded quite wrong on every one of the five pianos I owned (especially throughout "Reverie", but also "Clair de Lune"). I mentioned over at the forum linked in that sig line that when I recently tuned the Chickering to your EBVT after my recent move and played "Reverie" afterward, it truly brought tears to my eyes. With the EBVT, the piano sounds just exactly like my mind's ear expects it to. The individual pitchs of a single note sound right and the way they stand apart clearly and cleanly from each other, even while perfectly complementing each other, during big chords or arpeggios is nothing short of thrilling. My time on tuning is getting better along with the quality of my tunings. I find the EBVT much easier to tune than any other temperament I've ever tried. I'm certain I did a good job of the others, but I found the process much more difficult to judge by interval checks throughout. Not so with EBVT. And now that I have a room about six times larger than the old one and with lush carpet, I find myself hearing the sound of the piano very easily without all the reverberations a smaller room entailed. (Helps, too, that the room is irregularly shaped with no parallel walls.)

The following book is the "bible" for pedaling and contains an extra chapter only on the sostenuto pedal, with many examples:

"The Pianists Guide to Pedaling" by Joseph Banowetz. Available at Amazon.

Banowetz even shows some examples where all 3 pedals are used simultanously. Very interesting reading, not only for prefessional pianists.

I'm postfessional, myself.

Thank you very much for your comments, Chick Grand. One of the features of the Well Tempered sound is that it actually does put the emotion back into music which a totally Equal Temperament removes. Not only is the EBVT designed to bring out the best a piano has to offer but is easy to replicate by any person who reads the instructions.

Actually, Bill, the score says " . . . Senza Sordino," which translates literally to "Without Mute." Some translate this to "with pedal," but it is pretty well documented that Beethoven would simply mash the pedal and play. It requires extremely delicate playing - which is also specified by Beethoven in the score.

I agree, though, that on a modern piano it's a big mess if played this way. That must have been hard to listen to. It is a much more interesting effect on the period instruments.

I remember thinking that not using the pedal in this way could have worked with a fortepiano because the decay is much quicker. On a Bösendorfer Imperial Concert Grand, one phrase ran into the other. It sounded like someone who didn't know what he was doing. I kept looking to see if the pedal was stuck. It was not at all pleasant.

yuck, those big Bosies always sound like they have a cold in the head anyways.