Recording and mixing a French sound: The case of Beethoven’s Erard Frères piano

A newly built replica of Beethoven’s 1803 Erard Frères piano (Orpheus Institute, 2016–present) has allowed for a study of “Frenchness” through the sonic and embodied explorations of a well-known and all-important Viennese pianist-composer. Relevant to the ACTOR mission, the proposed collaborative research now builds on questions that emerged from a recording on the instrument in 2019, which featured music by Beethoven and French contemporaries Louis Adam and Daniel Steibelt.

On a fundamental level, we ask what differentiated a “French” from a “Viennese” sound; but taking into account the skills of both builder and player, along with the complex affordances of a particular type of instrument, we also ask what made Beethoven a “fast learner” on a new instrument and his Paris-based rival Steibelt an “expert” of a familiar one—one that lent itself well to what in France was known as son continu, or the skill of sustaining or “spinning” sound (which turned Steibelt into a widely recognized champion of the technique of tremolo).