The
present school of pianoforte playing rejects this effect altogether, but
Beethoven valued it, and indicated its use in some of his great works.
Steibert called the _una corda_ the _celeste_, which is more appropriate
to it than Adam's application of this name to the harp-stop, by which
the latter has gone ever since.
Up to quite the end of the last century the dampers were continued to
the highest note in the treble. They were like harpsichord dampers
raised by wooden jacks, with a rail or stretcher to regulate their rise,
which served also as a back touch to the keys. I have not discovered the
exact year when, or by whom, the treble dampers were first omitted,
thus leaving that part of the scale undamped. This bold act gave the
instrument many sympathetic strings free to vibrate from the bridge when
the rest of the instrument was played, each string, according to its
length, being an aliquot division of a lower string. This gave the
instrument a certain brightness or life throughout, an advantage which
has secured its universal adoption. The expedients of an untouched
octave string and of utilizing those lengths of wire that lie beyond the
bridges have been brought into notice of late years, but the latter was
early in the century essayed by W.
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