The good qualities of Erard's action, completed in 1821, the germ of
which will be found in the later Cristofori, are not, however, due to
repetition capability, but to other causes, chiefly, I will say, to
counterpoise. The radical defect of repetition is that the repeated
note can never have the tone-value of the first; it depends upon the
mechanical contrivance, rather than the finder of the player, which is
directly indispensable to the production of satisfactory tone. When the
sensibility of the player's touch is lost in the mechanical action, the
corresponding sensibility of the tone suffers; the resonance is not,
somehow or other, sympathetically excited.
Erard rediscovered an upward bearing, which had been accomplished by
Cristofori a hundred years before, in 1808. A down-bearing bridge to the
wrest-plank, with hammers striking upward, are clearly not in relation;
the tendency of the hammer must be, if there is much force used, to
lift the string from its bearing, to the detriment of the tone. Erard
reversed the direction of the bearing of the front bridge, substituting
for a long, pinned, wooden bridge, as many little brass bridges as there
were notes.
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