The soft pedal, or una corda pedal, was invented by Bartolomeo Cristofori. It was the first mechanism invented to modify the piano's sound. This function is typically operated by the left pedal on modern pianos. Neither of its common names—soft pedal or una corda pedal—completely describe the pedal's function.
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"Hammerklavier" was part of the title to specify that the work was not to be played on the harpsichord, an instrument that was still very much in evidence in the early 1800s. The work also makes extensive use of the una corda pedal, with Beethoven giving for his time unusually detailed instructions when to use it.
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On the modern piano, the una corda pedal makes the hammers of the treble section hit two strings instead of three. In the case of the bass strings, the hammer normally strikes either one or two strings per note. The lowest bass notes on the piano are a single thicker string. For these notes, the action shifts the hammer so that it strikes the string on a different, lesser-used part of the hammer nose.
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In the 1940s Cherkassky moved to California. He appeared at the Hollywood Bowl with conductors such as Sir John Barbirolli and Leopold Stokowski, and he played the sound track (Beethoven's Appassionata Sonata) for the Bette Davis 1946 film Deception. He also played Stravinsky's Three Pieces from Petrushka for the composer, who advised him to use the 'una corda' pedal for certain loud passages in order to obtain a particular special effect. Concert engagements were infrequent for Cherkassky in California during World War II.
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Beethoven's Broadwood grand, presented as a gift to him from the Broadwood company in 1817, had an una corda pedal and a split damper pedal — one half was the damper for the treble strings, the other was for the bass strings.Crombie 1995:37-38. In an effort to give Beethoven an instrument loud enough for him to hear when his hearing was failing, Conrad Graf designed an instrument in 1824 especially for Beethoven with quadruple stringing instead of triple. Graf only made three instruments of this nature.
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The final fugue gradually increases in intensity and volume. After all three voices have entered, the bass introduces a diminution of the first fugue's subject (whose accent is also altered), while the treble augments the same subject with the rhythm across the bars. The bass eventually enters with the augmented version of the fugue subject in C minor, and this ends on E, the work's dominant. During this statement of the subject in the bass the pianist is instructed to gradually raise the una corda pedal.
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When all of the other strings on the piano can vibrate, this allows sympathetic vibration of strings that are harmonically related to the sounded pitches. For example, if the pianist plays the 440 Hz "A" note, the higher octave "A" notes will also sound sympathetically. The soft pedal or una corda pedal is placed leftmost in the row of pedals. In grand pianos it shifts the entire action/keyboard assembly to the right (a very few instruments have shifted left) so that the hammers hit two of the three strings for each note.
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This original German inventions from the early 20th century was widely introduced in the USA in the 1920s and permitted individual key dynamics and real "una corda" pedal effects. The Aeolian Company folded during the depression, but many rolls from artists like Hoffmann, Friedmann, Percy, Lamond, Paderewsky, Cortot and many others still exist and have been faithfully transferred to a series of CDs, e.g., the Grand Piano Series. The label was one of the first major Western classical labels to also record Indian classical music digitally and market alongside its Western counterpart.
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No pedal, soft pedal and practice pedal on an upright The soft pedal, or una corda pedal, decreases the volume of a piano. In grand pianos, this is done by shifting the hammers so that each hammer misses one of the multiple strings used for each note; in uprights, the soft pedal moves the hammers closer to the strings, making a softer impact. The middle pedal on most pianos is a sostenuto pedal, which does not perform a muting function. On some pianos, however, the middle pedal is a practice pedal, which lowers a piece of felt between the hammers and strings, muffling the sound.
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On upright pianos, the soft pedal operates a mechanism which moves the hammers' resting position closer to the strings. Since the hammers have less distance to travel this reduces the speed at which they hit the strings, and hence the volume is reduced, but this does not change tone quality in the way the una corda pedal does on a grand piano. Digital pianos often additionally use this pedal to modify non-piano sounds such as the organ, guitar, or saxophone in ways appropriate to those instruments' playing techniques. Pitch bends, Leslie speaker speed, vibrato, and so forth can thus be controlled in real-time.
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