attention to the action, most likely with the idea of combining the
English power of gradation with the German lightness of touch. Erard
claimed, in the specification to a patent for an action, dated 1808,
"the power of giving repeated strokes, without missing or failure, by
very small angular motions of the key itself."

Once fairly started, the notion of repetition became the dominant idea
with pianoforte-makers, and to this day, although less insisted upon,
engrosses time and attention that might be more usefully directed. Some
great players, from their point of view of touch, have been downright
opposed to repetition actions. I will name Kalkbrenner, Chopin, and, in
our own day, Dr. Hans von Buelow. Yet the Erard's repetition, in the form
of Hertz's reduction, is at present in greater favor in America and
Germany, and is more extensively used, than at any previous period.

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