Mid-18th-century Upright Piano

 For three centuries, the answer to this question has varied according to who you ask. Our conclusion based on an analysis of the many books and articles on various instrument types, is that this should be considered an early type of upright piano. But that deserves some explanation:
 At the same time that the piano was being invented by Cristofori in Italy around 1700, a flamboyant German virtuoso named Pantaleon Hebenstreit was popularizing a type of large complex dulcimer that he played with a variety of hand-held hammers. His instrument had no keyboard and came to be called a pantalon. So popular were Hebenstreit’s performances that some harpsichord makers in Germany and elsewhere began making instruments with keyboards to operate the hammers so anyone with keyboard ability could imitate Hebenstreit’s performances. Since these makers were basing their instruments on Hebenstreit’s pantalon and not on Cristofori’s piano, some period references and a few scholars today call such an instrument a “keyboard pantalon” or just a pantalon. Michael Cole’s web page Pianoforte & Pantalon explains his logic for calling the Nazareth upright a pantalon.
 Those early keyboard instruments designed to imitate the pantalon, of which the Nazareth instrument is an example, were distinguishable for having several characteristics that differed from Cristofori’s piano: (1) bare wood hammers or thinly leathered wood hammers, (2) lack of dampers or dampers that could be left off, and (3) one or more stops to soften the sound, such as cloth or soft leather inserted between hammers and strings in imitation of the gut strings of Hebenstreit’s pantalon. But there is a problem with calling instruments with those characteristics pantalons and not pianos. As those effects gained popularity, most of the pianos made in the 18th century incorporated one or more of those characteristics. That leads to an imponderable question: when does a "keyboard pantalon" stop being a pantalon and become a piano? The best solution, we think, is to define piano as any stringed keyboard instrument with hammers that strike the strings. Then we can hasten to add how much the design of any particular piano is influenced by Hebenstreit’s pantalon performances. In the case of the Nazareth piano, there is much more influence from Hedbenstreit than from Cristofori’s original concept of a piano, so we'll call it piano with strong pantalon characteristics.
 For a clear analysis of 18th-century piano history in terms of the commingling of Cristofori’s invention of the piano with varying amounts of influence from Hebenstreit’s pantalon performances, see Michael Latcham’s book, Towards a new history of the piano published by Musikverlag Katzbichler in 2019.

 The upright piano at the Moravian Historical Society in Nazareth is likely the oldest surviving piano made in North America, and therefore could represent the beginning of what would eventually grow into a major American piano-manufacturing industry. Its pantalon-style design makes it a rare example of an early strain of piano design that was important and influential, but often overlooked. Like the Moravian people themselves, this early species of piano came to Pennsylvania from Saxony in the area around Dresden. If our attribution of the piano’s maker is correct (see next question), the instrument is of great importance also for being the best preserved of only two surviving instruments by British colonial America’s first professional keyboard instrument maker. Finally, the Nazareth upright piano is important for its excellent state of preservation with hardly any alterations from past restorations.

 Although the piano is not marked with a maker’s name, our recent examination and research reveal many clues that strongly suggest an attribution. Johann Gottlob Klemm (1690-1762), who later Anglicized his name to John Clemm, was trained in building organs and other keyboard instruments in Dresden. He befriended and eventually built a harpsichord for Count Nicolaus von Zinzendorf, founder of the Renewed Moravian Church in the Saxon town of Herrnhut. Clemm immigrated to America in 1733, two years before the first group of Moravians came from Zinzendorf’s Herrnhut estate.
 Considered the first professional organ builder in colonial America, Clemm continued building organs and other types of keyboard instruments throughout his life. He is best known for training the most celebrated early American organ builder, David Tannenberg. Clemm lived with the Tannenbergs in the latter part of his life, including two years (1759-60) at Nazareth's Whitefield house, where the upright piano is thought to have spent its entire history.
 Attribution to Clemm is based on several circumstances which, taken together, are compelling:

• The use of North American woods (Atlantic white cedar and yellow poplar) in the casework indicate the instrument was made on this side of the Atlantic and not imported from the Old Country.
• The combination of black walnut with white cedar in the instrument is linked to Clemm through at least two other instruments: his only surviving instrument, a 1739 spinet at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is walnut with a white cedar soundboard, and Clemm's original specifications for an organ he was to build for Trinity Church in New York specified those two woods for the windchest.
• Assuming a construction date between 1745 and 1765 (about which there is more evidence below), the list of skilled instrument makers operating in America is very short, with Clemm being the one most likely skilled and experienced enough to make such an instrument.
• The straightforward and sophisticated design of the casework and its mechanical action, along with the lack of naïve mistakes often present in less informed and experimental work indicates a maker with a great deal of experience making keyboard instruments. This is a type of evidence that only becomes clear during the process of making an accurate reproduction.
• The instrument hints at the maker’s orientation to organ design in the use of a trundle in the stop action.
• The unusual scaling of the string lengths suggests an organ builder’s bias and a construction date prior to 1765: The piano’s scaling scheme was used for organ pipes (not piano or harpsichord strings) from the middle of the 17th century until it was replaced with an approach based on logarithms. Pennsylvania organ builders adopted the logarithmic scheme in 1765 when its inventor, German theorist Georg Andreas Sorge, sent his treatise to Clemm and Tannenberg. For more about the scale evidence, write to us.

 As an early upright piano made in America, this piano is unique. Pianos in an upright form did not begin to appear with any regularity in America until at least the end of the eighteenth century.
 In the larger history of the piano, however, this example is not entirely unique. Back in Saxony in the 1730s, as Clemm and the group of Moravians were leaving Germany for America, pantalon-inspired keyboard instruments of various upright, rectangular, and harpsichord-like shapes were beginning to appear.

 Restoration is an interpretive process. Musical and mechanical characteristics that have been lost over time have to be re-imagined by the restorer. While this results in an instrument we assume to be just like the original when it was newer, we do not really know how much the restored instrument reflects the vision of the restorer rather than that of the original maker. That is why for the most important historical instruments, it is better to leave the original instrument untouched and make an accurate copy instead. The same interpretations must be made where original details have been lost over time, but interpretations in a copy do not impact the original historical document. If we get something wrong in the reproduction, the original instrument remains untouched and can inform an even more accurate reconstruction in the future.