Piano on the Half Shell

The piano is dying. So is the pianist --of exhaustion. Or so claims Monique de la Bruchollerie, one of Europe's top concert pianists. Modern piano compositions have become so wickedly difficult to play that to get by today the pianist must be something of a contortionist--gyrating, flailing, crossing hands, crouching spread-eagle fashion to play both ends of the keyboard simultaneously. To rescue both piano and pianist from extinction, Monique has designed a new instrument--a kind of piano on the half shell.

Noting that watchmakers work at curved desks so that their tools are more accessible, she has designed a crescent-shaped keyboard that places the top and bottom keys within easier reach. In addition, she has converted the loud and soft pedals into bars extending the length of the curved keyboard. With feet freed from the center of the piano, she says, the pianist can then swing to either end of the keyboard without having to do a sitdown version of the twist.

She also proposes to tack on five notes at the bottom and ten notes at the top of the keyboard to expand the sound range of the standard piano (from 27.5 to 4,186 cycles per second) to come closer to the range of the human ear (from approximately 16 to 20,000 cycles). Her most far-reaching innovation is a pushbutton electronic system whereby the pianist can play from two to twelve notes simultaneously by striking one key. In effect, she says, this device "will give the player 30 fingers." It will also allow the piano to be "programmed" like a computer, multiplying its creative potential for modern composers, whose interest in writing for the piano has been flagging.

With the support of France's famed Pianist-Teacher Marguerite Long, Monique is negotiating with piano manufacturers. Despite engineering problems, she hopes to have a working model by the end of this year. To traditionalists who balk at her spaceage innovations, she explains: "The evolution of these instruments has been steady. The clavichord said all it could. Then came the pianoforte, and eventually it said all it could. The time has come to give the piano a new franchise, a new life. A golden era is opening for the piano, if only the piano is ready for it."

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