ome
piano bangers do so still; but every pianist who deserves the name
knows that loudness and softness must be regulated by the hands (and
very rarely the left-side pedal). Yet even among this better class of
pianists the notion seems to prevail that the main object of the
right-side pedal is to enable them to prolong a chord or to prevent a
confusion of consecutive harmonies. This is one of the functions of
the pedal, no doubt, but not the most important one. The chief service
of the pedal is _in the interest of tone-color_. Let me explain.

Every student of music knows that if you sing a certain tone into a
piano (after pressing the pedal), or before a guitar, the strings in
these instruments which correspond to the tone you sing will vibrate
responsively and emit a tone. He also knows that when you sound a
single note, say G, on the violin or piano, you seem to hear only a
simple tone, but on listening more closely you will find that it is
really a compound tone or a complete chord, the fundamental tone being
accompanied by faint overtones, which differ in number and relative
loudness in different instruments, and to which these instruments owe
their peculiar tone-color.

Now when you press the pedal of a pianoforte on striking a note you do
not only prolong this note, but its vibrations arouse all the notes
which correspond to its overtones, and the result is a rich deep
tone-color of exquisite sensuous beauty and enchanting variableness.
Hence, whenever the melodic movement and harmonic changes are not too
rapid, a pianist should press the pedal _constantly_, whether he plays
loudly or softly; because it is only when the damper is raised from
the strings that the overtones can enrich and beautify the sound by
causing their corresponding strings to vibrate in sympathy with them.
Those who heard Schumann play say that he used the pedal persistently,
sometimes twice in the same bar to avoid harmonic confusion; and the
same is true of Chopin, concerning whose playing an English amateur
says, after referring to his _legatissimo_ touch: "The wide arpeggios
in the left hand, _maintained in a continuous stream of tone_ by the
strict legato and fine and constant use of the damper pedal, formed an
harmonious substructure for a wonderfully poetic _cantabile_."

I have italicised and emphasized the words _maintained in a continuous
stream of tone_, because it calls attention to one of the numerous
resemblances between the