In 1777 Mozart had visited the Stein factories, then in Augsburg, and had been much pleased by a device with which Stein’s pianos were equipped: a lever, worked by the knee, which lifted the dampers from all the strings at once, allowing them a fuller and richer vibration in loud passages than was necessary in softer ones. This _genouillière_ soon gave way to the _pedal_ which had been invented for the same purpose by the English manufacturers. Pedal effects distinguish pianoforte music from harpsichord music perhaps more than any other feature. These are chiefly effects of sonority, of combining in one relatively sustained mass of sound notes which lie far apart on the keyboard, outside the span of the hand. These notes, of course, cannot be struck together, but, when struck one after the other, can be blended and sustained by means of the pedal. There must be supposed in the pianoforte a tone which unaided will vibrate longer after its string has been struck than the dry, short tone of the harpsichord. Such a sustained, rich tone the Viennese pianos did not have. They suggested but few possibilities in pedal effects to Haydn and Mozart. For them the close spacing of harpsichord music was natural. They ventured little in wide combinations, in sonorous masses of sound. [Illustration] Beethoven’s Broadwood Pianoforte. _From a drawing made on the day after his funeral_. The English action, on the other hand, was more resilient and more powerful, the tone of the English pianos correspondingly fuller and richer. The instruments at once suggested a range of effects quite different from the harpsichord. Thus Clementi begins as early as 1770 to build up a new keyboard technique, demanding strength as well as fleetness and lightness, using octaves, double notes, heavy chords and wider and wider spacing. This becomes the new idea of playing the piano. Mozart is judged by contemporaries who have heard Clementi and his pupils, to have little technique, i.e. in the new style. He is still a cembalist. Composers have a new power within their control, the power to stir now by mere volume of sound, to do more than please or amuse, to impress by power and breadth of style. The piano becomes second in volume, in quick changing variety and multiplicity of effects only to the orchestra. Sonatas approach the symphony in depth and meaning. The ideas of the new style are spread over Europe by Clementi and his disciples. The great maker of pianofortes in Paris, Sebastian Érard, copies the English action.