Overlapping of sounds in piano passages

It is well known that, in piano passages, specifically, in those played legato, sounds may overlap in time. Our experiments show that this overlapping is much greater than one would expect proceeding from the undistorted pitch perception in a given phrase. Moreover, the sounds produced by piano and perceived by a listener as clearly distinguished in pitch, when subjected to an objective analysis, may prove to be a mixture of equally intense components of the preceding and next sounds. This phenomenon is related to the problem of piano quality, including the still unclarified role of the damper system, as well as to the mysterious manifestation of pianist’s personality that is called the art of touch.