Is it possible to make a organ-size piano?

Question

The organ is a truly epic instrument, being enormous, capable of outputting sound volume surpassing a whole symphonic orchestra… having multiple keyboards, including pedal keyboard, and additionally a number of switches or pulls of who-knows-what purpose…

Well, I had an idea to make a similarly epic instrument, ‘epic’ in terms of size, complexity, and power, however based on a grand piano, not on pipes. Does this idea of mine of ‘pumping up the piano’ make any sense musically?

• Assuming we just make an enormous grand piano, as large as the organ, would it be capable of producing interesting sound? Or would it be impossible for such large strings to play well? What about tuning? EDIT: OK, I get it that making the strings that huge is practically unfeasible. So, what about multiplying strings instead? Instead of making one huge string producing a particular sound, make a number of strings of normal size and put them in a row.
• One obvious problem is that the hammers of such a piano would have to strike the strings with enormous force… Hopefully however this problem is solvable, and in a number of ways: • by employing another person to pull some kind of a weight to give the instrument enough kinematic energy; • by including some wind-up mechanism to store the necessary potential energy for later use while playing; • by powering the instrument with a water turbine, wind turbine, with a little more advanced technology with a steam or gasoline engine, and nowadays, of course, with electricity?
• Would it make sense to add greater complexity to such a piano? For example, borrowing the idea of organ stops, combination actions, multiple keyboards, etc.,, we could include multiple sets of strings in such a piano, with each set producing a slightly different tone; and we could have one keyboard per set of stings. Each key could be connected to a number of strings, allowing us to control the exact sound of a note or even play whole chords with one keystroke; switches would control which strings are connected to which keys while playing. Like in organs, presets could be made and remembered either mechanically or electronically, and these presets could be switched while playing.

I guess the imagination can go ad infinitum here… yet such an instrument is absent in real life. Is it absent because no one has ever seen the need for it (especially taking into account how costly it would be to manufacture it, and how difficult would designing such an instrument be), or is it maybe absent because the whole idea makes no sense?

Answer 1

A piano: This is an instrument that produces its sound when a hammer is slammed down upon a string corresponding with the note that's been pressed. Scaling up a piano would mean larger strings and larger strings lead to a lower pitch of sound according to its "scale length" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scale_length_(string_instruments) ) for more information about this.

Realistic depiction of upscaled piano: With it being established that the longer string gives a lower pitch sound it can be compensated by putting tension on the strings as is done with a guitar, though this causes more stress on materials as well as the strings losing tension causing the instrument to go out of tune hindering its practicality.

Complexity: Adding complexity to your device as in more keyboards and other tools present on an organ but not a conventional piano would vastly increase the range of tones you would be able to play with the instrument, leading to the possibility to compose unique sections of piano music playable despite potential massive tone difference between them. (Whether this is beautiful is a second, it's just possible).

I hope this answers your question to some extent.

Edit: As mentioned before in the complexity bit, adding more strings to produce different sounds at the same pitch is very feasible granted your materials can handle the stress from so many strings.

Answer 2

Such a piano has already been made in real life. It is Klavins Klavier Modell 370 by David Klavins:

(the above image is from Wikimedia Commons by Maximilian Schönherr, licensed under GFDL 1.2 or any later, or under CC BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 2.5, CC BY-SA 2.0, and CC BY-SA 1.0)

This vertically laid-out piano is 370 centimeters tall (hence the name), spans two floors, and its longest bass string is 3.03 meters long, which is around three times longer than in an ordinal piano. As of 2012, it is the world’s largest piano.

Also see Wikipedia article and documentary by Deutsche Welle.