U of Ideas of General Interest -- June 2000
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Contact: Melissa Mitchell, Arts Editor, (217) 333-5491; [email protected]
MUSIC
Book traces evolution of piano from home to pub and concert hall
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- These days if you want to listen to music, multiple options exist -- many at the touch of a button or two. You can turn on your radio, stereo or television; you can download music files on the Internet; or you can head down to the local music club or concert hall for a live-music fix.
"But not so long ago, to hear music, you had to produce it yourself -- or get close to someone who did," says UI musicologist Stephen Zank. And for much of the American middle class, the instrument of choice -- hands down -- was the piano. "Nearly everybody in America, allowing for our unfortunate distinctions in class, race or ethnicity, took piano lessons or knew someone who did," said Zank, one of 15 authors who contributed to the new book "Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life With the Piano" (Yale University Press). In "Piano Roles," Zank relates the history of "The Piano in the Concert Hall."
Contrary to what people might expect, he said, piano concerts of the 18th and 19th centuries were actually very distant cousins to today's formal concert-hall events. In fact, the solo recital as we know it today didn't actually catch on until around the middle of the 19th century in Europe. Before that, programs of public performances featuring piano music consisted primarily of chamber music that included singers and other instrumentalists.
The early piano and its forerunners, Zank said, were designed for a variety of more intimate settings, including the home. By the late 17th century in London, the instrument could be found in public spaces as well -- most notably, as standard operating equipment for "public pub" concerts. The venue remained popular for quite some time, as evidenced by a 1765 advertisement for a "concert" by the Mozart children at the Swan and Hoope Tavern. Zank said the shows had a circuslike flavor and included stunts such as four-hand playing and "Papa Mozart's famous trick of placing a handkerchief so that his children could not see their hands as they played."
Not long after that, concerts by Bach, Haydn and others drew large enough crowds among more elite audiences to justify the construction of so-called "great rooms." Another popular venue of the day throughout the continent was the piano manufacturer's showroom. Zank said American piano makers copied the model and expanded on it in the 19th century, with Steinway and others opening substantial venues in New York in the 1860s and '70s.
Clearly one of the most popular and accessible instruments of the past three centuries, the piano does appear to be in somewhat of a decline -- or at the very least, in an evolutionary stage, Zank said. "Piano sales are down, although electronic keyboard sales are up. It's hard to know if we're coming quickly or abruptly -- or more slowly in a more dignified fashion -- to the end of the piano as an instrument of great cultural significance. It's difficult to imagine it will have the same roles in the 21st century that it had in the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries. But that in itself is quite fascinating, no?"
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