Keyboard Warriors

Pippa Cuckson charts the Victorian-era rise and subsequent fall of the piano-making industry

- Pippa Cuckson

MOST people think of Victorian music being of the Come into the garden, Maud variety, sung around the piano, a large aspidistra tactfully obscuring any shapely wooden leg that might offend. It’s a quaint image that belies a golden era of piano playing and making—the mechanics that were finessed by the Victorian makers remain little changed in the instruments adorning today’s concert stages.

The pianoforte didn’t first catch on when it was invented by Bartolomeo Christofiori in about 1700. these new-fangled instruments were expensive and not significantly different in capability from the harpsichord. Four things changed this.

The first was the rise of the composervirtuoso player, from J. s. Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven to Lizst and Chopin. they promoted the piano and themselves simultaneously, performing their own works on a scale never replicated by string or wind players.

The second was the emergence of the Victorian middle class, for whom leisure time was a novelty. A piano could cost half the average annual income, therefore, ownership was a symbol of affluence and keyboard skills contributed to the marriageability of daughters. there was considerable cachet in hosting a gathering at which favourite melodies from Victorian saloons, music halls and Gilbert & sullivan could be performed and all this spawned a major new genre: the parlour song.

Thirdly, classical composers realised the piano could promote their latest orchestral work and would arrange the pieces as duets, fiendishly difficult reductions that comprised almost as large a portion of a music publisher’s output in the 19th century as songbooks. these pieces also shed light on the impressive competence of hobby players 150 years ago.