Topsy Turvy.

I really enjoyed the viewing of Topsy Turvy. The movie, although on some points fictional, gave me insight into Gilbert and Sullivan’s working relationship as well as social aspects of the Victorian Era. I had no idea that Gilbert came up with the idea for The Mikado after attending a Japanese exhibition. The exhibition itself was fascinating, as it was clear to me that the Japanese presented their culture in a way that Victorians would find exotic: women pouring green tea, dramatic stage productions with no translation, and sword fighting. If today’s Americans had an exhibition in Victorian England, there would have been women serving hamburgers, American Idol singers, and football games. It is interesting to me that the Victorians only sought to explore Japanese culture within the context of an exhibition, in which the Japanese were on display. Even within  the context of The Mikado, Japanese culture is put on show. The movie portrays Gilbert as aiming for an authentic portrayal of Japanese culture. There are two long scenes in the male and female fitting rooms of the Savoy that depict the English actors’ disgust/hesitancy with Japanese dress. A hemline that falls above the knee? No corset? These scenes portray the English attitude toward foreign culture. The film insinuates that the English are interested in exploring other cultures but not entirely embracing them. The English clearly have a superiority complex.

            Although Gilbert’s relationship with his wife was not portrayed accurately in the movie, the strained relationship contrasted with Sullivan’s sexually adventurous lifestyle shed light on Victorian relationships. Gilbert’s wife, although often overlooked, seemed comfortable with her place. The only mention of Mrs. Gilbert’s unhappiness is when she conveys her ideas for Gilbert’s next play. Even in this scenario the only way Mrs. Gilbert can address her relationship is through the parameters of a theater production. This mode of communication seems so Victorian to me, to talk about something that is bothering you without actually talking about what is bothering you. Sullivan’s mistress also made an impression on me. She projected herself as an empowered woman, yet she was flitting around with a man who visited French brothels and did not seem to take her seriously. Topsy Turvy’s social implications give the viewer a portrayal of Gilbert and Sullivan’s history within the context of larger Victorian issues.

           

            

John Anderson: Synthesis of Research.

John Anderson, my great-great grandfather, was a Swedish immigrant and an American piano manufacturer. I spent my childhood practicing scales and arpeggios on two pianos that he designed, the Anderson upright and the Everett grand. Above one of the “Anderson” upright piano are sketches of John Anderson a la Johannes Brahms, passionately playing the piano over a hefty belly. There is also a photograph of him sitting nobly in a carved wooden chair, dressed in a woolen gray suit and floral tie. Although the photography is black-and-white, my grandfather’s blonde hair and blue eyes reveal his Swedish heritage. His gaze is proud, but soft. My grandfather strikes me as someone with great business savvy, but he is also an unabashed romantic. Somehow, he was able to synthesize his Victorian sentiments with the consumer trends developing during World War I.

John Anderson, born April 16, 1859 in Drottingham, spent his childhood working in the Royal Gardens of Sweden. This detail was continually referenced throughout biographies, as if my grandfather’s deep sensual love of natural beauty is what eventually led him to piano design. By 14, Anderson began his apprenticeship with the Royal cabinet-maker. After five years, the Society of Mechanics of Stockholm awarded him for his work. He then received a stipend from the Swedish Chamber of Commerce to study with the great cabinet-makers abroad. He traveled to Vienna, Munich, Zurich, and Paris. Through his travels, Anderson mastered furniture building and design. In 1884, he immigrated to New York. While designing cabinets, he also received his first assignments to design piano cases. He studied this craft with Decker Brothers and later with Albert Weber and Steinway & Sons.  Anderson drew his first piano scale for the Shaw Piano while working for the Shaw Company in Erie, Pennsylvania. In 1892, Anderson moved to Minneapolis, Minnesota to work for the Century Piano Company, where he designed the Anderson piano. Impressed with Anderson’s design, the Everett Piano Company of Boston, MA invited the piano maker to take over all manufacturing for their company. Beginning in 1899, Everett gave Anderson unlimited funds to remodel the entire factory system, including the addition of a piano actions and hammers department. Anderson felt a responsibility to personally employ every man, an action that Alfred Dodge in his book Pianos and their Makers suggests was indicative of Anderson’s deep conviction for design integrity. Anderson designed the Everett concert grand piano, favored by piano virtuosos such as Ossip Gabrilowitsch, Maria Teresa Carreño, and Otto Neitzel. Anderson was well known and financially successful until his death on July 9, 1936.

Publications that feature John Anderson either portray the man as an artist or a businessman. Alfred Dodge wishes to depict Anderson as the epitome of Victorian ideals. In an attempt to connect Anderson’s childhood with his later career, Dodge writes,

He had fully taken in the beautiful forms and colors of flowers, become intoxicated with their aroma, and feasted his eyes and mind on the beautiful forms of artistic furniture and classic and decorative architecture, but the world of tone had been an unknown realm to him, although it was fully as strong in his soul as the knowledge, inspiration and appreciation for the beautiful in its various other forms and phases. [1]

This sensual world that Dodge envisions for Anderson seems to explain why Anderson became a superior piano designer, and it seems that Anderson would be in compliance with such an assumption. In a letter written to Dodge, Anderson exclaims,

I had long ago formed an idea for the beautiful in life, and although neither musician nor singer, also for the beautiful in sound. The roar of the ocean, the whisper of the leaves, the murmur of the brook, the mighty sound of storm in the woods, always had a charm for me, but when I heard men discuss piano tone, at first I hardly knew much about it.  But as time went on it became perfectly clear to me that tone, color, shade and light in a beautiful painting, the delicate molding in a statue, and the harmony produced by perfect piano tones are practically the same thing, for the reason that the whole must result in a harmonious perfection.[2]

             

From an entirely different perspective, “Adapting Selling Talk to Circumstances: An Interview with John Anderson” from the March 18^th 1916 issue of Music Trade Indicator is a front page article that discusses John Anderson’s advertising strategies and his subsequent success as a salesman. The article gives anecdotes about various customers of the Everett piano company, and how John Anderson catered his salesmanship to suit their life experience. In this article there is no mention of Anderson’s childhood or his Victorian fascination with perfect tone. In contrast, the article presents Anderson as a quick-witted businessman.

            A farmer complains that while the Everett piano only has two pedals, he is able to buy a cheaper piano with three pedals down the road. Why should he buy here? Anderson replies, “ ‘Well, I suppose you always buy cows with three horns? ...  I suppose every horse you buy has five legs, and that you wouldn’t have a rooster on the farm unless he had three or four well spurred legs.”[3] When the farmer finally bought an Everett piano, the anonymous magazine writer concludes, “The farmer bought that piano because he had been told about it in a way that was easily understandable to the farmer.”[4]

            A minster was doubtful of the Everett piano because of what other salesmen on Boyleston Street had told him. It did not seem in compliance with Anderson’s praise of the Everett piano.  Anderson rebutted, “Haven’t you ministers been telling us about heaven and hell for years and years? Do any of you know anything about it? Have any of you ever been there?”[5] Inexplicably this argument convinces the minister of the Everett’s superiority.

            John Anderson is not just presented as an authority on pianos, but an authority on people. He sizes up his customers so that he can connect their identities with their desire for the best piano imaginable, which in this case is the Everett piano. This is salesmanship at its finest, a craft that became increasingly pertinent as brand names and standardized factory systems replaced small businesses.

            While some writers illuminate Anderson as a traditional Victorian, and others as a 20^th century big business man, the most effective advertising combines these paradoxical roles. “The Quest for the Perfect Tone” by F. Burnham McLeary, written in 1915 to document the manufacturing developments of the Everett Piano Company, synthesizes these roles effectively, albeit with a melodramatic flair. “Have you often regretted that the music in your heart could not find its way to your fingers? You need regret it no longer.”[6] The article begins with a brief and general history of the keyboard, beginning with the Grecian god Hermes “…hitting his winged foot against a tortoise shell…vibrating five dried sinews stretched taut across it”[7] to Pythagoras and the keyboard instruments of the 16^th and 17^th centuries. The author eventually arrives in the early 20^th century, and “…we find here and there a man who would rather make something surpassingly well than heap up great riches.”[8] McLeary leaves his readers in suspense. He introduces Frank A. Lee, president of the Everett Piano Company, who is searching for a perfectly harmonious instrument. In a section of the article entitled, “Just at the darkest moment fate appears behind the scenes,” a piano dealer leads Mr. Lee into a private display room that holds this perfect instrument. “He ran a short arpeggio in the middle register. Each note rang out as clear as a cathedral bell.”[9] Finally McLeary reveals that it is the Swedish cabinet-maker John Anderson who has fashioned this piano, whose artistry is then compared to the fine works of Benvenuto Cellini, Della Robbia, and Stradivarius. By creating the perfectly balanced instrument McLeary implies that Anderson, like the great artists, understands the deepest secrets of life.

            John Anderson is not only fascinating because of his relevance to my ancestry. The piano maker symbolizes the dramatic culture shift that occurred in the early 20^th century. Many piano writers and enthusiasts projected their personal values onto my grandfather. For instance, perhaps Alfred Dodge’s sentimental portrayal of John Anderson is a yearning for a dying way of life, a life that cherishes the carefully crafted piano forte and the musician as artist. With the invention of the player piano and the phonograph, music became more accessible but less inspired. Anderson himself was aware of this trend, and it seems that his business approach simultaneously accepts the fast-paced forward moving American ideology without disconnecting from 19^th century piano tradition. A large reason for this synthesis may be that Anderson did not have a choice but to combine his old-fashioned sentiments with American big business. He needed the money. His immigration to America presented the craftsman with numerous struggles. In a personal letter, Anderson wrote, “Then back home doing well, but taking a chance to start for America and start all over with empty hands and no one who knew me after all I already had mastered and overcome. But for all this I feel happy and have something that one only can get that way.”[10] There are many ways in which to construe John Anderson’s life as a piano manufacturer. There is no certain reason for his blending of old and new modes of thought. However his personal story illuminates America’s larger story, a shift from inspiration to production, and the way in which American still desperately tries to balance the paradoxical.

           

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[1] Alfred Dodge, Pianos and their Makers: Development of the piano industry in America since the Centennial Exhibition at Philadelphia 1876 (Covina, California: Covina Publishing Company, 1913), 85.

[2] Ibid., 85-6.

[3] Anonymous, “Adapting Selling Talk to Circumstances: An Interview with John Anderson.” Music Trade Indicator (Chicago: March 18, 1916), 2.

[4] Ibid., 2.

[5] Ibid., 2.

[6] McLeary, F. Burnham, “The Quest for Perfect Tone,” The World’s Work: A History of our Time Volume XXX May, 1915 to October, 1915 (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1915), 285.

[7] McLeary 280.

[8] Ibid., 280.

[9] Ibid. 281.

[10] John Anderson, Personal Correspondence (June 16, 192-), p. 5

The Piano in America, 1890-1940 by Craig H. Roell

Craig H. Roell’s The Piano in America, 1890-1940 explores the piano industry’s apex at the turn of the 20^th century. Roell uses the piano industry to convey the shift from nineteenth century Victorian ideals to twentieth century consumer culture. Furthermore the author examines how this shift in thought affected society’s perceptions of music, and specifically perceptions of the piano. Published in 1989 while Roell was a Samuel Davis Fellow in Business History at Ohio State University, The Piano in America remains the most cohesive account of America’s piano trade history. Roell gathered his resource from numerous scholarly sources, including trade publications, newspapers, correspondence, government documents, and classic books and articles in the fields of business history and music appreciation. Although targeted toward musicians, his clear and well-organized writing makes this book accessible to music enthusiasts as well.

            Roell organizes his research into six chapters, which chronologically convey the American piano industry’s successes and failures. The chapters are entitled,  “The Place of Music in the Victorian Frame of Mind,” “The Origins of a Musical Democracy,” “Halcyon Years of the American Piano Industry,” “Strategies of Piano Merchandizing,” “Industrial Bankruptcy in a Musical Age,” and “Depression, Reform, and Recovery.” While all chapters are informative, Roell’s thoughts on the piano’s role as America shifted from a Victorian to a consumer based culture are particularly fascinating.

In Chapter 1, Roell establishes the piano’s place within the Victorian Era, the era from which the piano was born. Known as the “altar to St. Cecilia,”[1] the piano became a quintessential object in the Victorian home. Roell writes,

The piano became associated with the virtues attributed to music as medicine for the soul. Music supposedly could rescue the distraught from the trials of life. Its moral restorative qualities could counteract the ill effects of money, anxiety, hatred, intrigue, and enterprise. Since this was also seen as the mission of women in Victorian society, music and women were closely associated into the twentieth century. As the primary musical instrument, the piano not only became symbolic of the virtues attributed to music, but also of home and family life, respectability, and woman’s particular place and duty.[2]

Roell is referring to the cult of domesticity as it related to piano culture. Victorians valued a strict work ethic, which for a woman manifested in the way in which she kept her home. Victorians also valued aesthetic beauty. Virtuoso piano players because increasingly popular in the nineteenth century. Inspired by the professionals, many amateur piano players would practice endlessly in order to perfect their craft. Roell confirms, “Increasingly common throughout the mid to late nineteenth century was the trend to turn amateurs into performers. The goal of music teachers was to produce the virtuoso.”[3] Apart from these large-scale societal trends, Roell offers details that illuminate these trends. For example, businesses brought aesthetic beauty to the workplace as a means to enliven the workers. The Baldwin Piano Company hung flowerboxes in the windows. Many factories played music during the work hours, as they thought it would make the workers happier.[4] Music also enforced strong moral character. “Like religion, music could save souls.”[5] Roell concludes Chapter 1 with a foreshadowing of what is to come: the Great War, the player piano, and the end of hard work.

            The title of Chapter 2, “The Origins of Musical Democracy,” is particularly fitting because music, once a recreational activity for the elite, in the early 20^th century became accessible to all social classes. With the invention of the player piano, one no longer needed private piano lessons and countless hours of practice in order to become a virtuoso. Roell writes, “…it was the player piano – with its significant link to Victorian culture, its superior fidelity, and its mass-production by an influential industry already entrenched in American musical and industrial life – that was the most powerful force toward establishing a musical democracy in the Victorian twentieth century.”[6] Although there existed an initial resistance to the player piano, music educators supported the player piano for its educational benefits. Roell brilliantly ties the piano player into larger social trends. The Victorian work ethic diminished as the Industrial Revolution created efficiency in the work place, a rising middle class, and increased recreational time. While Victorians emphasized the value of each unique moment, the invention of the camera made a moment unoriginal. In relation, the general population no longer valued the inspired and unique power of a single musical performance. With the player piano and the phonograph, Americans heard the same interpretation of the same composition countless times. Roell concludes that it was through the invention of the player piano that the debate between recorded versus live music began. He writes, “Such battles lines inevitably resulted when the Victorian-producer ethic clashed with the culture and technology of consumption, and when the advertisements of a Victorian-rooted industry espoused the advantages of ‘easy-to-play’ technology.”[7]

            Throughout Chapter 4 Roell examines the evolution of piano advertisement. It is in this chapter that Roell arrives at his most profound hypotheses. Roell initially explains how the role of advertising changed to adapt to consumer ideology. Initially advertisement simply named the product. However in the early 20^th century the benefits of owning the product became increasingly important. Brand loyalty became the fashion, although Roell divulges that brand loyalty was always a component of piano advertisement, even in the Victorian Era. Celebrity endorsement was the most effective means through which to advertise a piano.  Piano companies hoped that virtuoso pianists, opera singers, and even political figures would prefer their brand. While player piano advertisements gave into the ideals of the 20^th century (i.e. it’s easy to play!), straight pianos continued promoting Victorian principles. Steinway, named the “Instrument of the Immortals,”[8] represented their pianos as symbols of high art. Roell elucidates, “Those purchasing a Steinway thus were not buying merely a piano, but something akin to great painting or sculpture. References to touch and tone – that is, the piano’s useful functions – were nothing compared to the basic uselessness that allowed the Steinway to thrive in the consumer’s imaginations.”[9] Roell’s most profound realization, however, is that the reason the piano industry survived through the Great War and The Depression, is not because it surrendered to consumer culture, but because the piano industry uncompromisingly maintained its Victorian origins. While player pianos, a product of consumer culture, disappeared from popular culture by the late 1920s, straight piano became a symbol of traditional, centered values that were difficult to establish in a fast-paced consumer-driven culture. Roell writes, “In a real sense all traditional straight pianos are Victorians out of their time. That is, they are artifacts of an age preceding mass society, in which the home and family rather than business interests and consumerism governed society.”[10] The piano symbolized an escape from worldly affairs, a means for transcendence.

            While Roell so clearly and effectively depicts the piano trade’s history, the one criticism of his book is that at times it is redundant. The redundancy is a means through which the author hopes to tie all of his research together through the same two or three large concepts. At times this repetition is unnecessary. Regardless, Roell’s scholarly work The Piano in America, 1890-1940 presents an impressive breadth of information with carefully crafted and provocative hypotheses. In the Epilogue, Roell summarizes his findings:

The significance of the American piano industry’s confrontation with the consumer culture from 1890 to 1940 lies in its successful cultivation of the amateur spirit in music and its appreciation of productive values in a consumer age. The irony is that the trade accomplished this through promoting the values of the Victorian culture as a commodity, yet appealing at the same time to the values inherent in the consumer culture.[11]

Roell’s research not only encapsulates the piano’s history. Roell furthermore frames the piano’s industry within significant historical events and subsequent social evolution. It is this feature of his writing that renders this book accessible and relevant today.

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[1] Craig H. Roell, The Piano in America, 1890-1940 (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1989), 5.

[2] Ibid., 5

[3] Ibid., 8

[4] Ibid., 12

[5] Ibid., 21

[6] Ibid., 32.

[7] Ibid., 54

[8] Ibid., 177

[9]Ibid.,  177

[10] Ibid., 180.

[11] Ibid., 276.

Princess Ida.

After viewing the Princess Ida video clips, I cannot decide whether to be offended or open-minded about its content. The subject of an all-women’s college is obviously a sensitive subject for me. I find it hilarious that the premise of the story is that Princess Ida, in her attempt to swear off men, founds an all-women’s college. I think that this premise probably captures the perception of Victorian England in regards to all-women’s education’s purpose. In actuality all-women’s education has little to do with the separation from men. Rather it presents a place in a society abundant with double standards in which women are free to study and think critically. It also in more recent years has become a haven for those women questioning their sexuality and/or gender. I don’t think that Gilbert and Sullivan were trying to purposely trivialize all-women’s education, but they do seem to capitalize upon a controversial social movement and the innate ignorance involved. In so doing they both create a strong female protagonist, but they also present a giggly and jumpy female chorus. Gilbert and Sullivan insinuates that the college women’s absence from men have made them nervous and frightful of men rather than strong and independent.

            “A lady fair, of lineage high,” presents woman as scientifically more developed than man, hence why the “Ape man,” even in disguise, cannot woo the enlightened lady. These Darwinian references were quite popular in the late 19^th century. I remember in my reading about Mahler that he wrestled with Darwinian theories in his 3^rd Symphony. However Gilbert and Sullivan set up a black-and-white situation in which the only reason a woman would study in lieu of romance is because men are not worth their time, scientifically speaking of course. This argument makes me uncomfortable because it reminds me of statements made through the 19^th and early 20^th centuries that African American brains were less biologically developed than Caucasian people’s brains. Why does superiority’s claim have to be grounded in a faulty biological basis? And why does it have to be about superiority at all? 

Steinway Advertisement.

My favorite part of the Music Page Indicator from March 1916 is a two-page advertisement by Steinway & Sons, which is prefaced with, “Not only is Steinway & Sons’ advertising of the highly artistic character which reflects the reputation of the Steinway Piano, but it also furnishes an example of splendid ideals.”[1] Steinway then displays three advertisements for which the company is most proud. These advertisements are fascinating, because they evince the values of Victorian Society.

The first advertisement pictures a female singer in concert with a male accompanist. The ad reads, “To support the singer’s voice with reassuring strength and unfaltering truth, to inspire it to new efforts, to ecstatic heights and stirring depths…”[2] In short, this ad features a Steinway as a superior accompaniment, as if using a Steinway somehow transforms the singer into a true artist. In their writing I have found that Victorians use extremities to portray a positive opinion. I have also learned the enthusiasm of the Victorians for virtuosic players and singers. Steinway clearly plays on the trend.

            The second advertisement portrays a mother peering from behind a drape at her daughter practicing the piano. This image illuminates the cult of domesticity, an ideal that was exceedingly popular in the Victorian Era. The ad begins, “Start the small traveler on life’s journey with the most helpful equipment. A knowledge of the best in music means an uplift all the way.”[3] This advertisement does not necessarily promise that one’s child will be a virtuoso pianist, but it does promise that one’s child will have impeccable taste, a trait that Victorians would value.

            The final advertisement pictures a teenage woman at the piano and her female piano teacher looking over her shoulder. “To the fine soul in search of expression, the Steinway comes with an untold wealth of treasure…In the Steinway’s tonal range each note of the human voice finds its perfect complement, sustaining it with sympathetic sweetness and flawless purity.”[4] In this advertisement the piano is presented as a kind of therapist, a personified object that through its tonal capacities will meet a woman’s desires and needs. This advertisement in its entirely has certainly given me much food for thought. Perhaps I can use this two-page spread as the base structure of my paper, and use each advertisement as a means from which to expand.

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[1] Music Trade Indicator, Chicago March 18, 1916, 20-21.

[2] Ibid., 20.

[3] Ibid., 20-21.

[4] Ibid., 21.

Thoughts on "Spectacular" Bodies.

In Faulk’s chapter entitled “ ‘Spectacular’ Bodies,” the author discusses the “Living Pictures” phenomenon that proved so popular in the music halls of the late Victorian Era. Faulk also discusses the various reactions to this phenomenon, attributing their responses to varying social class and ideology.  Faulk writes, “…the female nude was not linked simply to scopic pleasure for late-Victorian London spectators; audiences participated in a complex production of meaning when they encountered the female body in settings that encouraged aesthetic evaluation.”[1] As Faulk implies, much of the controversy regarding the “Living Pictures” revolved around the classification of the female subject. Was she a working class woman transformed into a picture of beauty, embodying art? Or rather, is she a working class woman subjected to the vulgarity and sexual implications of being displayed in a nude body suit? Many of the questions that society asked regarding these pictures reminded me of the same arguments that surround the pornography industry of today, or, perhaps a magazine like Playboy. Do these businesses showcase a woman’s beauty or victimize unknowing woman with no economic alternative? The answer at which Faulk arrives, and which I believe is true of modern-day “female subjectification” is that one must judge on a case-by-case basis. It seems that critics of the Victorian Era attempted to make broad generalizations such as “tableaux vivants are degrading.” Well, yes, it seems that at times this art form was specifically geared toward the sexual enjoyment of middle class men. But, Faulk suggests with Kilyani’s Pictures and advanced special effects, that society became intrigued by the “visual spectacle.”[2] Faulk comments, “Comolli draws attention to the proliferation of optical inventions in the late nineteenth century – camera, magic lanterns, dioramas, biographs - …that place the body under new, intense scrutiny.”[3] Kilyani’s pictures allowed this art form to become a family affair. Boys would take their girlfriends, and neither party found anything wrong with appreciating the female form as it related to high art. Lady Somerset, an upperclass woman involved in the social purity movement, felt regardless that the living pictures victimized women. Faulk says that her “…intention, which appears to have been to speak for women unable to articulate their own concerns – established these women as speaking subjects in a public sphere.”[4] Faulk then exemplifies this point through the story of La Milo, who takes her success in the living pictures out into the streets, posing in a public parade. This anecdote reminds me of the TV shows like The Girls Next Door and HBO documentaries that feature women who feel empowered by their careers in the sex industry.  There is no definitive moral answer to the questions asked in the Victorian Era or today, but I find it fascinating in itself that we are faced with the same moral battles, another hint that Victorian society is not so unlike out own.

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[1] Faulk 145.

[2] Ibid. 156.

[3] Ibid. 156.

[4] Ibid. 180.

Anderson's role as a piano salesman.

“Adapting Selling Talk to Circumstances: An Interview with John Anderson” from the March 18^th 1916 issue of Music Trade Indicator is a front page article that discusses John Anderson’s advertising strategies and his subsequent success as a salesman. The article tells anecdotes about various customers of the Everett piano company, and how John Anderson catered his salesmanship to suit their life experience. Throughout the article Anderson convinces a doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, a ship captain, and a minister to buy from the Everett piano company. Sounds like a dirty joke, right? (A lawyer, a doctor, and a minister walk into a piano store….)

            My two favorite anecdotes are the farmer and the minister. The farmer complains that while the Everett piano only has two pedals, he is able to buy a cheaper piano with a three pedals down the road. Why should he buy here? Anderson replies, “ ‘Well, I suppose you always buy cows with three horns?...  I suppose every horse you buy has five legs, and that you wouldn’t have a rooster on the farm unless he had three or four well spurred legs.”[1] When the farmer finally bought an Everett piano, the anonymous magazine writer concludes, “The farmer bought that piano because he had been told about it in a way that was easily understandable to the farmer.”[2]

            In the case of the minister, the reverend was doubtful of the Everett piano because of what other salesmen on Boyleston Street had told him. It did not seem in compliance with Anderson’s praise of the Everett piano.  Anderson rebutted, “Haven’t you ministers been telling us about heaven and hell for years and years? Do any of you know anything about it? Have any of you ever been there?”[3] Inexplicably this argument convinces the minister of the Everett’s superiority.

            What impresses me about this article is the way in which John Anderson is not just presented as an authority on pianos, but an authority on life. He sizes up his customers and understands their deep inner-workings, so much so that he can connect their identities with their desire for the best piano imaginable, which in this case is the Everett piano. A doctor, a lawyer, a farmer, a ship captain, and a minister are all authorities in their own right. Within a parable, they would symbolize different components of wisdom. Yet John Anderson, a mere piano designer and salesman, sees through all of them. He sees through them, unmasks them as servants of the petty worldly wishes, while he is the servant of something much greater. Art. No wonder his argument is so convincing. Who wouldn’t want to be as enlightened? And to think that this enlightenment is represented by the piano in your living room!

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[1] Anonymous, “Adapting Selling Talk to Circumstances: An Interview with John Anderson.” Music Trade Indicator (Chicago: March 18, 1916), 2.

[2] Ibid., 2.

[3] Ibid., 2.

The Music Hall and National Identity.

Faulk’s first couple chapters in his book Music Hall and Modernity explore the music hall and its ties with English essence, the hall’s rise and downfall, and the analysis of the musical hall through the lens of Victorian critics. The description of the music hall as a corny but entertaining variety show reminded me of a show I saw while visiting the Chitwan rainforest in Nepal. The act, which included singing, dancing, and stunts, was supposed to introduce tourists to the culture of the indigenous people. I found it odd that my mind kept returning to this experience, considering that the music halls of England were not necessarily intended for tourists. The target audience was the English middle class. Especially as the music hall developed into a popularized, commercialized form, it was as if the English middle and upper class became tourists to their own country, embracing the songs and dance of the working people. This interest in the exoticism of one’s own country reminded me of slumming, a kind of tourism in which the wealthy visit impoverished communities for sport.  However with slumming, just as with the music hall, the more popular the idea of escaping into a national subculture became, the less of a subculture it actually was. I remember reading that in the Latin quarter of New York City, there was a “divey” restaurant that rich tourists liked to visit to experience the dirty underbelly of city life. However, as slumming became more popular, the restaurant became a place for the upper class in search of adventure, without an impoverished person in sight.

            As the music hall became more family friendly and less reflective of folk culture,  society critics like T.S. Eliot began writing music hall laments. These laments mourned the music hall’s inevitable demise. While paying tribute to the nationally infamous and deceased music hall singer Marie Lloyd, “the poet emphasizes that Lloyd’s death affects more than a single mourner and means much more than a setback for music-hall audiences; it constitutes a full-blow, national crisis.”[1] It seems to me that the English were trying so hard to establish a national identity that to many the music hall because a national treasure, the one slimmer of hope is “Das Land ohne Musik.” In my own personal experience however, the more we try to define ourselves, the less real we actually are. England reminds me of an angst-ridden teenager searching for identity amongst existential emotions. The music hall is the perfect snapshot of England’s identity crisis.

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[1] Faulk, 44.

The American Woman and the Piano.

One aspect of piano history that has fascinated me is the influential power of the woman. I was happy to read that in the early 19^th century, there were a couple professional pianists who were female: Sophia Hewsit, who performed Beethoven’s Sonata in A-flat, Opus 26 with the New York Philharmonic, and Miss Eustaphieve, the daughter of the Russian consul. But even in the more socially expected ways, the woman influenced piano consumption in America. In 1820, John R. Parker published America’s first music magazine in Boston, entitled Euterpeiad, or Music Intelligencer, Devoted to the Diffusion of Musical Information and Belles Lettres. Loesser comments, “A year’s wroth of response to Parker’s venture seems not to have been too eager, and he therefore, for the future, tried to tone it up with a little more pungent feminine flavor – just as the Jacksons toned up their piano store with perfumes and soap.”[1] Parker even added the subtitle Ladies’ Gazette to the cover. Although the magazine failed after three years, this consumer targeting suggests that music and pianos were a female affair.

            In 1825, Manuel Garcia brought his troupe of Italian singers to New York City, where Americans heard real Italian opera for the first time. “Italianitis”[2] ensued. As a result, the Musical Fund Society was established in New York City, the new economic and social epicenter of America. At one of the Musical Fund Society concerts at the City Hotel, a woman named Miss Sterling played the piano. The review states, “The keys of her piano seemed gifted with vocal powers, which addressed themselves to the inmost feelings of the auditory, in tones of stirring excitement, or of melting passion, of solemn grandeur or hurried breathlessness, at the will of their mistress…”[3] This review in particular reminds me of the advertisements associated with the Everett Piano Company (my great-great grandfather’s business). The reviewer describes Miss Sterling in a way that deems her sexy, and the piano is an object that she has enchanted. What more could make a young woman desire to play the piano?

            Loesser also writes about America’s preference for the upright as a female-inspired trend. Women wanted the space in their drawing rooms to display their many knick-knacks, and the smaller square shape of the upright piano, as opposed to the grand piano, gave a woman more space in which to display her wealth. Loesser states that the upright became the norm for 40-50 years. I am curious to find out what perpetuated a change in this thought, especially considering that the grand piano came back into fashion around the time of my great-great grandfather John Anderson’s business in the early 20^th century. Was their something innately Victorian about owning a grand piano?

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[1] Loesser, 467.

[2] Ibid., 471.

[3] Ibid., 472.

The American Piano.

Loesser’s Men, Women and Pianos continues to be an invaluable source for the piano’s social history in America. The chapter “The American piano takes its own shape” confirmed many of my hypotheses from the previous blog. At the beginning of the 19^th century, those who could afford pianos preferred the European imports to American-made. This fact is supported by the Franklin Music Warehouse, which prided itself at its opening upon its two Viennese grand pianos, each for sale for $750. ($750 was equivalent to one year’s salary for an upper middle class family.) The extreme exoticism and price of these pianos implies that Americans idealized European products. Charles Albrecht, a piano salesman, advertised his pianos as a “consignment of patent pianofortes from London.”[1] Loesser deduces, “The word ‘London’ represented, as theretofore, a presumption of superior excellence.”[2] American pianos were not even associated with their maker because they were not held in as high esteem. In advertisements, these American-made pianos were simply listed as “American,” without any person or company, as if this qualifier covered all bases.

            American-made pianos became more popular as people realized that European imports did not always hold up to America’s extreme weather conditions. American piano companies used this issue as a main vehicle for advertisement. There was a great amount of piano innovation in America at this time: John Isaac Hawkins of Philadelphia developed the first upright piano, Alpheus Babcock constructed the first one-piece cast-iron frame, and Jonas Chickering further developed the cast-iron frame and used it in many of his pianos. Also, in 1816, a 30% duty on all imported items made of wood made the imported piano much less economically feasible for many families. By 1830, American-made pianos were preferred to imported pianos.

            With these developments came a change of thought in America.   New Englanders began to view music as more than just a young woman’s social activity. Loesser writes,

It was characteristic that in New England the elevation of music’s value should take a religious form. The moral earnestness, as well as the respect for learning, of the original Calvinists persisted; and when many of the richer and more educated among their descendants evolved into Unitarians, it was natural that some of them could see something divine in music. It was not really paradoxical that the great great grandchildren of those who had all but forbidden music in church services should now become enthusiastic promoters of a kind of sacred music. Both the negative and the positive point of view implied an appreciation of the power of music.[3]

Just as I suspected, America’s initial hesitance toward and rejection of music resulting from religious belief eventually transformed into a zealous appreciation of the art. In 1815, the Handel and Haydn Society formed, a choral society that still exists today. Loesser notes that it is interesting that Handel and Haydn were both known for their nonliturgical sacred music, a concept that New England seemed to embrace at this time.

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[1] Loesser 458.

[2] Ibid., 458.

[3] Ibid., 465.

The piano in colonial America.

I have just begun reading Arthur Loessler’s Men, Women, and Pianos: A Social History. I am starting with the section on the United States, as the focus of my upcoming research paper is the perception of the piano in Victorian America. The first couple of chapters weave the story of the piano’s beginnings in the colonies. The Massachusetts Puritans and the Pennsylvanian Quakers were against music in the church, although Puritans were comfortable with music study as private practice. Thomas Brattle, one of Boston’s social elite and the treasurer of Harvard College, was the first to buy and import an organ from England for his home.  In the 1730s, the first musical performances appeared in Boston. Philadelphia, New York City, and Charleston, South Carolina were other hot spots for music in the 18^th century. Charleston especially was supportive of the arts. The city constructed many playhouses in the mid-1700s and premiered the first American operas. Flora, one of these operas, was actually revived this past summer at the Spoleto Arts Festival, and some of my colleagues from Westminster Choir participated in the production. The opera is more reminiscent of musical theatre, alternating between speech and song. The subject matter is comedic, raw, and simple. The opera does indeed make music-making feel like the earthy and sinful genre that many Americans believed it to be.

As population increased and the colonies gained more financial success, more harpsichords were shipped to America from England. Virginia especially had a surplus of harpsichords, which suited the needs of educating businessmen’s blossoming young daughters. In the 1760s the pianoforte was introduced to America. Thomas Jefferson even ordered a pianoforte for his fiancée: “I have since seen a Forte-piano and am charmed with it.”[1] In 1775, John Green crafted in Philadelphia the first American-made piano. By 1791, 27 Boston families owned pianos.

            While none of the information above directly describes the Victorian experience, it is interesting to think about how the country’s social origins perhaps laid the groundwork for Victorian perceptions. For example, colonial American’s Puritanical ideology certainly repressed many Americans from musical enjoyment. Thus the language used in the Victorian Era to describe the piano as a spiritual vessel leading to ecstasy and freedom might imply an attempt to break away from this prior repression. In conjunction with this thought, like in England the piano was used as a parlor trick for young ladies wishing to impress a potential husband, clearly another form of oppression. How interesting that the piano simultaneously represented a split from Puritan and Quaker thought, as well as a tie into female social entrapment. The piano both freed and limited American thought.

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[1] Loessler 441.

Gustav Holst.

What most struck me in Vaughan Williams’s “Gustav Holst: An Essay and a  Note” is the equal importance placed on Holst the man and Holst the musician. Vaughan William implies that Holst’s identity as a man very directly influences the quality of his music. Vaughan Williams writes, “But if to live may be summed up in the words ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with they might,’ then Holst has lived to the full; he has learnt his lesson in the hard school of necessity; he has not run away from the battle but has fought and won.”[1] Vaughan Williams then proceeds to discuss key aspects of Holst’s compositional style: his austerity, his interest in ancient Sanskrit texts, his tie to English folk song, his use of modes, and his independent treatment of the voice. Vaughan William’s one criticism of Holst lies in his tendency to at times add too much to the musical texture. The writer explains, “…his very faults are those of commission not of omission.” He continues, “His austerity leads not to dullness or emptiness, but to harmony which is acrid rather than luscious, melody sometimes angular but never indefinite or sugary, orchestration which is brilliant and virile but not cloying.”[2] I found this emphasis on Holst’s austerity particularly interesting as it relates to Vaughan William’s assertions that Holst is a quintessential nationalist composer. I imagine that these claims have somewhat to do with prevalent anti-German sentiments, as Strauss or Mahler were certainly not known for their simplicity.

            I also enjoyed thinking a little bit about Holst’s ties with Indian culture. I know from singing Choral Hymns to the Rig Veda-III that Holst studied Sanskrit and wrote his own translations of the Vedic Hymns. It notes in the essay that Holst enjoyed the flexibility that came with interpreting a “mystical” text. Vaughan Williams writes, “…it is not the orientalism, but the mysticism of the Vedic Hymns which attracted Holst, he needed some expression of the mystical point of view less materialized and less systematized than anything to be found in occidental liturgies.”[3] This point reminded me of the Victorian Era’s interest in exoticism. In actuality the Vedic Hymns are just as systematic as any standard Christian text. It is our distance from and subsequent idealization of eastern religion that makes it so mystical, just as it is the distance from impoverished communities that made slumming a phenomenon. When I sang the Choral Hymns, I never once thought this work to be an illumination of Hinduism. I feel now that these pieces are rather a snapshot of Western thought gazing at the East through rose-colored glasses.

           

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[1] Vaughan Williams 133.

[2] Ibid., 141.

[3] Ibid., 140.

Vaughan Williams and Folk Song.

What struck me most about the Vaughan Williams articles this week was the composer’s absolute commitment to and belief in the power of folk music to establish an English national identity. He believed in folk song so much that he wrote an opera that he did not anticipate would garner any acclaim or success; he simply wanted to showcase the many English folk songs sprinkled throughout the work. This opera, entitled Hugh the Drover, does not utilize folk song to develop the storyline. Rather, the folk influence is “…atmospheric, appropriate for underscoring the rural setting but irrelevant to the plot” (Saylor 49). It is amazing to me that in the Victorian Era Covent Garden would only produce opera with Italian libretto, and I find it very smart of Vaughan Williams to capitalize upon this disservice to national music by composing his own English opera, rampant with indigenous folk melody. Even better it seems that the opera was well received. The opera’s success coupled with the work of the English Folk Song Society aided in the reemergence of English folk songs in school, church, and everyday life.

The convictions in indigenous folk song Vaughan Williams had reminded me of a book I read in college entitled Balkan Fascination: Creating an Alternative Music Culture in America. This book by Mirjana Lausevic explores a subculture in America in which white Anglo-Saxons indentify with the music and dance of Eastern European rural society. The conclusion that Lausevic comes to is that there is no Anglo-Saxon culture left in America, so certain individuals seek the vibrancy and quirkiness of another culture in order to feel like they belong somewhere. It seems to me that Vaughan Williams had a similar aim in cultivating the old songs of his own heritage. I wonder though if certain English people did identity with the music and dance of another culture to order to gain a sense of identity, or whether in the midst of World War I this attachment to another culture was considered taboo. I appreciated Vaughan William’s quote at the conclusion of the Saylor article, which reads, 

This was Vaughan Williams artistic ideal: he wanted England to have its own autonomous, distinctive musical life, but he also knew that “…this life cannot develop and fructify further except in an atmosphere of friendship and sympathy with other nations […] our national art must not be a backwater, but must take its part in the great stream that has flowed through the centuries.” (Saylor 83).