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 19th 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 20th century. Was their something innately Victorian about owning a grand piano?
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