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 18th 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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