Piano: A conduit to and from the middle-class
In this essay, I will explore how the piano connected the middle class of the United States to other cultures.
A Brief Keyboard History
The pipe organ is the grandfather of all keyboard instruments — employed for centuries in churches. These impressive machines could put the fear of God into a listener with a wall of sound. The cost, complexity, and size make such instruments impractical for small-scale use.
Harpsichords have appeared in paintings since the fifteenth century (Halton, 2004, p. 138–139) and are keyboard instruments with strings stretched across a horizontal harp that are played when a key is pressed. Clavichords are relatively quiet but can produce louder sounds when a key is pressed harder, while harpsichords produce a consistent volume regardless of how hard the key is pressed (Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2013, “Clavichord”).
The Development of the Present-Day Piano
While the piano was invented around 1700, it was incredibly expensive due to the impressive craftsmanship that Cristofori employed to create the action (Parakilas, 2002, p. 9). It wasn’t until the industrial revolution that the production cost of pianos decreased enough to become mainstream. The innovation of the double escapement mechanism introduced in 1821 is what allowed pianos to play quick, repeated notes (Double Escapement). The shape, sound, and look that we associate with a modern piano was solidified in the end of the 19th century; Cristofori’s pianos didn’t have a metal harp. The piano’s prime was between 1870 and 1920 in the US, France, Britain, and Germany (Parakilas, 2002, p. 223–224).
Actor-Network Theory
While discussing the social life of instruments and objects, Bates shows that instruments are much more than just economic objects that are acquired and sit alongside everyday life (Bates, 2012, p. 372). Actor-Network Theory, ANT, is a way of relating non-human objects into a social network (Spöhrer, 2017, p. 3). This way of seeing the piano makes a tremendous amount of sense. The monolith of “western culture” with its science, music, and economics is an entangled web, or network, and the piano finds itself with many interesting connections. A piano can be seen as just an object that can play tones when buttons are pressed, but a deeper look will reveal how its creation is the embodiment of modern engineering techniques applied to an evolving body of western harmonic traditions. The piano as a constructed entity tacitly declares “we accept western harmony and equal temperament tuning as the foundation of music that is produced here”. This is a profound level of “thing-power” as Jane Bennet would call it (Bates 2012, p. 373). Many people learn piano, but very rarely are they thinking “by learning this instrument, I am accepting a culture of hundreds of years of piecemeal evolution” but the piano imposes this tradition on the player regardless. The rest of this blogpost will investigate some of the clusters of connections in which the piano finds itself enmeshed.
The Rise and Fall of Piano in the Middle-Class Household
Around the turn of the 20th century, pianos breached into the middle-class and an extensive infrastructure developed around piano playing including piano technicians and sheet music publishers (Parakilas, 2002, p. 223–224). Pianos became available to more of the middle-class thanks to increasing standards of living, leisure time, the industrial revolution, and financing arrangements, (Parakilas, 2002, p. 226). According to Parakilas, the piano represented middle-class Western musical and cultural values, and where the piano went it introduced those values to people who were not western or middle-class (Parakilas, 2002, p. 226). In this way, the piano, its sheet music, technicians, and teachers can be considered a strong conduit to middle-class “western” life.
The Road to Polyrhythms
The world was taken by ragtime at the end of the nineteenth century when Scott Joplin was inspired by minstrel shows and wrote Maple Leaf Rag in 1899 (Messenger, p 2–5). Minstrels featured syncopated African rhythms from Cakewalks — a slave plantation dance “craze” from the Antebellum South. Joplin’s music became incredibly popular, creating a very popular North American music genre that was equal parts European roots and African rhythms (Messenger, p 2–5).
Ragtime is technically challenging music requiring classically trained musicians to perform with syncopated rhythms (Messenger, p. 4). It is formally written music with an “ragged” African rhythmic twist. Jazz takes a departure from the formal music and embraces improvisation; in Messenger’s words “In its earliest incarnation, jazz combined syncopation with improvisation, owing a debt to Dixieland and ragtime in the doing” (Messenger, p. 8).
According to Scott Joplin in a 1913 article in New York Age, Joplin said “ragtime music in America ever since the Negro race has been here, but the white people took no notice of it until about twenty years ago” (New York Age, April 3, 1913 p. 6). Based on this comment, I suspect that ragtime piano music and specifically Joplin’s published works had a major cultural effect in the United States and Europe. African American and European-American music was quite segregated, but Joplin’s sheet music provided a path for this African American music to make its way from New Orleans bars and into prudish households. Using the established system of western instruments and sheet music publishers, ragtime created a footing for African American music to spread its influence. The network connection between piano, sheet music, and middle-class America is now connecting cultural ideas in more than just one direction. Influences from outside the western music tradition have been connected to the network and the resulting sheet music made its way into middle-class households who might not have a direct link to African American culture.
Jazz, Blues, Boogie Woogie, and Rock and Roll
Early jazz grew out of ragtime in the late 1910’s and focused on improvisation and syncopation (Messenger, p. 8). Jazz grew and changed style in the 1920’s with the invention of the microphone, which allowed guitarists and singers to create an intimate but loud sound (Messenger, p. 9). Pianos remain for most jazz groups.
Dixieland Jazz with Louis Armstrong. Note the syncopated rhythms and simultaneous melodies that mark this sound as something special. The piano and bass hold the group together by maintaining the harmonic structure of the piece.
Blues, a relative of Jazz also makes heavy use of piano. Blues are a more structured and more overtly emotional form of music than Jazz. Blues are known for their salient lyrics and simple twelve-bar structure. The genres of the time are related and co-mingled. Blues and big band blues were very popular in the 1920’s to 1940’s (Messenger, p. 17).
Boogie Woogie grew out of Jazz and Blues and was one of the most popular genres of the 1940’s (Messenger, p. 17). Boogie Woogie is famous for repetitive and driving left hand on the piano. Boogie Woogie grew into rock and roll, where the piano was finally left behind (Messenger, p. 17).
Fats Domino, Famous for his Boogie-Woogie Style piano technique
Also present, popular, and related was swing music. Swing in the 1920’s was known as “big band Jazz” (Messenger, p. 14). Where most Jazz was improvised in a jam session, Swing was more highly arranged.
Circling Back to the Piano
What does all of this have to do with the piano? From jazz to blues and big band music, the piano is in the center of the ensemble, laying down the harmonic framework and keeping the band together. The tacit understanding in this situation is that the harmonic and melodic underpinnings of western classical music are employed here, but in a way to serve the needs and desires of this new and exciting music. In this way, the piano is serving as a link to these roots. These growing genres that used the latest instruments and technology of the day grew and represented an African American infused set of American genres that used African polyrhythms and syncopation on western instruments. While racism and appropriation were rampant, these mixes of cultures have resulted in a golden age of music in the 20th century. One could argue that the piano and other western instruments used for Jazz are the reason that the genre is seated so firmly within western music culture.
Pianos in Japan
Despite its own rich cultural history, Japan has a strong classical music culture (Gaspar 2014, p. 1). Gaspar claims that the Japanese obsession with classical music, pianos, professional, and amateur orchestras is a large piece of the Europeanization of Japan. She claims that Japanese people are obsessed with learning, and the concept of piano fits into this paradigm. Meanwhile, Yamaha and Kawai have been making pianos for almost 100 years and have strong positions in a tough market.
Conclusion
Keyboard instruments have existed for centuries, perhaps even a millennium. Mechanically complex, the piano represents a crowning achievement of mechanical engineering, the industrial revolution, and an acceptance of equal temperament and western harmony. Ragtime, jazz, boogie-woogie, blues, and swing were large musical movements that swept the western world with great popularity. These movements centered around the piano and introduced African polyrhythms and syncopation to western pop music. The piano’s mass adoption during the 1870’s to 1920’s by the middle class created a link between middle-class households and exciting new music and the different cultures that create them. From Bach to jazz, pianos are a conveyance for western culture and have a global presence.
References
1. Halton, Rosalind. “A History of the Harpsichord.” Musicology Australia 27, no. 1 (2004): 138–142.
2. “Clavichord.” The Oxford Dictionary of Music. Oxford University Press, 2012.
3. Powers, Wendy. “The Piano: The Pianofortes of Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731).” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/hd_cris.htm (October 2003)
4. Bill Messenger: Elements of Jazz: From Cakewalks to Fusion Course Guidebook
The Teaching Company, 1995
5. “Theatrical Comment: Use of Vulgar Words a Detriment to Ragtime”. New York Age. April 3, 1913. p. 6.
6. White House Historical Association: Treasures of the White House: Steinway Grand Piano
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/photos/treasures-of-the-white-house-steinway-grand-piano
7. Mindy Jarrett: Fats Domino and Hurricane Katrina
https://nolajazzmuseum.org/articles/2019/8/29/fats-domino-and-hurricane-katrina
8. Ben Rogerson: Elton John’s Live Aid and Dodger Stadium grand piano sells for $915,000 Keyboard Magazine, July 21, 2021
https://www.musicradar.com/news/elton-john-steinway-piano
9. Bates, Eliot. “The Social Life of Musical Instruments.” Ethnomusicology 56, no. 3 (2012): 363–95. https://doi.org/10.5406/ethnomusicology.56.3.0363.
10. Veronica Gaspar: History of a Cultural Conquest: The Piano in Japan
Nov. 27, 2014
http://cejsh.icm.edu.pl/cejsh/element/bwmeta1.element.desklight-29567af0-b385-490d-add4-e8a106208299/c/Gaspar_v02.pdf
11. “Double Escapement.” The Oxford Companion to Music. Oxford University Press, 2011.
12. Parakilas, James. Piano Roles Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
13. Spöhrer, Markus, IGI Global, and Beate Ochsner. Applying the Actor-Network Theory in Media Studies. Hershey, Pennsylvania [701 E. Chocolate Avenue, Hershey, PA 17033, USA]: Information Science Reference, 2017. https://search-ebscohost-com.proxy.uba.uva.nl/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=1344303&site=ehost-live&scope=site.
