In 1780, John Adams wrote home from Paris to his wife Abigail:

Adams’s prescience - at least concerning music – was remarkably accurate: it was not until the mid-1840s, when his grandson Charles Francis Adams was a young adult, that musical culture in America came of age. Music, of course, had been an important part of American life during the Colonial and early Federal periods. But the 1840s marked the United States’s emergence as a true music-supporting nation, equipped with the infrastructure necessary for the performing arts. With that development, musical culture could only grow, as it did throughout the 1850s.

Because the American musical environment changed so significantly after the mid-1840s, this chapter is divided into two parts. The first half introduces the situation at the dawn of the century and explores the foundation-building endeavors of the 1810s through the mid-1840s; the second covers the context and circumstances of musical activity in the mid-1840s and 1850s.

As with any music before the age of sound recording, what survives of pre-nineteenth-century American sacred music is that which was written down or published. This means, in the main, Anglo-American Protestant psalmody. Psalmody - the word here referring to musical settings not only of the Biblical psalms but also of hymn texts and Biblical prose – was an extraordinarily rich creative phenomenon in late-eighteenth-century America. The vast literature of this tradition and the high artistic quality of many of its compositions are substantially the reasons why a separate chapter on early American sacred music is found in the present volume.

It is important, however, to consider the tradition of Protestant psalmody within a larger context: that of music as an aspect of worship - or, more broadly stated, of sacred activity. Humans have used music in various ways to express, intensify, channel, or unblock their relationship to the divine. Music can bring a person closer to God or to the spiritual realm; it can also create and strengthen the bonds within a community of worshippers or spiritual seekers. In different ritual settings within different cultural traditions, religious music has worked in very different ways: intensifying consciousness or dissolving it; exciting the body and spirit or rendering them tranquil; reinforcing established social hierarchies or providing a temporary alternative.

Seen from these perspectives, Protestant worship music occupies a very particular place in a wide spectrum of traditions. Both German Protestantism and the mainstream of Anglo-American Protestantism have always been wary of departing from consciousness and rationality in worship. And they have rarely encouraged individual or personal religious experiences.

The Cambridge companion to the piano brings together in a single volume a collection of essays which covers the history of the instrument, the history of its performance and a study of its repertory. Each chapter is written by a specialist with access to the most recent research on his or her topic, but all the authors have written accessibly, with the student of the instrument, or an enthusiastic amateur, in mind.

Chapters 1–3 bring together as much up-to-date piano history as is possible in the space available. In recent years, some extremely important work has been published on the early history of the piano. Stewart Pollens's The early pianoforte and Michael Cole's The pianoforte in the Classical era between them provide a comprehensive survey of the technical developments which took place in the eighteenth century. These developments are summarised in chapters 1 and 2 along with information about the specific kinds of instrument played by the early pianists. Necessary technical terms are explained in the glossary at the end of the volume. The equivalent history of the piano in the first half of the nineteenth century is much less well documented and a new, detailed history of the piano in the nineteenth century is urgently needed. It is remarkable that Rosamond Harding's book The piano-forte, first published as long ago as 1933, remains the standard text for this period.

‘Art music, what is that?’ Music lovers and many others in the second half of the nineteenth century were confronted with a new idea, a choice and an obligation. Some music, art music, had acquired a special status, and whatever one thought, there were things one was supposed to think about it. Earlier it had been much simpler: music was either utilitarian or fun. As utilitarian it had a function, be it in church, a militia ceremony, or a public commemoration, but the event dictated its role and except for the musicians, there was nothing to ponder. Music for music’s sake, that was just a diversion, enjoyable, entertaining.

A lot of earlier nineteenth-century music had of course been serious, in either perception or intent. Church music composers sought to enhance the dignity and decorum of the worship experience in their hymns and anthems; Henry Russell’s songs moved the population to tears; and vocal groups such as the Hutchinsons stirred, inspired, and outraged the population with their moral and political topics. But only in the second half of the century did the notion spread generally through society that certain types of music were fundamentally different. This music, the argument went, had the capacity to do more than entertain; it inspired and elevated. Even though it might be instrumental and abstract, it spoke to the ethical side of humanity. Even though it might be secular, it was sacred, in an intangible way. It was moral, it was good, it was good for you. Such music was called art music.

The history of American music begins with American Indians, who were the original inhabitants of North America. Their distant ancestors migrated from northeast Asia across the Bering land bridge and settled in the Americas some 15,000 years ago. Through time, Native Americans developed extraordinarily diverse lifeways as they adapted to a wide range of environments and climates. The first sustained contacts between Native Americans and Europeans began in the late fifteenth century, and by the early seventeenth century, Europeans had established permanent colonies in North America. Indian–White relations before 1800 were characterized by conflict over land, fraudulent treaties, and a steadily increasing imbalance of power. Native American social and economic conditions deteriorated during the nineteenth century, as the people were removed from their homelands, confined to reservations, and subjected to aggressive but unsuccessful acculturation programs. Misunderstanding and prejudice continued in the twentieth century, but Indian political activism since the 1960s resulted in legislation that supports tribal self-determination and religious freedom. Since the 1970s, Native Americans have experienced cultural renewal, and Indian identities remain strong and vibrant.

American Indians are the heirs to an enduring musical heritage that is as impressive in its modern richness and variety as in its historical depth and continuity. Each of the more than 200 tribes now in existence has its own historic musical culture, with unique repertories, styles, instruments, theories, and practices. American Indians also compose, perform, and listen to a wide spectrum of recently developed native musics, as well as European and American art, popular, and folk musics.

Introduction

Deep in America’s dreams, locked in a complex embrace, stand two mythic figures: the Pioneer (inventor, frontiersman, outlaw, tycoon) – naked, self-made, indebted to no-one, whose accomplishments dwarf his compatriots; and the Citizen – anonymous, unremarkable, but with the strength of thousands, shielded by the absolute equality of the polling booth. In their entanglements – sometimes cooperative, sometimes competitive – these figures act out the profound tension between two fundamental ideologies which drive America’s politics and culture: individualism and egalitarianism.

On one hand America declares itself a land of freedom and opportunity, a country which guarantees each person’s right to be different, to rise above the crowd, to become uncommon. On the other it declares all its citizens equal: no-one is privileged, no-one special; each is but a member of the common weal. The two declarations meet in America’s most hackneyed phrases: “e pluribus unum” [“from many, one”]; “liberty [for each] and justice [for all].” They each claim a share of America’s most fundamental laws, the egalitarian Constitution and the individualist Bill of Rights. And they confound each other in America’s comic archetypes, from Brer Rabbit to Huck Finn to The Little Tramp.

The mythic reconciliation of these two ideologies has been situated physically on the frontier: there (the story goes) any Citizen can become a Pioneer, and in its wake Pioneers rediscover Citizenship. It has been economically situated in capitalism (rags to riches), and politically situated in democracy (my son, the president). Ideological reconciliation in cultural domains, however, has been more problematic; and the domain of art has been the most problematic of all.

As the United States expanded in the nineteenth century its population increased dramatically. Much of that increase came from immigration, which was spurred by severe economic and political problems in parts of Europe. The overwhelming majority of immigrants to America still came from Europe in the nineteenth century, primarily from Germany, Ireland, and Great Britain. Only slightly fewer came from Scandinavia. On the West Coast there was considerable immigration from China. After 1880 Italian immigration began to rise, but the large waves of Italian, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian immigrants arrived only after 1900 (Thernstrom 1980, passim).

In this chapter I will discuss the kinds of music that the principal immigrant groups brought with them and the role immigrant musicians played in nineteenth-century American culture. I will not limit the discussion to new immigrants, however; I will also discuss the principal types of folk music that immigrants arriving before 1800 planted on American soil.

The subject matter presents immediate methodological problems, as much of the musical activity of immigrant groups was in the folk tradition. It was spontaneous and oral, leaving few documents. And though many of the traditions persisted into the twentieth century, they were not static. Thus to determine what nineteenth- as opposed to twentieth-century practice was can be elusive. In some areas documentation does exist. Collections of dances for the violin or flute almost certainly reflect folk practice, as do instrumental tutors, a particularly valuable source. Because of the tutors and many instrumental collections, we know more about nineteenth-century folk dance music than folksongs of several important ethnic groups.

Mark Hambourg's (1879–1960) cavalier approach to Mozart, as recalled by Artur Rubinstein (1887–1982), typifies one popular image of the Romantic virtuoso pianist: stylistically insensitive, contemptuous of textual fidelity and, to cap it all, too loud – especially in chamber music. Rubinstein heard Hambourg in 1915, but equally harsh criticisms of the ‘virtuoso school’ had been penned at least as far back as the nineteenth-century heydays of Liszt and Thalberg, whose concert triumphs served as models for many later pianists. Even today, some critics seem unable to utter the word ‘virtuosity’ without the appendages ‘empty’ or ‘meretricious’. This contrast between playing that somehow metaphysically exposes the soul of music without drawing attention to technical accomplishment, and playing in which tasteless display is paramount echoes Mozart's two-hundred-year-old criticism of Clementi as ‘a mere mechanicus’. Of course, in a fundamental sense this contrast is misleading. No player, however elevated his interpretative ability, can communicate his intentions without a sound instrumental technique (unless he becomes a conductor), and most of the great Romantic pianists were both interpreters and virtuosos of the highest order.

The golden era of Romantic pianism lasted roughly one hundred years, the famous musical duel between Liszt and Thalberg in 1837, and the death of Paderewski (the most highly paid concert pianist of all time) in 1941 being convenient, if slightly arbitrary, markers at either end.

Although the terms “avant-garde” and “experimental” are often used to categorize radical composers and their works, it has been noted that “‘avant garde’ remains more a slogan than a definition” (Griffiths 1980, p. 743) and that “‘experimental music’ is ill-defined and the concept it is used to describe is vague” (Rockwell 1986, p. 91). (In fairness to Rockwell, he does also stress the “bolder, more individualistic [and] eccentric” aspects of experimentalism, which suggest an “untrammeled willingness to probe the very limits of music” [p. 91].) But equally problematically, there is no clear demarcation line between the composers and repertories to which the terms are usually applied, or between the territory supposedly described by combining the two terms and that inhabited by other species of contemporary composer. Thus Ruth Crawford (Seeger) (1901–1953) and George Crumb (born 1929) might be thought of as either avant garde or experimental, while Steve Reich (born 1936) and Philip Glass (born 1937) have – over a twenty-five year period – moved imperceptibly from the experimental fringe to the postmodern mainstream, without having compromised their work to any substantive degree.

These problems of definition are at least partly attributable to two linked paradoxes. First, almost all forms of radicalism will, as a function of time, progressively degenerate into normality and acceptability: today’s novelty can easily become tomorrow’s cliché. Second (and more important), radicalism does not exist per se, but rather is a function of difference when measured against contemporaneous norms.

Introduction

The underlying acoustical principles of sound production on the piano are very straightforward. When a key is depressed, it causes a small, felt-covered hammer to be thrown against a set of strings tuned to a specific note of the scale. The key incorporates an escapement mechanism which detaches the hammer from the key just before striking the strings so that they receive a single, unimpeded blow from the hammer. The exchange of momentum causes the strings to vibrate, and it is these vibrations which are the origin of the musical sound. The strings do not radiate sound directly, however, because they are much too small to interact with the surrounding air. Instead, they are coupled to a soundboard, a lightweight plate of wood, which is specifically designed to vibrate in sympathy with the strings. It is the structural vibrations of the soundboard which induce pressure changes in the air, rather in the manner of a loudspeaker cone, to create the sound we hear.

This is, of course, just the start of the story. This simple explanation of the mechanical action of the piano invites more questions than it answers. Why do different pianos have different sound qualities? What is the function of double and triple stringing? What control does the performer have on the final sound quality of an instrument? In searching for the answers to these questions, we discover that the piano has a few hidden secrets of surprising complexity, and we have to marvel at the ingenuity of the craftsmen who have played their part in the development of the modern instrument and at the skill of the technician who keeps a piano at the peak of its performance.

The experience of recording

The modern recording studio is a very different place from the studios of the early twentieth century, and the process of making records has changed very greatly. Until the introduction of tape recording around 1950, pianists, like other musicians, recorded onto a wax disc one side at a time. The maximum length was about four and a half minutes by the 1930s, shorter in the early days. Recordings could not be edited, and they could not even be played back at the time without destroying the wax master. Before the advent of electrical recording in the mid 1920s, the frequency range was very limited in both bass and treble, making a concert grand piano sound more like a small upright.

The first important pianists to make records were Alfred Grünfeld in Vienna in 1899, and Raoul Pugno in Paris in 1903. But for several years into the twentieth century the principal work of the studios was vocal recording. Because the acoustic recording horns were very directional, the piano used for accompaniment was raised up to the same level as the singer's head. In 1902, Caruso's accompanist Salvatore Cottone played on an upright piano set up on a platform of packing cases. Pugno's recordings were made under similar conditions. Even when solo piano recording became established, and grand pianos were routinely used in the studio, the pre-electric recording still had limitations.

Throughout the world, music is used by the powerful to advance their personal or political agendas, by governments to achieve national objectives, by performers and tradesmen to earn a living, and by the people for entertainment and individual goals. Thus, the music played and heard in colonial America was defined by the distinct national cultures that held political power and whose people populated its land.

The first colonists arrived from and perpetuated a world in which the arts were divided. On one side were the cultivated arts of music and dance, enriched by centuries of patronage from the court and nobility. Settlers with ample means purchased instruments and music, hired professional instructors, and enjoyed playing or listening to new compositions of British and European artists. They performed the latest dances learned from their teachers or from books ordered from London, Paris, or Madrid, depending on trade connections at the time. In colonial societies that were anxious to appear as refined as those in the mother countries, capability in, or consumption of, the arts was a sign of gentility, affluence, and influence; it gave evidence of sufficient means to obtain appreciation, training, and leisure to practice necessary skills.

On the other side was the music of the people. The laboring, farming, and servant classes had little access to cultivated music. They did not understand it and they did not need it. Their long-lived ballads and dancing tunes were seldom consciously learned but rather absorbed from frequent hearing. They were an integral part of their community bond and identification.

In 1972 a well-known pianist confided to an interviewer that his favourite composer was Orlando Gibbons (1583–1625). In a later interview he declared that he ‘had doubts about Beethoven’ and that he didn't think Chopin was ‘a very good composer’; in fact the whole core of the pianorecital repertory was ‘a colossal waste of time’.

Such heretical statements could come only from Glenn Gould, whose groundbreaking performances of J. S. Bach (and indeed of Orlando Gibbons) demonstrate a profound understanding and love of contrapuntal writing. Gould dismissed nineteenth-century music purely on the grounds that Romantic composers treated the piano as a ‘homophonic instrument’. Leaving aside the breathtaking inaccuracy of that statement, it presumably achieved its main purpose to challenge complacent notions about piano repertory and canon.

Repertory

What are these notions? Ask any pianist about his or her ‘repertoire’ and out will come a list of works by composers from J. S. Bach to Bartók – that is, if your pianist is at all interested in his or her own century; many will not venture much beyond Brahms. Beethoven will perhaps be predominant, then Mozart and Schubert, some Haydn, Chopin, Schumann, Brahms, Liszt and possibly some Mendelssohn. Choice of repertory is in part influenced by examination requirements, from elementary to diploma level; it is what is taught in our conservatories, whose syllabuses reflect and reinforce prevailing custom. On the other hand, the diversity of the recording industry, particularly since the arrival of CDs, means that we now have more choice of what to listen to than ever before.

Introduction

One of the most compelling portrayals of jazz develops from the theme of the downtrodden hero. According to this narrative, jazz, as an anthropomorphism of black survival – America’s “living art” - endures a precarious existence, trapped within a plebeian and often hostile commercial environment. For a time, the hero narrative worked successfully to perpetuate beliefs in the music’s historical and aesthetic coherence. Jazz endured, it seemed, despite the wide range of styles and practices that had emerged since its “birth” in the “cradle” of New Orleans. By the late 1950s, however, many observers had begun to suspect that something was seriously wrong with the musical body, jazz. Having taken for granted its ties to a market economy that required a constant flow of new stars, taste makers and pundits feared that jazz might soon die off unless a new figure of vision could provide a clear stylistic direction. Musical activity in a real sense had not subsided, of course. Journalistic coverage from the period shows that musicians actively performed and recorded in an array of styles, from New Orleans ensemble improvisations to gospel-inflected soul jazz, from “third stream” (a hybrid of jazz and European-based art music) to energetic extensions of bop (Lees 1960). Yet the expectations of innovation, exacerbated by market pressures, led many to believe that any lapse in discernible stylistic growth was a sure sign of a coming “death.” As a matter of course, critics and audiences looked hopefully to that next “Great Man” who would build a new kind of jazz based on prior practices.

It seems a virtually inevitable development that the creative explosions taking place in the realms of American jazz, popular, and theatrical music following World War I would find a parallel in the sphere of American art music. It also follows that much of the new art music would draw direct or indirect inspiration from those exciting and novel developments in the vernacular areas. Sometimes this took the form of direct stylistic mimicry or evocation, and other times it came across more subtly as an attempt to emulate, in art music terms, the sense of an original, energetic American identity that characterized the best of the new vernacular musics.

The prosperous United States of the 1920s proved an ideal environment for a flourishing of concert music. There was a significantly wide bourgeois audience, interested in “culture” and with money to spend, and a striking growth in upper-class financial support for art music performing organizations, concert series, and individual efforts and events – offered through personal, charitable, and corporate sources. The emergence of the United States as a world presence in the aftermath of World War I was an equally important stimulus to creativity in the art music sphere. American composers became abruptly aware of the inspiration and challenge presented to them by developments in European modernism, at the same time that they sought to establish a new and distinctive identity for American music, an identity that would speak both to their native audiences and to the world.