Craig H. Roell’s The Piano in America, 1890-1940 explores the piano industry’s apex at the turn of the 20th 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 20th 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 20th 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 20th 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.
No comments:
Post a Comment