Shifting ideals of tone in Grand Pianos (1880-1904) and their Implications for Performance Practice

Abstract

Since invention to the present day, the piano has undergone tremendous technological improvement, driven principally by musical tastes but also influenced by societal, economic, and environmental factors. Although late nineteenth-century pianos have been less often studied than their earlier counterparts, this thesis demonstrates that there was significant change in the build, use and reception of the instrument between 1880 and 1904. In the framework of piano development during this period, ‘tone’ is a subject of particular significance at both an individual and collective level, and invoke ideas transcending beyond social groupings such as age, gender, education, culture, and professions. Scrutiny of how piano tones were shaped and advocated by piano manufacturers, pianists, critics, and other influential bodies can lead to an understanding of musical stylistic preferences and diversity of pianism in the late nineteenth-century; Moreover, ideals of tone relate to notions in the broader fin-de-siècle culture, such as nationalism, industrialisation, and globalisation. The search for ideals of late nineteenth-century piano tone in this thesis goes further than the inquiry of documentary evidence of musicological and organological research to combining practice-led investigations of extant pianos from the period under consideration. As a pianist, I play on and compare 17 pianos (1870-1910), most of which are from the National Trust collection. Empirical measurements of the instrument and its sound, as well as auto-ethnographical study of my own experience of playing on the pianos a carefully selected repertoire, reveal that a broad range of factors both intrinsic (e.g. action weight) and extrinsic (e.g. repertoire compatibility) can influence one’s conception of the ‘ideal’ tone. Through practical experimentation to uncover subtle nuances of piano tone, I propose new insights into understanding nineteenth-century pianistic styles and performance practice, and offer an instrument-informed interpretation to approach a broad swathe of repertory.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Joyce Tang: orcid.org/0000-0003-3708-2743

ORCID for David Owen Norris: orcid.org/0000-0001-6047-3529

ORCID for Matthew Wright: orcid.org/0000-0001-9393-4918

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