The Piano in the Home

In the later nineteenth century the piano became furniture, and families made their own music.

Related

RomanticPianoCharacter Piece

In the later nineteenth century the piano turned from a luxury into furniture, and families began making music in the drawing room.

Time and place

Europe and North America, 1850 to 1900. Piano factories in London, Paris, New York and Boston used cast-iron frames, felt hammers and machine-wound strings for mass output, and the upright fitted a small room. Department stores and mail-order catalogues sold instruments, shops sold scores and stools alongside, and the piano became standard equipment for the middle-class home.

What happened

Industrial production lowered cost, and the upright replaced the grand in ordinary houses. A purchase came with stool, music desk and tutor, teachers called at home, daughters were expected to learn, and lessons became a fixed item in the household budget. Four-hand arrangements reduced symphonies and operas to what two people could play, and family concerts filled Sunday afternoons. Scores were graded by difficulty, with studies, lyrical pieces and dances each finding a market. The piano stood in the most visible corner of the parlour, an instrument and also furniture and a sign of standing.

What changed

Domestic playing became the mass base of the music market, and most people first heard Beethoven or Wagner through their own hands. Genres shrank to the room, with the short piece, song without words, lyrical piece and dance becoming the norm. The piano also wrote a gender division into music education, playing being treated as a woman's accomplishment. When recording and radio arrived, the piano lost its playback function and became furniture, a teaching tool, and later an object of revival.

Listen for the turn

Begin with the Arietta from Grieg's first Lyric Pieces, two phrases and a simple accompaniment that stands up with one change of pedal. Then Mendelssohn's Song without Words, a singing line over an even accompaniment, the standard parlour model. Then Chopin's Mazurkas Op. 33, dance rhythm written as a solo piece a household could play. Finally Schumann's Scenes from Childhood, titled miniatures, technically easy and emotionally complex. Before the turn such music belonged to salon and court; afterwards to any family that had bought a piano.

Related

The turn belongs to Romantic, with the instrument at Piano, the genre at Character Piece, and the public recital coming later.

Sources

• Grove Music Online 的 Piano 条目，用于核对立式钢琴的批量生产
• Cyril Ehrlich, The Piano, A History（Oxford University Press），用于核对钢琴价格与家庭普及

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.