Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano PDF
Preview Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano
00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page i Piano Roles 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page ii Yale Nota Bene Yale University Press New Haven & London 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page iii PianoRoles A New History of the Piano James Parakilas with E. Douglas Bomberger Martha Dennis Burns Michael Chanan Charlotte N. Eyerman Edwin M. Good Atsuko Hirai Cynthia Adams Hoover Richard Leppert Ivan Raykoff Judith Tick Marina Tsvetaeva, translated by Jane Costlow Mark Tucker Gretchen A. Wheelock Stephen Zank 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page iv First published as a Yale Nota Bene book in . Originally published in a slightly different form in by Yale University Press as Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano. Parts of Chapter are adapted from Mark Tucker, Ellington: The Early Years(Urbana and Chicago, ), including all citations from primary sources, printed by permission of University of Illinois Press; and Judith Tick, Ruth Crawford Seeger: A Composer’s Search for American Music(Oxford, ), including all citations from primary sources, printed by permission of Oxford University Press. “Piano after War” by Gwendolyn Brooks (p. ), copyright by the author. Reprinted by her permission. Copyright ©by James Parakilas. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections and of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publica- tions, please contact: U.S. office [email protected] Europe office [email protected] Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress card catalogue number: isbn---(pbk.) A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page v Contents Acknowledgments vii James Parakilas Introduction James Parakilas One to s: The Need for the Piano James Parakilas Two Designing, Making, and Selling Pianos Edwin M. Good; Cynthia Adams Hoover; Michael Chanan Three s to s: The Piano Revolution in the Age of Revolutions James Parakilas; Gretchen A. Wheelock Four The Piano Lesson James Parakilas; E. Douglas Bomberger; Martha Dennis Burns; Mark Tucker; Judith Tick; Marina Tsvetaeva,translated by Jane Costlow Five s to s: The Piano Calls the Tune James Parakilas; Charlotte N. Eyerman Six The Concert and the Virtuoso Stephen Zank; Richard Leppert 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page vi Seven s to s: The World’s the Limit James Parakilas; Atsuko Hirai Eight Hollywood’s Embattled Icon Ivan Raykoff, with a Preview by Michael Chanan Nine s to :New Voices from the Old Impersonator James Parakilas; Mark Tucker; Michael Chanan Afterword: Making the Piano Historical James Parakilas Notes Recommended Readings Contributors Index Illustration gallery follows page vi Contents 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page vii Acknowledgments This book is the paperback version of Piano Roles: Three Hundred Years of Life with the Piano, published by Yale University Press in ; that original edition was created as the book element of Piano , a project examining and commemorating the three-hundred- year history of the piano in its cultural contexts. In the first place, then, the book emerged alongside the planning for the Piano exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution, as well as for the associated television programs. Of those who took part in that planning, several —Cynthia Hoover, Edwin Good, Richard Leppert, and Mark Tucker— contributed to the book as authors; the others—Lynn Edwards, H. Wi- ley Hitchcock, Sandra Rosenblum, Patrick Rucker, Ruth Solie, and James Weaver—all lent invaluable help in other ways. The contributors to the book were true co-authors, and they could all have supplied their own lists of names to acknowledge. Julie Carl- son, who blended the writing of all the contributors together to tell a single story, should have her name on every page. The original book conveyed its message in pictures as much as in words, and though the present edition retains just a fraction of those pictures, it continues to rely seriously on its pictures and therefore on the efforts of the student assistants who tracked them down in the first place: Timothy Bakland, Nils van Otterloo, and Karen Grady at Bates College, and Rosalie Metro, Jennifer Korn, and Chris Mooney at Yale University Press. Courtney Elf produced the beautiful musi- cal examples. Bates College provided generous institutional support for the book; for this I thank especially Deans Martha Crunkleton and Ann Besser vii 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page viii Scott and the members of the committee on student research. The librarians of the Ladd Library—especially Elaine Ardia, Thomas Hayward, Laura Juraska, Janice Lee, Gilbert Marcotte, Paula Mat- thews, Sharon Saunders, and LaVerne Winn—provided years of sup- port to this work, sometimes under the most trying of circumstances. In a larger sense, this project was sustained by the whole Bates community—by endless conversations that showed me what impor- tant roles pianos play in many people’s memories and consciousness, as well as by favors that I owe to particular individuals. Besides two of my colleagues, Jane Costlow and Atsuko Hirai, who are among the authors, I thank Judith Head, who provided crucial editorial help; William Matthews, who made the project fit into the life of our de- partment; my students in a course that mapped out the subject of this book; Max Andrucki, Dennis Browne, Timothy Chin, Rebecca Corrie, Laura Gagnon, Frank Glazer, Sallie Hackett, Sylvia Hawks, Robyn Holman, Mark Howard, Phyllis Graber Jensen, Melville Mc- Lean, Lillian Nayder, and many others who provided both ideas and material help. And I remember the wonderful lesson I received in re- searching nineteenth-century American culture from Bob Branham. For help on the subject of piano tuning, I thank Owen Jorgensen; on the subject of pianos in institutional settings, Rachelle Smith; and on the book as a whole, William Weber. For references, advice, and answers to queries, I thank David Appleby, Isabelle Belance- Zank, Jennifer Bloxam, Martha Clinkscale, Martha Cox, Mária Eck- hardt, George Eberts, David Engle, David Fuller, Lee Glazer, Charles Hamm, Maria Anna Harley, John Hasse, Marshall Hawkins, Roland Hoover, Ann Kuebler, Page Lily, Ralph Locke, Cristina Magaldi, Judith McCullough, Zvi Meniker, Jean-Paul Montagnier, Lyle Neff, Leon Plantinga, Tom Pniewski, Regula Qureshi, Rodney Regier, Tim Stone, Thomas Stoner, William Summers, Nicholas Tawa, Susan Weg- ner, William Williams, Susan Youens, and Neal Zaslaw. Librarians at institutions from neighboring Bowdoin College to the Modern Music Library in Tokyo put their resources at the service of this project. So did people at museums, conservatories, and other in- stitutions, both profit and nonprofit. In many cases I do not know the names of the people I should thank. Let Sarah Adams and Suzanne viii Acknowledgments 00 Piano NB FM i-x 1/25/02 11:09 AM Page ix Eggleston of the music libraries at Harvard and Yale Universities stand for many. Likewise, at Yale University Press many people known and un- known to me made the production of the book possible. I would like to thank by name those whom I worked with directly: Kathleen Cun- ningham, Phillip King, and Nancy Ovedovitz on the original edition; Ali Peterson on the present edition; and above all Harry Haskell, who has stood behind this work at every stage. Pianos are family fixtures, and in the making of this book about the piano many questions have been answered and many crises eased by the members of my family—Mary Hunter, Sandy and Jacob Para- kilas, George and Shelagh Hunter. In all my work I count on support from Mary that is miraculously spousal and collegial at the same time; in this case she also supported our family single-handedly for half a year so that I could write. Acknowledgments ix
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