The Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture: Instruments, Performers and Repertoire

Description

Since the publication of The London Pianoforte School (ed. Nicholas Temperley) twenty years ago, research has proliferated in the area of music for the piano during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into developments in the musical life of London, for a time the centre of piano manufacturing, publishing and performance. But none has focused on the piano exclusively within Britain. The eleven chapters in this volume explore major issues surrounding the instrument, its performers and music within an expanded geographical context created by the spread of the instrument and the growth of concert touring. Topics covered include: the piano trade and how piano manufacturing affected a major provincial town; the reception of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier and Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum during the nineteenth century; the shift from composer-pianists to pianist-interpreters in the first half of the century that triggered crucial changes in piano performance and concert structure; the growth of musical life in the peripheries outside major musical centres; the pianist as advocate for contemporary composers as well as for historical repertory; the status of British pianists both in relation to foreigners on tour in Britain and as welcomed star performers in outposts of the Empire; marketing forces that had an impact on piano sales, concerts and piano careers; leading virtuosos, writers and critics; the important role played by women pianists and the development of the recording industry, bringing the volume into the early twentieth century. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of Figures List of Tables List of Music Examples Notes on Contributors Foreword Acknowledgements Abbreviations General Editor’s Series Preface 1 Introduction 2 ‘That Domestic and Long-suffering Instrument’: The Piano Boom in Nineteenth-Century Belfast 3 ‘Most ingenious, most learned, and yet practicable work’: The English Reception of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century seen through the Editions Published in London 4 The Faces of Parnassus: Towards a New Reception of Muzio Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum 5 Mendelssohnian Allusions in the Early Piano Works of William Sterndale Bennett 6 William Sterndale Bennett, Composer and Pianist 7 Victorian Pianists as Concert Artists: The Case of Arabella Goddard (1836–1922) 8 Origins of the Piano Recital in England, 1830–1870 9 ‘Remarkable force, finish, intelligence and feeling’: Reassessing the Pianism of Walter Bache 10 Fanny Davies: ‘A messenger for Schumann and Brahms’? 11 Three Oxford Pianistic Careers: Donald Francis Tovey, Paul Victor Mendelssohn Benecke and Ernest Walker Index