Zach Wilson

Dr.Vilkner

Historiography II

Final Paper

The History and Virtuosity of Pianos

Pianos have played a pivotal role in the evolution of musical history and culture. Pianos
have impacted many of the great musicians we honor today. In the previous assignment Fetis
Reviews Chopin I suggested several thoughts about the evolution of virtuosity that are also very
important when it comes to the levels at which musicians perform. Around the early 1830s it is
suggested that there has been an extreme increase in talent. However, it is not just the number of
talented pianists that has increased. It is also the bar of supremely talented that has gone up.
Knowing more about pianos and how they have evolved among people helps explain and
broaden the extraordinary artistic ability it takes to become a virtuosic master. The most
successful of virtuosic musicians are those that are able to reimagine the instrument they are
working with. It is a true relationship between the composer and piano. Toward this period, it
was now expected that most musicians were generally fundamentally sound. That includes the
style and forms from the former years past. I was then asked Do you think the supreme in
performers is a reflection of the new focus on and practices of instrumental virtuosity? The only
way to answer that is to start from the beginning of the pianos creation as well as the scientific
foundation of sound. Although there were several eras that experienced a different development,
the Industrial era was the most distinguished between the dates of 1750 to 1920. We have come
to know many different varieties of music based around this period; composers like Charles Ives,
Igor Stravinsky and Richard Wagner all expressed their talents of musical divergence this way.
Since the time it was invented in around 1709, the piano has grown to be one of the worlds most
spectacular instruments that revolutionized a path for musical growth.

Before there were pianos and merely even instruments, it was rumored that around 6th
century B.C., a man known as Pythagoras discovered the mathematics of sound. John Steadman,
author of Virtuosity. The Musical Quarterly explains:

The legend that Pythagoras first discovered the principles of harmony by investigations at a
blacksmith's forge and subsequent experiments with bells, strings, pipes, and other media was
widely circulated during the late classical period through such writers as Nicomachus,
Iamblichus, Gaudentius, Macrobius, Boethius, and Martianus Capella and echoed in countless
mediaeval and Renaissance accounts of the origin of music (2).

Instruments like the clavichord appeared around the 14th century, which ultimately led to an
even bigger invention, the harpsichord. This fueled an even greater breakthrough in the European
culture with the finalized conception of the piano in the early 18th century. Although the organ
and harpsichord were made first, the changes made within the piano was immensely needed for
the common artist to express more emotions through louder and softer sound.

Just as instruments have evolved to create what is now called the piano, the role that
pianos play in the music itself has changed with time. As the economic status changed among
Western Europe, so did the art. As an entity, the Industrial Revolution revolutionized the ideas of
a musician. During this era more people were given possibilities in becoming a musician and a
virtuoso based solely on the change of the piano. The general ability of virtuosic material was
also in flux at this point in time. Wagner expressed his bitterness in a long article On the
Virtuoso Trade, in which he says:

Things would already have arrived at a sorry state if it were necessary for
composers to arrange their works in the interest of this or that special quality on
the part of the performer. But the matter has already gone much further than that.
The musician who wishes to win the sympathy of the masses is forced to take as
his point of departure the intractable self-esteem of the virtuosos and reconcile
with such servitude the miracles that one expects of his genius.

Developing musicians at this time were given the freedom to explore their own sense of
virtuosity. Composers were able to create music through themselves with the accompaniment of
a piano.

Patrons had also become fond of musicians with multiple skills, however there was an
alcove in opportunity specialized for the masters of a specific instrument. With that as well as the
rise of the middle class, came an advancement of other positions that also supported and gave
musicians their popularity. One result of the Industrial Revolution was the creation of a middle
class. This new economic strata consisted of a larger number of people with more expendable
income and more leisure time than had ever existed before. Musical extravaganzas that
triumphed the musician or composer gained popularity with the masses of concertgoers
(Dobney). As the economic status changed among Western Europe, so did the art. I mentioned
previously in my essay on the Industrial Revolution that more people were given possibilities in
becoming a musician and a virtuoso based solely on the change of the piano. Beginning with
Beethoven, composers began to arrange large concerts in order to introduce their works to the
public. As audiences desired more, composers wrote larger musical works and demanded more
of performers and their instruments (Dobney). Music has transitioned from light, background
music to robust program music that allowed composers like Beethoven to showcase more in
depth concepts.

Most widely known composers in these times were known as virtuosic piano players. A
prime example of piano development and virtuosic differences is one of the greatest German
romantic composers, Felix Mendelssohn. The piano affected Mendelssohn from a very young
age. Much like the American production rate of factories, Germany also started experiencing
changes around the time Mendelssohn was born. Although Mendelssohn was an impressive
artist, his father had been a banker and amateur pianist. Without the change in economic and
theoretical life, who knows what education Mendelssohn or his sister would have received. Had
they not been given the opportunity to obtain the knowledge they were given, perhaps music
would not be the same as it is today. Artists had an extreme amount of motivation to create many
different art forms and pieces of music because of how much access was attainable during the
developing times.

Ranges on the piano were increased at that time as well which gave aspiring artists larger
tessituras to play with. With the rapid expansions of the piano, the public ear still demanded
more. The pressure was on for rising composers. Patrons were pushing even harder to hear
something new from these musicians. The demands of pianists like Franz Liszt pressed the
technology and design of pianos to ever-larger instruments, eventually replacing the internal
wooden structures of the eighteenth century with cast iron frames that could withstand thousands
of pounds of pressure (Dobney). The demand of new expectations from patrons catapulted
innovative composers much like Franz Liszt. The evolution of the piano and the music that was
produced because of it grew together into a cohesive art form.

From that configuration of music, brought forth new ages of music and expressiveness.
Composers have continued to ask themselves, what else can we do? and what else is music
capable of? Avant-garde music was a new form of experimental music that has been
characterized as being unorthodox yet, refined. The musical person, indeed, is one who shows
an inclination towards music through a discrimination and sensitivity with regard to the technical
aspects of his art. Now, it is the function of the creative artist to make laws, not to follow them;
he strives for a perfection in harmony through his own creativity (Schueller). I have noticed that
in pieces of avant-garde music, the range at which the pianist has to reach in order to obtain the
proper sound is so much larger. John Cage was a composer who marked the path for
experimental music. During the 1950s he was received as a very controversial composer for his
unconventional use of the piano. He used many different stylistic techniques such as: tying
fishing line around the strings, attaching bells and whistles to the strings, and using abstract
objects to play the keys. John Cage proved that there are endless ways to use an instrument. He
mentioned in an interview in 1960 on the popular television show I've Got a Secret that he does
not like to incorporate gadgets by their instructions intentions. His creative choices influenced
an entire subgenre of composers who explore the extended use of the piano.

There is a complexity about the virtuosic evolution within the community of music. However,
without this, there would be no music. Pianos and many other instruments have accompanied
humans in ways to express music that in which there are no words for.
Reference List:

Dobney, Jayson Kerr. Nineteenth-Century Classical Music. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New
York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/amcm/hd_amcm.htm (October 2004)

Steadman, J. (1964). The "Inharmonious Blacksmith": Spenser and the Pythagoras Legend. PMLA,79(5),
664-665. doi:10.2307/461152

Schueller, H. (1977). The Aesthetic Implications of Avant-Garde Music. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art
Criticism, 35(4), 397-410. doi:10.2307/430606