There is a scene from Amadeus that shows a piano recital Mozart gives al fresco, which starts with four foot soldiers carrying the piano ahead, while he follows them in a horse-drawn carriage. The pianos he seems to be playing are the early prototypes, a few decades after the original Cristofori models came into vogue. The keys are black, and the entire instrument resembles a harpsichord rather than a pianoforte. Nearly 250 years later, we are doing the same thing metaphorically. The foot soldiers are many, taking the instrument all over the globe.
I have had the pleasure of playing abandoned instruments in the Pacific Northwest, in parts of Europe, and as far afield as an abandoned warehouse in Jamaica. In New York, I got to play on a beautifully reconditioned Steinway that Duke Ellington owned, and in Chennai, more memorably, I got to restore, along with the wonderful craftsmen at Musee Musicals, the grand piano at Kalakshetra that belonged to the late great M.S. Subbulakshmi.
A month later, I had the same experience with a piano that belonged to Jayachamarajendra Wodeyar, the maharaja of Mysore. Both these instruments had made their way to India a century previously, a journey that must have involved mind-boggling logistics, with traverses as steep and treacherous as the mythical one in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon . The piano has come a long way: it is 300 years old, if one goes by the first official record of the instrument in the Medici family catalogue of May 1716, and attributed to Bartolomeo Cristofori, its creator.
In Vienna, one can see the pianos that Beethoven used across all his turbulent years — the ones that he specially reconditioned so that the soundboard and body of the piano lay on the ground. This way the deaf composer could feel the vibrations as he pounded out the notes on his beloved instrument. In Poland and in large parts of France, we see the pianos touched by Chopin, venerated in what resemble shrines, while across many public places all over the world, “public piano” projects have become a rage — instruments littered across parks, airports and even sidewalks — inviting the community to unite through music-making. No other instrument enjoys the piano’s immense popularity, and its rich history has seen it meld with genres and cultures.
In May this year, Carnatic vocalist Sikkil Gurucharan and I were in a primary school in San Antonio, Texas, with Indian music accompanied by the piano. I found it significant when one child asked if I could give him the notation, so that he could try and use it to pick up Indian musical ideas. The piano had come full circle. From being a Western classical instrument to being adapted for Indian music, and now a vehicle of our music for the West.
The most accessible instrument in the world owes its origin to the humble yet prodigious Cristofori, who was hired providentially by the progressive and impetuous Prince Ferdinando di Medici of Tuscany. Working his way through the existing keyboard instruments of the time, notably the spinet and later developments on the clavichord and harpsichord, Cristofori created several masterpieces.
The 1720 pianoforte, with almost all the features of the modern piano save the iron frame and the composition of the hammers, sits in state at the Metropolitan Museum of New York. That this creation from an obscure part of Italy is now in all corners of the globe and spans a universe of musicians, instrument makers, composers, and technologists owes in large part to its highly dynamic tone and sonic properties and to its quick adoption by almost all leading composers of the 18th and 19th centuries. The piano came into its own perhaps with the romantic revolutionaries, Liszt and Chopin.
But the piano travelled alongside history. It was the instrument that catapulted into the world scene a statesman such as Polish premiere (and concert pianist) Ignacy Jan Paderewski. It was the instrument around which statesmen and nation-makers celebrated their biggest victories, and it was the social lubricant of choice for families worldwide. It was an integral part of the early 20th century “coffeehouse” and later “pubhouse” cultures, the instrument around which everyone gathered, the early breeding ground for such diverse genres as ragtime (Ernest Hogan and then Scott Joplin, basis of the African-American march time music and big bands of the early 20th century), early, and then, serious jazz (which needs a separate article), and in improvisational music of any form in the middle and late 20th centuries.
Perhaps the piano’s greatest contribution is that it has always been a great leveller. From the fingers of concert pianists to film music composers such as M.S. Viswanathan, Ilayaraja and A.R. Rahman, it has transformed the way we listen to and process music across the globe. It’s a journey that knows no beginning or end, exactly as Madame Sousatzka (essayed by the incredible Shirley Maclaine in the eponymous 1988 film) said.
Here’s to the next 300.
Anil Srinivasan is a Chennai-based pianist who works across genres.
