ABSTRACT
Readers familiar with the late Cyril Ehrlich’s work on piano history and piano economics will appreciate the instrument’s multi-dimensional nineteenth-century personality: simultaneously a musical instrument, a means of social control (controlling women in particular), a driver or enabler of social change, a gymnastic apparatus on which rival virtuosi worked out in public, furniture for the home, an emblem of national pride – English pianos determinedly unlike Austrian pianos, German pianos, French pianos, etc., reputations for piano-building excellence rising and falling roughly in line with national political–economic prowess. The piano, more than any other instrument arguably, invites attention as an economic entity and an economic metaphor. How better to show you ‘value music’ than by giving this bulky piece of musical hardware valuable house-room? 1
