Piano Culture and Cosmopolitanism. A Global History of Keyboard Instruments, c. 1850-1930

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The project addresses the tension between the cultural specificity and the global resonance of European art music through the lens of keyboard instruments and their highly uneven dissemination across the globe. Between 1850 and 1930, when European piano culture developed great cosmopolitan cachet and the piano trade itself grew into a global business, the social and cultural role of the piano and its derivatives, the harmonium and the mechanical pianola, varied considerably according to the contexts of their appropriation. Thus the project addresses both the scope and the limits of a global culture of European origin. It does so, on a global level, by mapping the cultural topography of key institutions of music transfer, from the instrument trade to conservatories, and, on a local level, by investigating how piano culture was appropriated through the workings of musical intermediaries such as composers, musicians, missionaries and piano students. Their musical practices in the United States, South Africa, India and Japan, in particular, will serve to show the diverse conditions under which keyboard instruments and the attending European high culture were adopted, adapted or rejected. Interpreting the history of the piano from the perspective of the glocalization of material culture is also a way to historicize the concept of cosmopolitanism. The analysis will be based on a variety of unpublished and published sources ranging from piano company archives and special music collections to autobiographical material and music journalism.