The Facets of One Face

By 1890, piano sales worldwide had reached into the hundreds of thousands and by 1900 just America's piano sales alone were in the hundreds of thousands. As mentioned last time, the piano had become a common household item, not just for richer, upper-class citizens, but for the middle class as well.

Novels from that time and earlier show that the ability to play the piano was deemed a marriageable quality. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Ionych by Anton Chekhov are two novels that show this idea perfectly. Because of the marriageability factor, the enjoyment derived from the piano, and its advancing availability, many people, especially women, played the piano. Piano playing was so prevalent that Oscar Wilde, an Irish author and poet, is quoted to have said, "The typewriting machine, when played with expression, is no more annoying than the piano when played by a sister or near relation".

Though there is no documentation of this, I believe that the number of women in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries that played the piano had an important role in the beginnings of jazz. Imagine it...a woman, a mother, who plays the piano, who loves that music and her children hearing it and then really listening to it. Maybe she taught them to play, maybe they just acquired a love of music, but I believe that it affected those children. James Weldon Johnson, the author of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (a fictional story of one young man's experiences with the music of the piano) spoke of his own mother's playing. He reminisced that "...those evenings on which she opened the little piano were the happiest hours of my childhood...". There is no doubt in my mind that the increase of pianos in the home inspired some of these children to the realm of jazz.

Though the piano would eventually come to jazz, it first found its fame in two very contrasting places: the concert halls of the nations and the brothels and bars of the cities. Although the concert halls produced many great pianists, even some who would play jazz type music such as George Gershwin, the brothels and bars are more important to us at this moment.

Many early jazz pianists started their careers as pianists in lowly places. The owners of the brothels and bars knew that the piano was the perfect instrument--it could provide melody, harmony, and rhythm all in one and only required them to pay one person which saved them money. For many black pianists, these brothels and bars would become a heaven-send. Though these talented musicians could not perform in the same venues as their white counterparts, the lowly places they played allowed them a freedom of expression and repertoire that allowed them to expand their own knowledge and push the bounds of musical innovation.

Sources:
Marketing History of the Piano http://www.cantos.org/Piano/History/marketing.html
U.S. Piano Sales History http://www.bluebookofpianos.com/uspiano.htm
Piano Roles: A New History of the Piano by Professor James Parakilas