A MUST READ!

This book is an unqualified masterpiece and should be required reading by every serious student of music.

Loesser wrote almost fifty years ago, but most of what has happened since has tended to confirm his long term view of social and cultural trends ranging around the musical vehicle that is the piano. In future essays and features that I will be writing and posting on this website, in particular concerning classical music and the role it has had and may continue to have on into the future, I shall be drawing heavily on Loesser's insights. This book provides answers to at least the following questions:

Brief answer; NO.

More complex answer; there never was a "Golden Age" of classical music and composers aren't treated any better today than they were in the past with a few exceptions as has always been the case.

Brief answer; NO.

More complex answer; all the "great" music for the instrument was already written by that time and what followed the "Golden Age" of American piano building was a steep and steady decline.

Brief answer; NO.

More complex answer; music was more often used as the lure than the promise of piano ownership.

You'll find out by reading this book.

It is full of anecdotes, written in a spirited, often sarcastic style that moves right along. You'll see glimpses into the ordinary lives of people who lived a few hundred years ago on up to the turn of the last century and beyond and begin to realize that with the piano, humankind had a great opportunity for a kind of advancement that was, even in the best of times and places, missed by the majority of those who had access to one. Is Loesser's story tragic then? You decide.

Reading Loesser, one is reading history seen through an unflinchingly realistic mind, one that does not idealize events or personalities, but describes matters pretty much as they stood with regard to music, composers, performers, audiences, home life, the reasons behind buying and playing pianos, as well as the cultural differences among various European nations and America which shaped the eventual outcome of musical events as they have developed up to the present time. Even though Loesser's history stops about fifty years ago, before the tremendous rise of rock 'n roll, rhythm & blues, much of modern jazz, the electronic pianos, synthesizers, etc. none of this further development would have surprised him much.

I have read much concerning the history of music, but nothing quite like this book, compared to which most of the rest that dwells on the lives and personalities of individual composers, misses the seminal point that what most of them accomplished was done through a deep personal or spiritual compulsion for which few of them ever reaped any sizeable rewards during their lifetimes. Artistic heroism, especially of the musical variety, requires the participation of other people to perform and appreciate it; a society of concerted interest. If there is no such social interest, then the work of any great composer goes unrecognized and the reason to attempt work of this kind in the future dies. Loesser makes a pretty good case for why such efforts virtually did die out in England for almost 200 years.

More importantly, Loesser's insights remain valid today as instrumental in determining where we are and where we might be tomorrow as regards music and pianos.