Preservation of Pianos

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CCI Newsletter, No. 32, November 2003

Preservation of Pianos

by Robert L. Barclay, Senior Conservator, Treatment and Development Division – Objects

The piano has played a large part in the development of Canada's identity. We have only to think of Glenn Gould and his profound influence on world pianistic style to realize the place of this instrument in our culture. For a country with a relatively small and diffuse population, we have contributed excellent pianists out of all proportion to our numbers. The names of Angela Hewitt, Louis Lortie, Marc-André Hamelin, Jon Kimura Parker, and many others immediately come to mind. This pianistic culture did not spring out of thin air. The piano has been a feature of our concert halls, schools, churches, seminaries, recreation centres, and living rooms for four centuries. Both public and private collections attest to this. Not only did Canadian manufacturers satisfy their own local market, but they also became major world producers of pianos and other instruments, some of which are still found in various countries around the world.

Very few local museums are without at least one piano, many of which could tell the most wonderful stories if we only had the art to extract them. When one encounters an early 19th century piano, perhaps one from a famed maker in London or Paris, its presence always triggers a chain of questions. How did this instrument arrive here, who ordered it and waited for the wagon to deliver it from the train or the ship, how did they feel when they played the first notes? And when you find an early Canadian piano, perhaps one made in a small Ontario or Quebec town before the First World War, it is beguiling to imagine the entire social and technical ambience surrounding the workshop where the instrument first came to life. Often, written in pencil underneath the lowest key, there will be the signature of the craftsman who finished the instrument and the date of its completion. This is a touchstone to a life and a culture that are gone forever.

As a nation we have an excellent record for conserving the artifacts of our cultural heritage. Early and valuable pianos are no exception. The Cantos Music Foundation in Calgary boasts one of the finest collections of keyboard instruments anywhere. The collection includes, among definitive examples from many countries, a rare upright piano by Brockly & Brockly of Halifax, Nova Scotia, made in 1862. Altogether, the collection contains some 300 instruments (many of which are unique) that are all preserved in carefully controlled conditions. Nowhere else in the world is there such a focussed and extensive collection, and we can be justifiably proud of it. Many other Canadian museums also preserve excellent examples of both locally made instruments and products imported from Europe.

When it comes to more recent pianos, especially those still in private hands, the situation is not so optimistic. Instruments that are treated as utensils sometimes fail to accrue the value that items preserved in collections acquire. Initially, there are good practical reasons to preserve a used piano and have it restored. Because the average life of an old piano is more than 50 years, and with proper treatment at least 50 more, it is a waste of our resources to buy new pianos when old ones can be so effectively "recycled." As well, some older pianos have a very high mechanical quality, exquisite veneers, and attention to detail in cabinetry and decoration that are unavailable on new, reasonably priced pianos. As professional restorer Marc Thompson, of Pianoforte (1999) Inc. in Montreal, has said: "Not enough people value their old pianos, and quite often a truly historic instrument is sent to the dump because an ordinary piano tuner has said it is not worth putting into playing condition." Many historic pianos have ended their lives on the say-so of unqualified practitioners. Owners of old pianos should not consider them simply as musical tools, to be discarded when their intended function may have passed, but as items of intrinsic and sometimes real historic value. This is not to say that they cannot continue to function, but that assessments of their working status and their value as cultural documents are the realm of specialists.

Increasingly, as we focus on our cultural heritage and look to the past for enduring values, we learn to treasure those things we possess from past times. As the industries that service these objects have grown, so too have sensitivities among their practitioners to the potential historic qualities of the objects they tend. Today there exists a fairly wide network of specialists in early pianos who are able to provide sound advice on musical potential and cultural and monetary value.

CCI can be contacted for further information on the care and preservation of historic pianos. Although advice on monetary value is outside our mandate, we can provide references to organizations and individuals who provide the full range of services that historic pianos need.