Michael Atherton

Thanks to A Coveted Possession, the rise and fall of the piano in Australia, I now realise that my piano was one of many thousands imported to Australia, and that its likely fate after my demise will be the tip. People just don’t want them any more, but in their heyday pianos were, as the book blurb says, central to family and community life:

"With its iron frame, polished surfaces and ivory keys, an upright piano in the home was a modern industrial machine, a musical instrument and a treasured member of the household, conveying powerful messages about class, education, leisure, national identity and intergenerational history."

(Oh. I had never thought about my keys being made of ivory. I thought they were Bakelite. But this site sent me to inspect the keys with a torch, and yes, they have the tell-tale seam so they are ivory. I wish I didn’t know this).

I thought immediately of Michelle Scott Tucker and her bio of Elizabeth Macarthur when I read in chapter ‘Flooding the Colonies’ that Australia’s very first piano was given to Elizabeth in 1791. It came with the First Fleet on the Sirius, and was owned by the navy surgeon George Bouchier Worgan. Elizabeth describes it like this:

"Our new house is ornamented with a pianoforte of Mr. Worgan’s; he kindly means to leave it with me, and now, under his direction I have begun a new study, but I fear without my master I shall not make any great proficiency." (p.15)

We have become so used to having ready access to whatever music we like, we forget how in other times, people must have ached with longing to hear the music they loved. You can just imagine how having a piano meant that these early settlers were able to play and to hear the works of the great composers. And as the settlements grew, social mobility meant that having a piano as the centrepiece of the house became tied to social status. No wonder they imported them in their thousands…

No wonder Australian POWs risked so much to have one when they were locked up in Changi. (See my Sensational Snippet for more about this).

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2018/08/12/a-coveted-possession-the-rise-and-fall-of-th...… (mehr)