Piano tuners often became shop owners: the initial link with an established piano firm leading to a provincial placement, particularly within a cathedral city.
Cathedral towns had long been magnets for groups of musicians, for the cathedral was one of the main sources of employment for these people. In the eighteenth century, small groups of musicians could be found in the environs of almost any cathedral. By the nineteenth century their numbers had swelled, and many of them were teaching music in their spare time. A rise in teacher numbers meant a rise in pupil numbers and a consequent demand for music. Stationers and bookshops initially handled this demand, but eventually found the demand overwhelming, and music shops began to be seen in high streets all over the country. As demand rose for pianos it became worth the music shop proprietor’s while to open a piano sales department, which in turn led to a need for piano tuners. Rimbault quotes Dr Thalberg:
The increase of the number of pianos, compared with the population, is every year more rapid – a circumstance which is not observed in regard to other musical instruments. This is corroborated by the fact that some years ago piano music constituted only a very modest portion of a music-sellers stock; whereas now it fills more than 3/4 of his shelves and makes his chief business. The number of teachers is something wonderful.
As the piano became a social necessity, as a mark of respectability, demand spread from the cathedral cities to the industrial towns which were growing apace. In these cases the need for social cachet fed the fire of piano demand, rather than a surfeit of music teachers, but the ownership of a piano led to the need for a music teacher so the industry was relatively self-perpetuating: it was simply a matter of which way round the circle of supply and demand one chose to travel. Some music shops sold so many pianos that they found they could afford to specialise: specialisation has always depended upon the extent of the market. Many teachers realised that in certain areas – particularly in London and the suburbs – there was enough work for them to work solely as tuners: the 1840’s publication The Tuner’s Guide: containing a Complete Treatise on Tuning the Piano-Forte, Organ, Melodeon, and Seraphine, mentioned above, was merely the tip of a publishing iceberg comprising many books offering advice on the art of tuning. In 1853, Robert Cocks and Co. published An Essay on the Theory and Practice of Tuning, etc., and as far back as 1811 James Broadwood had submitted an article on tuning to the Gentleman’s Magazine.
Rimbault’s seminal work on the history of the piano, written in 1860, contains advice on tuning in an extensive appendix: ‘the unison … is the interval … which most frequently occurs in tuning, and which it is of the highest importance should be tuned with perfect accuracy’ which statement is followed by ‘We will suppose that the student has provided himself with a tuning hammer, and that he has seated himself at the instrument …’! Small chance, it would be thought, of a student who had neglected to arm himself with a tuning hammer being capable of tuning a unison with ‘perfect accuracy’.
Even a 1909 book on the Theory and Practice of Pianoforte Building begins a chapter on how to tune a piano with the words: ‘The art of tuning the pianoforte is one of considerable complexity and obscurity’.
The Music Trades Review were often offered books which advised the amateur on how to tune their own pianos, and were asked to review them. On one occasion, the publishers of the Bazaar magazine – a little inadvisedly, perhaps – proffered Tuning and Repairing Pianos by Charles Babbington for this purpose. The reviewer set to with a will, and the pen drips with vitriol:
In reviewing this book we can only regret that it has been issued at all … it pretends to be “the amateur’s guide to the practical management of a piano without the intervention of a professional”. It will probably be the best friend the tuner ever had. It gives full, if not very practical, instructions how an amateur can take a pianoforte to pieces, and the strong probability is that when the pianoforte is thus divided, and the action dissected the professional tuner will have to be called in to put it together again …
Mr Babbington … ingeniously says that as one little slip might ruin it altogether, an inexperienced person had better not meddle with it at all.
Piano tuners are poorly paid as it is and any piano may be properly tuned at a moderate sum. Indeed, even Mr Babbington utterly fails to make out a case for the non-employment of a professional man.
The MTR then cites Mr Babbington’s advice on the repair of a broken hammer shank: ‘If a clean break, a tuner would have to put a new stem [sic] in …’. The reviewer continues:
the proprietors of the Bazaar have … sent [the book] to us “for review”, and for an expression of our opinion, and we can only conscientiously say that the wider this sixpenny pamphlet is circulated, the better it will be for the professional tuners.
Given that a magazine designed for tradesmen was reviewing a booklet designed to cut tradesmen’s business, perhaps Bazaar should have thought a little more carefully in seeking a critique.
In 1907, Mr Charles Love was offering a course on how to tune pianos – by post:
Scale of Charges
Instruction in Tuning
lessons £1.1.0Instruction in Regulating
lessons £1.1.0By correspondence. A postal order, value 1/-, should be enclosed for reply to each question asked …
All correspondence to be addressed to:
Charles W. Love
67, Lady Margaret Road
Kentish Town
London, N.W.
With such advertisements and books available it was little wonder that many amateurs felt tuning to be something they could tackle, particularly with the burgeoning interest in pianos which persisted throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
In a comparison of two towns in Buckinghamshire, this self-training became apparent, although my original intention was to show the rise of the music shop in Victorian England in microcosm. For my example I compared Amersham, a small market town, with High Wycombe, also a market town but with a fast-growing industrial aspect owing to the rapid growth of both the furniture and paper businesses which flourished in the town.
The census of 1841 shows Amersham to have a population of 3,645 and High Wycombe, 6,480, and street directories show no music shops or even teachers in either town. In 1842, Richard Pontyfix and Frances Teacher are organist and music teacher respectively in High Wycombe, with none in Amersham. In 1853 the music shop of Pontyfix and Co., is in High Wycombe’s High Street, and Amersham’s High Street now boasts Wm. Henry Birch, Professor of Music. The 1851 census shows 3,662 souls in Amersham and 7,179 in High Wycombe. By 1854, Frances Treacher specifies herself as Harp and Piano teacher in High Wycombe. The first piano warehouse in the town arrives in 1863, proprietor Mr Rolls Payne who advertises his services as a ‘Professor of Music’ in 1864, by which time Amersham has Caroline Batey, Professor of Music. A note here to those impressed by the number of learned professors in south Buckinghamshire: Cyril Ehrlich cites The Musical Profession (a guide to careers in music) of 1888 which portrays a young man who ‘spends a little money in the purchase of sheet music, invests in a brass plate – and lo! he is a professor. How easily it is done, and what an amount of life-long misery has been the consequence of this fatal facility!’
By 1877, Rolls Payne has a competitor in High Wycombe, Francis Hill who is a ‘piano dealer, and fancy repository’ and Amersham still has no music shop. The populations show that by 1881 Amersham’s population has dropped to 3,001, whilst High Wycombe now has 13,154 – the disparity between the two becoming ever more marked. In 1883 Frederick Johncock opens a piano warehouse in the High Street in High Wycombe and three more ‘professors’ of music are in the town, now with none in Amersham, Caroline Batey no longer being included. By 1887, High Wycombe has its first tuner, David Nash. The next directory available – 1895 – shows Rolls Payne as a piano tuner, so he has evidently realised that there is more money and less responsibility in being a piano tuner with no shop: David Nash is no longer listed, and Payne makes no mention of teaching.
The new century sees Amersham’s population at 3,209 and their nearest tuner at Chesham, seven miles away, whilst High Wycombe is now a large town of 19,282 people with Johncock as the sole piano shop and Rolls Payne still tuning. He has competition with Mr Birch in High Wycombe itself and Mr Goodchild at Lane End – a tiny village seven miles from the town.
In 1911, Dysons have bought out Johncock at 22 High Street and added it to their Windsor branch and another tuner has appeared. Amersham – with a population of 3,392 – has long been outstripped by High Wycombe’s 20,387 and still has neither piano shop nor tuner which, given its tiny population, is understandable.
From: Gill Green MA
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