Reviews

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The instrument made its first long sea voyage from London to Sydney, where it was purchased for Elizabeth by her parents. It then travelled across the Tasman Sea, as Elizabeth’s dowry and companion. After a residence of twenty-five years in Paihia, the Broadwood accompanied its mistress to Whangarei, where it remained first as an instrument and then as a sideboard, until it was donated to the Treaty House at Waitangi in 1962.

Piano Forte focusses on the time when people had to entertain themselves and many families gathered around the piano for a sing-along and play various musical instruments. Initially the piano would have been looked at askance by Maori, but they became used to the new sound and learned to play the instrument themselves. It offered a rewarding opportunity for people in the early settlements to gather together for social and cultural activities and even helped to promote careers playing, teaching and writing music. It also led to careers in piano-tuning, making and mending instruments and retail.

Much of this book is about people reflecting on, affected by, their situation, chosen or fortuitous; their love for the piano and for music and for the freedom piano-playing gave them. And if we shiver slightly, as it is surely intended that we should, the writer has not given herself away to be used for propaganda or preaching. Not that we are likely to miss the points that are raised or find delight in the accompanying pictures, but the sense of fun is there right up to the last chapter.

In the Coda to the book, Moffat indicates the changing roles of women and the way in which the piano was rejected by the male-dominated society:

Gender roles traditionally associated with the piano in Victorian Britain were modified in the new cultural space. While the instrument continued to play a role in the courtship rituals and domestic lives of colonial women, some rejected the piano as an inappropriate affectation in an environment in which the ‘colonial helpmeet’ was valued for her useful rather than decorative functions.

By the 1930s, with the increasing popularity of radio and records and the introduction of films, there was a decline in piano-playing.

Piano Forte: Stories and Soundscapes from Colonial New Zealand by Kirstine Moffat. Dunedin: OUP (2011). RRP: $45. Pb, 275pp. ISBN: 9781877372797. Reviewed by Patricia Prime.

Kirstine Moffat is a senior lecturer at the University of Waikato. Her

research interests in nineteenth and early twentieth-century feminist writing, and the motif of music and what it conveys about family, led to the writing of Piano Forte. Moffat is co-editor of the Journal of New Zealand Literature.

Piano Forte is a large book of 175 pages containing a selection of historical anecdotes, paintings and photographs of the piano in its many contexts. It is primarily a book for lovers of the piano, music and those interested in the domestic and public history of New Zealand.

The control in the book is clear from the first; the passion must be looked for. One needs a warm-up period with this book, or a tune-in time, before communication flows strongly. An early impression is of observing without engaging in the drama. As we read on, the expression of feeling develops in intensity and engages us more fully; this is probably a function of the way the book is comprised of many voices, as it draws on memoirs, diaries, letters, programmes, company records, fiction and visual images.

A story which captured my imagination was that of Elizabeth Mair, whose Broadwood grand square piano accompanied her to New Zealand and was probably the first piano to arrive here. The Mairs are a well-known New Zealand family and one of my friends is a descendant of Gilbert and Elizabeth Mair, so their story is very satisfying to read. The history of the Mair’s piano is fascinating and we read on page 19: