Topical in recent times, the piano is the focus of Anna Goldsworthy’s award-winning memoir, Piano Lessons (2009). Girls at the Piano (2018), by Virginia Lloyd, reflects on the experience of two women pianists worlds and generations apart. A Coveted Possession explores the piano from a broader reach and from an Australian viewpoint. The outcome is engaging: a detailed, well-researched, and loving contemplation of how the piano became integral to Australia’s search for identity, and how the continent prospered as ‘a colony of pianos’. Atherton scrutinises its significance from historical, economic, cultural, social, and gender-driven perspectives.

In the early days of settlement, the author asserts that the instrument represented a nostalgic connection to the Mother Country, and, as such, became a talisman of home comforts left behind. Its pride of place in domestic quarters assuaged the alienation of the recently arrived. But when pianos were unloaded from cargo ships on arrival, many ended up stranded on the beach. Crestfallen, Mrs Hindmarsh, the South Australian Governor’s wife, observed her eagerly awaited piano ‘floating ashore at Glenelg’.

Just as the piano became a symbol of superior social status, Atherton says it was considered an appropriate instrument for women. The player sits demurely, legs together, there is no unseemly ‘straddling of cellos’ or the necessity for puckered lips in playing an oboe or flute. Even so, there were those who disapproved of women’s delight at the keyboard, in case household duties were forgotten.

Successive governments approved of the piano as calmative, a recreational distraction from Europe’s political unrest. On a humbler scale, it was admired as decorative furniture, especially Australian varieties, because these were often intricately carved with local flora and fauna. For some, the piano was admired as a depository for treasured photographs or floral arrangements. Here, Atherton’s disapproval peels through the pages.

In wartime, the piano was invested with therapeutic power. It was the transformative hero of the various Cheer-Up Squads in South Australia, whose mission was to restore the spirits of broken soldiers during World War I. Its presence, increasingly ubiquitous, was no longer confined to domestic use, chalky classrooms, pubs, and church halls. Despatched to the trenches, it cheered soldiers on battle lines, patients in hospitals, inmates of asylums, travellers on troop ships, those interred in prisoner-of-war camps, and the frequenters of brothels. In the infamous Changi Prison during World War II, a dozen men escaped to retrieve a piano abandoned by the navy a kilometre and a half away. Carried through jungle and somehow smuggled into Changi, it encouraged communal singing and boosted morale.

At the time of Federation, ‘Australian made’ was a galvanising mantra. The continent’s piano producers, in particular Beale in Sydney and Wertheim in Melbourne, ran ‘superb piano factories’. These entrepreneurs devised innovative technology and pioneered the use of local timbers better suited to the continent’s climatic conditions. Parallels are drawn between these producers and today’s Stuart & Sons, who have pioneered a trailblazer with 104 keys, nine octaves, and four pedals. This structurally enhanced model has inspired new piano repertoire.

Major importers such as Allans Music and W.H. Paling & Company lobbied fiercely for tariffs to be removed from imported instruments so that German models could compete with Australian varieties. The history is complex because the consumer’s hunger for the piano waxed and waned. Australia’s piano industry was adversely affected during World War I, when German pianos were banned and local production slowed. Piano sales also slumped due to the advent of the pianola (a self-playing piano) and the radio.

In 1918, German models were once again imported, and the conflict between importers of European brands and Australian producers fuelled sabre-rattling piano wars, where overseas merchants attempted to buy out Aussie manufacturers and close them down. The fierce rivalry led to unscrupulous practices, where false brand names were attached to obliterate existing ones.

Michael Atherton (photo via Black Inc.)Extensive though Atherton’s canvas is, not to give more than a couple of lines to the Australian Music Examination Board is surprising because the organisation motivated piano students, served in a benchmarking capacity, and commissioned Aussie composers. Repertoire by locals appeared in graded anthologies from 1934. By 1942, pieces by ten Australian composers had appeared in syllabuses.

Similarly, the discussion of how the trend for sheet music like Paling’s ‘Sydney Railway Waltz’ and Theakstone’s ‘Federal Waltz’ further developed Australian identity and contributed to the democratisation of music, could have flowed into a survey of the nation’s current composers who have penned distinctive piano repertoire: for example, Carl Vine, Nigel Butterley, Ross Edwards, and Elena Kats-Chernin. While the stories of Australia at war and the country’s once-inspired piano industry resonate with authenticity, the survey of virtuoso pianists is the least convincing passage in this otherwise rewarding book.

In ‘Where do old pianos go to die?’ it is poignant to read of this instrument, once celebrated as a panacea for all ills, now abandoned in junk shops and waste dumps, hacked to pieces in performance art, or ritually burned in music happenings. And yet, despite the digital revolution, the electric piano, and prominence of the guitar, the author reassuringly claims the ‘instrument is here to stay’.