Piano in the parlour : when the piano was New Zealand's home entertainment centre / John MacGibbon.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

One. Early years, to 1859: Introduction ; Should we take the piano? ; Moving pianos ; A disaster on the Taieri River ; Playing their pianos ; Hannah Ormond, née Richardson -- Two. Mid-colonial period, 1860 to 1899: Introduction ; Adela Stewart ; Jess Whitworth ; Alick Archibald ; The Wests ; Ellen Tripp ; Samuel Butler ; Julius and Mary von Haast ; Sarah Courage -- Three. Consolidation then decline, 1900-29: Introduction ; Working-class households in Petone ; Granny Jones and her Kirchner ; Latter-day pioneers in the King Country ; Hector Allan ; Musical postcards ; Society pages ; Katherine Mansfield's drawing room ; Piano in the cave - the Worgans -- Four. The service industries: Introduction ; Charles Russell's Music Warehouse ; Edward Greaves Smith ; George West - Dunedin's first musical entrepreneur ; Charles Begg & Co ; Dresden Piano Co ; The Eadys and other music companies ; Piano teaching ; Teaching in Catholic convents -- Five. What they played and sang: Introduction ; American minstrel music ; Printed music ; The Worgan collection ; The Annie Craig collection ; Dorothy Theomin's music at Olveston ; New Zealand compositions and local publishing -- Six. Competition and dénouement: Recorded music, radio, cinema, motor cars, guitars, epilogue -- Seven. Songs popular in New Zealand parlours between 1840 and 1929 -- Feature pages: A brief history of the piano ; Historic pianos on show ; Dancing, Victorian style ; The first piano in the Chatham Islands ; Pianos on postcards from the Edwardian era ; Charles Russell advertisement -- Appendix I. The Annie Craig music collection -- Appendix II. Lithographed covers, local and overseas -- Appendix III. Dresden Piano Co advertorial in the Auckland Star, 1890.

"Huge numbers of pianos were in front parlours through Victorian and Edwardian times and into the 1920s. Central to home and community entertainment, they also stoked the flames of love for courting couples. Piano in the Parlour is a musical and social history that looks affectionately at a period when pianos were the most cherished domestic possessions in New Zealand and many other countries. Brought to life by contemporary real-life stories and graphics, Piano in the Parlour recreates a century of home musical culture between the 1820s and 1920s. Who played and sang? What did they play; where and how did they perform? Who looked after them: the music publishers at home and abroad, entrepreneurs and companies including Charles Begg & Co, the Dresden Piano Co and Auckland's Eady stores that serviced and sold pianos, and the old-time piano teachers. Pioneers would go to extreme lengths and spend a fortune to put a piano in their homes, as shown in the Academy Award winning film, The Piano. That was fiction, but similar real-life stories are in this book. Piano in the Parlour also looks at how and why piano culture declined in the 20th century. Words and music (with chord symbols) are included for 17 songs commonly played and sung in the piano's heyday: Rule Britannia!, Auld Lang Syne, Home! Sweet Home, Annie Laurie, Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep, Come Home Father, Beautiful Dreamer, I'll Take You Home Again Kathleen, When You and I Were Young Maggie, On the Ball, Love's Old Sweet Song, The Holy City, Waiting at the Church, Keep the Home Fires Burning, Alexander's Ragtime Band, Love's Garden of Roses, Hine e Hine. Though Piano in the Parlour is set mainly in New Zealand, the piano culture was similar elsewhere in the English-speaking world."--Publisher.

Machine converted from AACR2 source record.