The Piano in Nineteenth-Century British Culture

Dr Therese Ellsworth is an Independent Scholar. Her doctoral dissertation, ’The Piano Concerto in London Concert Life between 1801 and 1850’ (University of Cincinnati, 1991) has led to further research, paper presentations and publications on nineteenth-century London concert life and women pianists in particular. She taught at universities in the US before settling for eight years in Brussels (1998 - 2006) and now lives in Washington, DC. Susan Wollenberg is Professor of Music at the University of Oxford, UK. She has published widely on subjects including C.P.E. Bach and Schubert, women composers, and the social history of English music, in particular the history of music in Oxford. She was co-editor, with Simon McVeigh, of Concert Life in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Ashgate, 2004).

Contents: Foreword, Nicholas Temperley; Introduction, Therese Ellsworth and Susan Wollenberg; 'That domestic and long-suffering instrument': the piano boom in 19th-century Belfast, Roy Johnston; 'Most ingenious, most learned, and yet practicable work': the English reception of Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier in the first half of the 19th century seen through the editions published in London, Yo Tomita; The faces of Parnassus: towards a new reception of Muzio Clementi's Gradus ad Parnassum, Rohan Stewart-MacDonald; Mendelssohnian allusions in the early piano works of William Sterndale Bennett, R. Larry Todd; William Sterndale Bennett, composer and pianist, Peter Horton; Victorian pianists as concert artists: the case of Arabella Goddard (1836-1922), Therese Ellsworth; Origins of the piano recital in England, 1830-1870, Janet Ritterman and William Weber; 'Remarkable force, finish, intelligence and feeling': reassessing the pianism of Walter Bache, Michael Allis; Fanny Davies: 'a messenger for Schumann and Brahms'?, Dorothy de Val; 3 Oxford pianistic careers : Donald Francis Tovey, Paul Victor Mendelssohn Benecke, and Ernest Walker, Susan Wollenberg; Index.