Social History of The Piano - Pianos and Women

Pianos and Women

Both Parakilas and Loesser emphasize a connection during this period between pianos and the female sex. Piano study was apparently more common for girls than boys. It was also widely felt that ability to play the piano made young women more marriageable.

Women who had learned to play as children often continued to play as adults, thus providing music in their households. For instance, Emma Wedgwood (1808–1896), the granddaughter of the wealthy industrialist Josiah Wedgwood, took piano lessons from none other than Frédéric Chopin, and apparently achieved a fair level of proficiency. Following her marriage to Charles Darwin, Emma still played the piano daily, while her husband listened appreciatively.

A number of female piano students became outright virtuose, and the skills of woman pianists inspired the work of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, who dedicated difficult-to-play works to their woman friends. However, careers as concert musicians were typically open only to men (an important exception was Clara Schumann).