It is unfortunate that the Doctor has not written about the piano itself, he thought, for it is the hero of this entire endeavor, its absence an obvious omission in the narrative thus far. He was amused by this thought: Carroll made the army read his natural histories—it would only be fair if they were forced to learn about the piano as well. In the midst of his creative rapture and growing sense of united mission with the Doctor, he rose, took out an inkwell, pen, and paper, lit a new candle for the first one had burned low, and began to write.
Gentlemen,
I write to you from on board our steamer bound for Rangoon. It is now the fourteenth day of our journey, and I have been very much entertained by the view afforded by our route, and by the most informative briefings provided to me by your office. It has come to my attention, however, that little has been written about the very purpose of our endeavor, namely, the piano. Thus, for the purpose of History as well as the general education of those in the War Office, I feel it necessary to record this story myself. Please share it with anyone you wish. Should you care for any further information, gentlemen, I would be more than happy to provide it.
The history of the Erard piano could naturally be told with two beginnings, that of the history of the piano, and that of the history of Sebastien Erard. But the former is long and involved– fascinating naturally, but too much a challenge for my pen, for I am a tuner with a love of history, not a historian with a love of tuning. Suffice it to say that following its invention by Cristofori in the early eighteenth century, the piano underwent great modifications, and the Erard, the subject of this letter, is indebted, as all modern pianos are, to this tremendous tradition.
Sebastien Erard was from Strasbourg, a German, but he went to Paris in 1768 when he was sixteen and apprenticed himself to a harpsichord maker. The boy—to put it simply—was a prodigy, and soon he quit his apprenticeship and opened his own shop. The other Parisian craftsmen felt so threatened by the boy’s gift that they launched a campaign to have him close his shop after he designed a clavecin mecanique, a harpsichord with multiple registers, with quill and cowhide plectra, all operated by an ingenious pedal mechanism that had never been thought of before. But despite the boycott, the design was so impressive that the Duchess of Villeroi gave the young Erard her sponsorship. Erard started making pianofortes, and the duchess’s noble friends started buying them. This time he aroused the ire of importers who resented the competition with their imported English pianos. They tried to raid his house, only to be blocked by none other than soldiers of Louis XVI; Erard was so renowned that the king gave him full license to trade.The sponsorship of the king notwithstanding, Erard eventually looked abroad, and in the mid-178os he traveled to London, where he set up another shop on Great Marlborough Street. He was there on July 14, 1789, when the Bastille was stormed, and when, three years later, the purges of the Reign of Terror shook France. This history I am certain you know well. Thousands of the bourgeoisie fled the country or were condemned to die by the guillotine. But one fact few people know: those who fled or were executed left thousands of works of art, including musical instruments. Whatever can be said about French taste, it is worth noting perhaps that even in the throes of revolution, when scholars and musicians were losing their heads, someone decided that music must be protected. A Temporary Commission of Arts was set up and Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni, a mediocre violinist at the Comédie Italienne, was named Director of the Inventory. For fourteen months he collected the instruments of the condemned. In all, over three hundred were gathered, and each carries its own tragic tale. Antoine Lavoisier, the great chemist, lost his life and his French-made Zimmerman grand to the Terror. Countless other pianos still played today have similar pedigrees. Of these, sixty-four were pianofortes, and of the French makes, the majority seized were Erards, twelve in number. Whether this was evidence of the taste of Bruni or of the victims, this dark distinction perhaps most permanently established Erard’s reputation as the finest of piano makers. It is significant that neither Sebastien nor his brother Jean Baptiste, who remained in Paris, was ever brought before the Terror, despite their sponsorship by the throne. Of the twelve pianofortes, the whereabouts of eleven are known, and I have tuned all that now reside in England.
Sebastien Erard is dead now, of course, but his manufacturing shop is still in London. The remainder of his story is one of technical beauty, and if you cannot understand the mechanics of what I describe, you must at least appreciate them, as I appreciate the function of your cannons without understanding the chemical nature of the gases which make them fire. His innovations revolutionized piano construction. The double-escapement repetition action, the mécanisme à étrier, attaching hammers singly to the rail instead of in groups of six as in the Broadwood pianos, the agraffe, and the harmonic bar—all these are Erard’s innovations. Napoleon played on an Erard; Erard sent a grand to Haydn as a gift; Beethoven played one for seven years.
I hope this information will be found useful to your staff in furthering the understanding and appreciation of the fine instrument now located in the distant borders of our Empire. Such a creation merits not only respect and attention. It should be cared for as one would protect an objet d’art in a museum. The service of a tuner is worthy of the instrument’s quality, and I hope just the first step in the continuing care of the instrument.
When he finished, he sat looking at the letter, twirling his pen. He thought for a minute, crossed out “cared for” and wrote above it “defended.” They were military men, after all. He folded it into an envelope and put it in his bag, to be mailed in Rangoon. At long last he grew sleepy.
I hope they read the letter, he thought, smiling to himself as he fell asleep. Of course, at the time he couldn’t know just how many times it would be read, inspected, sent to cryptographers, held to lights, even examined under magnifying lenses. For when a man disappears, we cling to anything he left behind.
6
It was morning when they first sighted land, three days from Calcutta, a lighthouse perched on a tall red stone tower. “The Alguada Reef,” Edgar heard an elderly Scotsman beside him tell a companion. “Bloody hard to navigate. She’s a graveyard for passing ships.” Edgar knew from the maps that they were only twenty miles south of Cape Negrais, that soon they would reach Rangoon.
In less than an hour, the ship passed buoys marking the shallow sandbanks that spilled out from the mouth of the Rangoon River, one of hundreds of rivers which drained the Irrawaddy Delta. They passed several anchored ships, which the old man explained were trading ships trying to evade port dues. The steamer turned north, and the sandbars rose above the land to become low wooded shores. Here the channel was deeper, but still almost two miles wide, and were it not for the large red obelisks on either side of the mouth, he wouldn’t have known they were navigating inland.
They steamed upriver for several hours. It was low, level, mostly unremarkable country, yet Edgar felt a sudden excitement when they passed a series of small pagodas, their coats of whitewash peeling. Further inland, a collection of shacks, clustered at the water’s edge, where children played. The river narrowed, and both shores came into closer focus, the sandy banks fringed with thickening vegetation. The ship followed a tortuous course, hindered by sandbanks and sharp bends. At last, at one of these bends, boats appeared in the distance. On deck there was a murmur and several passengers filed toward the stairs to return to their rooms.