CHAPTER

1

A PASSION FOR
COLLECTING

MORRIS STEINERT

A boyhood impression rather than the general American interest in shipping segments of Europe back home led Morris Steinert to begin his collecting of keyboard instruments. Born in Scheinfeld, Bavaria, Steinert (1831–1912) showed an early love for music. His elder brother Louis engaged the aged local cantor-organist, Dazian, to teach the boy the rudiments of music. At that time there was no piano in Scheinfeld, but the cantor had a clavichord on which Morris had his first lessons. Many years later, after emigration to the United States and the establishment of a successful piano business in New Haven, Steinert returned to Scheinfeld, determined to find this clavichord.

After a few days in my native town, I began the search for my clavichord, which, according to information received from my brother Louis, then residing in Coblenz, had been left in Scheinfeld, as it was so old and dilapidated that he considered it a useless piece of furniture; he also stated that he had no record of it. I was not daunted, however, and after a day’s search I succeeded in tracing it to the tower abode of old Dazian, who must have taken it after my brother left. I was told that Dazian had died many years before, that his successor, his brother Joseph, had also passed beyond, and that Herr Bayer now held the position of Stadt Musikus.

Going to the tower, I mounted the steep, winding stairs to the living rooms, in search of Herr Bayer. Very much out of breath, I knocked at the door and inquired of the pleasant-faced elderly woman who opened it for the Herr Stadt Musikus, and was told by her that he was in the field hoeing potatoes. Descending, I hastened to him, and recognized him as the flute-player of old Dazian’s band. He was now a man of seventy-five years, aged and bent. We exchanged greetings, for he well remembered me as the boy taught by his uncle, and he also knew that I now lived in America. Herr Bayer had before him a large basket which was full of potatoes, and which, by my help, he strapped upon his back, and together we started for his tower home.

Upon asking him about my old clavichord, he told me that his uncle had an old clavichord which must have belonged to the Steinert family, that he had kept it for many years, using it to compose and arrange music, and that it was in the old tower. Again, I mounted the steep stairs, the old musician in advance with his potatoes on his back, and entering the principal living-room saw the old clavichord standing in one corner. With my heart full of joy I purchased the instrument, and, what is more, the violoncello upon which I took my first lesson, half a dozen violins and several violas, all instruments which belonged to and were loved by my old instructor, Dazian.¹

The American instrument collector Morris Steinert.

Steinert had a remarkably antiquarian (and therefore, progressive) viewpoint for his time:

I was deeply interested in collecting old instruments that were used in the past, and that must have served the great composers of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early part of the nineteenth century, and I based my work upon a closer investigation than the accepted view of our modern musicians, who think that the compositions of these classical tone poets sound better when played upon the present pianoforte. With this opinion I could not agree, and I ascribed their wrong views on the subject to their ignorance and unacquaintance with the instruments I speak of. . . .²

Steinert was even more ahead of his time in that he wished to have the instruments restored to playing condition. After assembling his “quite respectable collection” not only from the area around Scheinfeld but also from other sections of Germany, he had the instruments shipped to the United States, where he studied their construction, repaired them, and learned how to play them. “This was a great undertaking on my part, and it took me several years to put them into proper order and play them intelligently.”³ The first nineteenth-century concerts of historic keyboard instruments heard in the United States may have been these events described by Steinert:

Finally, having them in good condition, I engaged the services of Mr. [Henry] Krehbiel, the eminent musical critic of the New York Tribune, a gentleman who is profoundly interested in the study of the evolution of the pianoforte, and with him I began a lecture tour. While I played the old keyed instruments, playing Bach and the school which is in keeping with their mechanical construction, also improvising upon them, Mr. Krehbiel lectured, and my two sons, Henry and Albert, assisted me in rendering chamber music upon the violin and viola. These lectures were given gratuitously at Yale, Harvard, Brown, Smith, Vassar, Andover, Professor Lambert’s School of Music in New York City, Springfield, and the Music Hall, Boston, I also secured Mr. Arthur Friedheim, the pianist, who played upon the modern pianoforte, in contrast to the old school and old instruments of my collection. ⁴

Steinert and his band of early music explorers were quite successful in their musical ventures. Word spread, and the reputation of this unique playable collection grew.⁵ Steinert was requested to exhibit part of his collection at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, which he “most cheerfully did.” Another invitation, from Princess Pauline von Metternich, led to the exhibition of some of the choicest instruments at the Exhibition of Music and Drama in Vienna (1892); this in turn led to a similar exhibit at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893:

While in Vienna the Commissioner from America to Great Britain, Mr. McCormick of Chicago, came to visit the exhibition and to solicit musical loan collections for the “World’s Fair.” . . . He called on Geheimrath (Doctor) von Ausspitzer, and told him his object in coming to Vienna, and Doctor von Ausspitzer informed him that the man who had the most interesting collection was an American, Mr. Steinert, of New Haven, Connecticut, and he advised him to see me. Mr. McCormick, who lived in the same hotel, paid me a visit and solicited my co-operation. While I did not promise to send my collection, for I felt that I had been a showman quite long enough, I left the question open, and as he was not finally successful he left. Upon my return to the United States, I entered into correspondence with Doctor Peabody, and we arranged upon satisfactory terms for my loan collection to be shown in Chicago. I received two thousand dollars for my services, which amount did not cover one half of the expense of taking my collection there.⁶

(During the trip to Europe, Steinert made excellent purchases to augment his collection, adding a double-manual Hass harpsichord of 1710 and, from the British Exhibit in Vienna, a Hans Ruckers mother-and-child virginal of 1579, both instruments highly decorated and both rare examples.⁷)

The Chicago Columbian Exposition was the largest showing of Steinert’s collection thus far; one particular harpsichord—Napoleon’s—was singled out for an article in Musical Courier. It was an instrument built by Jacob Kirckman of London in 1755 and given by the sometimes impetuous emperor to a sergeant who served in the palace. After Napoleon’s banishment, the sergeant emigrated to the United States, settled in Scituate, Massachusetts, and eventually sold the instrument to Simon Bates in 1833. Steinert purchased the instrument from the Bates family.⁸

Steinert continued his lecture career for several more years, largely at schools and universities in the eastern part of the United States. In 1900 he donated about forty instruments to Yale University’s School of Music, creating the foundation of the great collection now housed there.⁹

MORE HISTORIC HARPSICHORDS,
MORE COLLECTORS

The public’s interest in an old keyboard instrument was often connected with the details of its former ownership. In 1889 a short article that appeared in the Milwaukee Yenowines News was reprinted in The American Musician for 30 November and again in Musical Courier for 18 December under the title “A Harpsichord Romance.” The article recounted the story of the Shudi and Broadwood double-manual harpsichord of 1789 that was discovered by William Rohlfing, the owner of a Milwaukee music store. While on a trip to Annapolis, Maryland, he found the instrument in the loft of an old college building and learned that it had once belonged to Charles Carroll of Carrollton, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Rohlfing was able to purchase the historic instrument and present it to the firm of Knabe and Company, the piano manufacturers, in Annapolis. The article stated, however, that Milwaukee was the present home of the instrument.¹⁰

Yet another instrument with a historic connection was a Longman and Broderip double-manual harpsichord of 1793 in Washington’s home, Mount Vernon. It belonged to Nelly Custis, “beloved granddaughter and adopted daughter” of the nation’s first president. She took it to Woodlawn Plantation, not far from Mount Vernon, where she lived with her husband, Washington’s nephew Lawrence Lewis. In 1860, long after harpsichords were out of style, this keyboard instrument was the first piece of furniture returned to Mount Vernon when the furnishings of the vacant mansion were reassembled.¹¹

The St. Louis World’s Fair in 1904 featured an instrument associated with a famous composer rather than with a political figure: the harpsichord on which Gioacchino Rossini took lessons from Giuseppe Malerbi in 1802. In a letter to Cav. Luigi Ferrucci, librarian of the Mediceo-Laurenziana Library in Florence, dated Passy, October 18, 1868, Rossini wrote,

My Dear Luigi: Nothing could give me more delight than you telling me about the harpsichord or cembalo, still existing at your cousin Malerbi’s. You undoubtedly know that in my childhood and during my sojourn in Lugo I used to play on that poor instrument! I call it a poor instrument now that I have become a pianist of some value, but I have always recommended it as a good deal preferable to the noisy pianofortes for the instruction of the true singing. If you will go to the theatre you will certainly notice how my advices have been taken and put into practice.¹²

Most private collectors after Morris Steinert did not have an interest in playing their acquisitions. They were attracted by the artistic and antiquarian features of the instruments. Mrs. John Crosby Brown discovered an ivory lute in Florence in the 1870s, fell in love with it, and purchased it. At first she collected Italianate instruments for her music room in Orange Mountain, New Jersey, but her hobby became all-consuming, and her collection of early instruments grew to 276 items by 1889. It was too large for a music room, so she presented the collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Even there her collection continued to grow, comprising more than 3,500 pieces by 1906.¹³

In Washington, D.C., the instrument collection of the Smithsonian Institution was officially recognized in 1879, when Dr. G. Brown Good, assistant secretary in charge of the U. S. Museum, reorganized the collections and classified musical instruments as sound-emitting devices. In 1892 he added European instruments that he had personally selected, but it was to be the Washington piano dealer Hugo Worch who developed an outstanding collection of keyboard instruments. Worch gave his first keyboard instrument to the Museum in 1914; subsequently he gave nearly 200 items.¹⁴

The Leslie Lindsey Mason Collection in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was presented by William Lindsey in memory of his daughter, who was lost in the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. This collection of 564 instruments, 317 of them European, had been assembled by Canon Francis W. Galpin of England. Keyboards did not figure prominently, but there were two spinets, a virginal, two clavichords, and a fine 1798 Joseph Kirckman double harpsichord.

Not all of these early collections were on the East Coast. Frederick Stearns, a drug manufacturer from Detroit, presented his collection of musical instruments to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1899, expressing the hope that his gift would inspire other successful businessmen to use their financial resources for furthering worthy pursuits.¹⁵ Several keyboard instruments were included in the collection, including Italian harpsichords of 1693 and 1702.

Early in the twentieth century George F. Harding of Chicago began collecting many sorts of art objects: Italian primitive paintings, armor, and musical instruments. Sixty-one instruments, chiefly keyboards, made up his collection. Among the most famous were a Jan Ruckers mother-and-child virginal of 1623, several regals, and various spinets. These and pianos that had belonged to Liszt and Chopin were exhibited for many years in the Harding home at 4853 South Lake Park, until the building was razed in 1965.¹⁶

Of course, many other Americans collected instruments as objects of fine art; they, as well as European enthusiasts, kept several prominent restorers and dealers busy. Charles Fleury and Louis Tomasini, both of Paris, were active in this field, and Tomasini might be considered an early harpsichord revivalist, for he made several copies of an eighteenth-century French harpsichord.¹⁷ The acquisitive urges of collectors also paved the way for successful chicanery; the workshop of Leopoldo Franciolini, established in Florence in 1879, sold forged or composite instruments—nineteenth century fabrications of older component parts—to unsuspecting purchasers.

The American instrument collections were important to the renaissance of interest in the harpsichord, for through them the public became aware of the old instruments as works of art. As musical instruments, however, they were almost worthless, for there was little opportunity for any of them to produce the glorious music for which they were intended. Performance was encouraged at the Brussels Conservatoire, where the collection was especially large, having been started as early as 1846.¹⁸ When the musicologist J. F. Fetis, director of the Conservatoire, died in 1871, the Belgian government purchased both his library and his instruments. Some of the instruments were restored to playing condition and were used in concerts by Conservatoire faculty or by visiting artists, such as Diemer from Paris. This sounding collection and the concerts presented by the Brussels Conservatoire were to have a far-reaching effect on the revival of the harpsichord, for they sparked an interest in old music in the young Arnold Dolmetsch.