Introduction

Sébastien Erard’s inventions—especially the double escapement for the piano and the double action for the harp—have had an enormous impact on instruments and musical life and are still at the foundation of piano and harp building today. Assisted by his brother Jean-Baptiste (1749–1826) and nephew Orphée, dit Pierre (1794–1855), he simultaneously operated workshops in Paris and London, a practice which was unique at the time. The story of the Erards’ lives and careers has been carefully preserved in an unusually rich documentary heritage, consisting of the archives of the Erard firm and those of the Erard family. Erard: A Passion for the Piano is the first publication ever to draw on the entirety of the extand Erard archives.

Square pianos and piano-organs

Today the word ‘piano’ connotes a large instrument with a powerful sonority, capable of doing battle with an entire orchestra in a romantic concerto. There are various features of the modern piano responsible for this image, including a case with a long wing shape reinforced by a cast iron frame, and the high degree of string tension that this frame makes possible. None of these features were present on pianos in eighteenth-century France, where the most common model was the rectangular-shaped piano carré (square piano), whose sound was scarcely more powerful than that of a harp. Before the French Revolution, the Erard firm produced square pianos and hybrid piano-organs. During this period, the Erards strengthened their ties with the French court, which resulted in several exceptional instruments made for Marie-Antoinette.

Liszt and the introduction of the new piano

The Erards realised that as brilliant as the double-escapement action was, it required an equally brilliant pianist to introduce it to the public. The Erards first thought to ask the Austrian pianist and composer Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837), but soon found another pianist to promote their invention: a musician whose talents eclipsed not only those of Morel, but also those of all other living pianists. Franz Liszt (1811–86), then only twelve years old and largely unknown outside of Vienna, arrived in Paris and became the leading advocate for Erard’s new invention. Liszt’s relationship with the Erard family quickly became advantageous to both parties. For the Erards, Liszt’s arrival was a godsend, as his superhuman technique demonstrated the advantages of their invention. Similarly, Erard’s new piano became an essential part of Liszt’s early success, as its magnificently responsive action and powerful tone allowed the pianist to push his virtuosity to new heights.

A modern business

In these early years, the Erard firm adopted a surprisingly modern approach to marketing their square pianos and piano organs. Numerous contemporary business concepts are already present, at least in nascent form. The Erards were keen to inspire brand loyalty among their customers, through the wooing of successful musicians, teachers, and dealers, and by offering substantial volume discounts. They also displayed a clear notion of customer service, providing their customers with a sort of mail-order catalogue and reassuring their clients on every detail, from the efficiency of the packing and transport to the quality of their products. The Erards even seemed to subscribe to today’s ‘the customer is always right’ attitude, complying with special requests from musicians. The amount of time and energy the Erards devoted to resolving such problems with their customers demonstrates that the notion of the instrument maker as a solitary artisan, toiling alone in his workshop oblivious to commercial concerns, is a romantic image born in the nineteenth century. The Erards were both artisans and merchants, a dual identity that was necessary in late eighteenth-century Paris, when a new consumer culture coalesced around the hundreds of boutiques of the capital.

The French grand piano

The first pianos, built by Cristofori in Florence near the turn of the eighteenth century, were already ‘grand’ pianos, their shape derived from that of the harpsichord. The invention gradually began to spread across the continent, and by the mid-1780s grand pianos were common instruments in London. This pan-European development stands in stark contrast to the grand piano’s reception in France, where the harpsichord reigned supreme. Indeed, until the 1760s, the piano—regardless of its size or shape—was almost completely absent from the French musical scene, and it was not until around 1810 that the grand piano became a frequently used instrument in France. Without a sonorous instrument capable of projecting an interesting palette of nuanced effects in a moderate to large space, it was difficult to develop an independent repertoire for the piano. The eventual adoption of the grand piano in France was largely due to the efforts of the Erard brothers, who were familiar with this type of instrument from their contacts with the Silbermanns in Strasbourg and English builders in London. The Erard grand piano responded to an increasing desire on the part of French musicians for pianos with a stronger tone, undoubtedly to better balance other string and wind instruments which were also evolving towards more sonorous models.

Family strains and secrets

During the years following the invention of the double-escapement action, Sébastien became too ill to manage the operations of the firm. With Sébastien indisposed, Jean-Baptiste took a more active role in the inventive work, and in particular with refinements to the double escapement action. Jean-Baptiste’s death in 1826, however, left Sébastien and Pierre deeply uneasy about the future of their family enterprise. Pierre understood that in order to ensure the perennity of the Erard firm he needed a successor, because the workers trained at the London branch would not necessarily be as motivated as would an Erard family member to invest their efforts and capital in the firm. Since Sébastien remained single, and Céleste childless and in any case living in Berlin, far from the family enterprise, Pierre would have certainly felt pressure to marry and found a family. However, Pierre’s homosexuality, kept secret from his family and only recently discovered, made marriage and the subsequent transmission of the family enterprise to a potential heir problematic. When Pierre returned to Paris after his father’s death, he came to the realisation that his father had been a poor manager who left the firm in a disastrous financial state. As a result, Sébastien threatened to close the Paris branch, but in the end maintained it while making drastic reductions in the workforce.

Faster and louder

Sébastien Erard’s most famous invention for the piano was the double-escapement action, which allows the pianist to rapidly repeat a given note without completely releasing the key, thus rendering the key and the hammer totally independent from each other. This action revolutionised the design of piano mechanisms and had a profound impact on music written for the instrument. Far from being an isolated discovery from the 1820s, Sébastien’s invention was the culmination of a lifetime of searching for ways to make the piano more responsive to the musician’s touch, all the while maintaining a powerful tone.

Passing the flame

For more than fifty years, the Erard firm had enjoyed relatively stable management in the hands of Sébastien and Jean-Baptiste. Sébastien’s death in 1831, however, ushered in a volatile period of just over twenty years during which the direction of the firm would change twice. At first, Pierre took control of the enterprise, doing his best to maintain the firm’s reputation for innovation. But Pierre’s unexpected cognitive decline and early death resulted in the transfer of the firm’s management to his wife Camille, thrusting the future of the Erard manufacture into unknown territory.

Founding a workshop

Having obtained a crucial royal protection that allowed them to compete freely with their Parisian rivals, the Erard brothers concentrated on enlarging their workshop in order to meet the growing demand for their pianos—not only in Paris, but throughout France. The firm hired numerous skilled workers from German-speaking Europe, enticing them by offering a good salary and a stable contract. The success of the Erard firm depended on recruiting, training, and supervising their numerous employees, and stocking their workshops with great quantities of specialised raw materials for instrument manufacture. The Erards developed relationships with musical instrument dealers, musicians, and music teachers as an important way to extend their instrument-building empire across Europe.

Gifts for Haydn, Beethoven, and many others

At the same time that Erard grand pianos were gaining a foothold in France, they were also finding enthusiasts abroad, even in places where there were established local builders. The Erards shipped grand pianos to both Haydn and Beethoven, instruments that would have an important influence on foreign piano building and piano music. Beethoven’s Erard piano in particular influenced numerous works he composed in the following years. The circumstances surrounding Beethoven’s acquisition of his Erard piano have been the subject of much debate among musicologists. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, it had been thought that Beethoven received the piano as a gift in recognition of his international stature as a composer, as had presumably been the case for Haydn. More recently, it has been argued that the Erard ledgers prove that Beethoven, then a little-known and largely unappreciated composer in France, ordered the piano from Erard, but never paid for it. A closer reading of the Erard ledgers, however, reveals that the piano was indeed a gift from the Erards to Beethoven, although perhaps not for the reasons that had previously been assumed.