THE STORY OF THE PIANO

By contrast,

blues was an idiom that displayed

an immediately

compelling

manner,

in black slave songs in the American

were flattened
African

as a folk-song

South. It used a distinctive

in

genre rooted

scale in which notes

or 'bent' from the normal major scale of European music, to reflect the

feeling for melodies

suffering:

the legacy of African-Americans

since it originated

and to produce

an out-of-tune

feel, expressive

of raw

these were known as 'blue' notes.

The form of the blues consisted

itself corresponds
infinitum,

to a distinctive

of a repeated

relationship

to the underlying

sometimes

performed

sequence,

style of singing

that has a rhythmically

the rhythms

and inflections

with piano accompaniment,

boogie-woogie

country as these developed

Barrelhouse

acquired

ad

loose

metre (which is always in 2 or 4 time) and therefore

with

sometimes

of speech.

Blues was

with guitar.

However,

its real influence on popular styles of piano playing emerged through

other styles: initially

which

AAB form. This can be repeated and elaborated

often with a declamatory

also a close connection

12-bar harmonic

and barrelhouse,

throughout

its influence on

but also much of jazz, rock and

the 20th century.

its name from the primitive

huts that functioned

as bars in

the lumber camps of the Deep South of the US. There the piano and alcohol formed
a close association

in a rough and dangerous

environment,

where a saying like "Don't

shoot the pianist, he's doing his best" may well have been used literally.
Boogie-woogie

was also synonymous

associated with drinking

the 20th century.

with

establishments

the rough

In this respect, its pounding

rhythms

bass lines - echoing blues and banjo styles - contributed

Yancey and Pinetop

Smith

and licentious

lifestyle

in urban America in the first few decades of

were perhaps

and rhythmically

marked

to its significance.

Jimmy

the most infamous

early exponents,

other masters who can be heard on record include Pete Johnson,

and

Meade Lux Lewis

and Albert Ammons.

The slower, more bluesy feel of barrelhouse
jazz pianists,

who fused it with the other musical

roots of jazz. Jazz emerged

performer

improvising

musicians

maintain

bandleader
which

around

mix

French)

andlor

Creole,

and musical

black musicians

began

to export

Great 'stride'

pianists

bands with written

pianisr-bandleaders

with inventing
Latin

arrangements

and

influences

to the

upon a solo
while

The pianist

other
and

Artur Schnabel was one of the greatest

interpreters

jazz,

European

in late

the music

19th

to other

cities,

also took it up.

began to emerge,

It was characrerised

used as backing

such as Duke Ellington,

by big

for solos, led by

Earl Hines, Nat 'King'

Cole and Count Basie, or, on a smaller scale, Fats Waller. The 1940s
saw the appearance
pianists,

of some

notably Art Tatum,

saw the beginnings

emergence

phenomenally

gifted

virtuous

solo

Errol! Garner and Oscar Peterson. It also

of a radically

new conception

of jazz with the

of bebop.

CLASSICAL IN THE 20TH CENTURY

Meanwhile,

the world of classical

great pianist-composers
Schumann,

Chopin,

century

and Liszt had provided

fame and success and a brilliant

generations

music continued

of the mid-19th

of virtuoso

players

repertoire,
to

tour

to change.

The

like Mendelssohn,

a glamorous
encouraging
Europe

and

model

of Beethoven's

piano works

during the early 20th century.

In the 1910s and

such as James P. Johnson

and then, in the 1930s, Swing developed.

ptogression,

in the background,

where he lived and worked.

especially Chicago, where white musicians

that contributed

by an emphasis

a chord

is often credited

of Negro,

cultural

century New Orleans,

1920s

a tune

the beat and the harmony

the

idioms

in the 1920s, characrerised

'Jelly Roll' Morton

reflects

(especially

was taken up by many of the early

of

subsequent
America,

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