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THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK
OF AFRICAN COLONIAL AND
POSTCOLONIAL HISTORY
Edited by Martin S. Shanguhyia
and Toyin Falola
The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial
and Postcolonial History
Martin S. Shanguhyia · Toyin Falola
Editors

The Palgrave
Handbook
of African Colonial
and Postcolonial
History
Editors
Martin S. Shanguhyia Toyin Falola
History Department, Maxwell School of University of Texas at Austin
Citizenship and Public Affairs Austin, TX, USA
Syracuse University
Syracuse, NY, USA

ISBN 978-1-137-59425-9 ISBN 978-1-137-59426-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950403

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,
whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any
other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation,
computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in
this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher
nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material
contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains
neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover credit: ilbusca/Getty Images

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Nature America, Inc.
The registered company address is: 1 New York Plaza, New York, NY 10004, U.S.A.
 Acknowledgements

This book is the result of unlimited effort from various individuals and insti-
tutions. The topics and themes came from an enriching brainstorming and
back-and-forth communication and conversation between Toyin Falola and
Martin Shanguhyia. Most important, we are grateful to the contributors to
this volume who were willing to share some perspectives on how certain top-
ics have been essential to the development of modern African history. They
spent their invaluable time making endless revisions to their chapters under
time constraints. Our constant communications and conversations were
more rewarding than an inconvenience to all involved. We would also like to
thank Amy Katherine Burnette, then a Dissertation Fellow at the Humanities
Center at Syracuse University, and Thomas Jefferson West III, a doctoral can-
didate in the Department of Languages, Literatures, and Linguistics, ­Syracuse
University, for the endless hours they spend editing the chapters. Special
thanks also to the History Department at Syracuse University for subsidizing
funds for editorial services. We also wish to acknowledge Jamie DeAngelo for
her expertise in producing the maps.

v
vi Acknowledgements

Map 1  Africa on the eve of European scramble and partition, circa 1880
 Acknowledgements vii

Map 2  Colonial Africa, circa 1914

viii Acknowledgements

Map 3  Modern Africa: Countries that have experienced military rule

 Acknowledgements ix

Map 4  Modern Africa: Countries that have experienced political conflict

 Contents

1 Introduction 1
Martin S. Shanguhyia and Toyin Falola

Part I Colonial Africa

2 Colonialism and the African Environment 43

Martin S. Shanguhyia

3 Colonial Administrations and the Africans 81

Toyin Falola and Chukwuemeka Agbo

4 Slavery in the Colonial State and After 103

Paul E. Lovejoy

5 Africans and the Colonial Economy 123

Moses E. Ochonu

6 African Women in Colonial Economies 145

Judith A. Byfield

7 Colonialism and African Womanhood 171

Gloria Chuku

8 Administration, Economy, and Society in the Portuguese

African Empire (1900–1975) 213
Philip J. Havik

xi
xii Contents

9 Christian Evangelization and Its Legacy 239

Andrew E. Barnes

10 Colonial Education 281

Kelly Duke Bryant

11 Health and Medicine in Colonial Society 303

Matthew M. Heaton

12 African Colonial Urban Experience 319

Uyilawa Usuanlele and Oluwatoyin B. Oduntan

13 Africa and the First World War 339

Meshack Owino

14 Africa and the Second World War 355

Meshack Owino

15 Colonialism and African Migrations 373

Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry and Isaac Indome

16 Colonialism and African Childhood 389

Temilola Alanamu, Benedict Carton and Benjamin N. Lawrance

17 Literature in Colonial Africa 413

Tanure Ojaide

18 Art, African Identities, and Colonialism 429

Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie

19 Intensification and Attenuation: Colonial Influences on an

African Culture 451
Augustine Agwuele

20 Youth and Popular Culture in Colonial Africa 479

Jamaine M. Abidogun

21 The Horn of Africa and the Black Anticolonial Imaginary

(1896–1915) 507
Fikru Negash Gebrekidan

22 Colonial Africa and the West 535

Enocent Msindo
 Contents xiii

23 International Law, Colonialism, and the African 551

Ibrahim J. Gassama

24 Colonialism and Development in Africa 569

Ruth Rempel

25 Nationalism and African Intellectuals 621

Toyin Falola and Chukwuemeka Agbo

26 Decolonization Histories 643

Robert M. Maxon

Part II Postcolonial Africa

27 Africa and the Cold War 661

Kenneth Kalu

28 African Politics Since Independence 681

Ademola Araoye

29 Secession and Separatism in Modern Africa 729

Charles G. Thomas

30 Postcolonial Africa and the West 759

Enocent Msindo

31 The USA and Africa 785

Adebayo Oyebade

32 Franco-African Relations: Still Exceptional? 801

Tony Chafer

33 Algeria and France: Beyond the Franco-Algerian Lens 821

Natalya Vince

34 China and Africa 839

Joshua Eisenman and David H. Shinn

35 Africa and Global Financial Institutions 855

John Mukum Mbaku
xiv Contents

36 Development History and Postcolonial African Experience 881

Ruth Rempel

37 African Diasporas and Postcolonial Africa 927

Kwasi Konadu

38 Islam in Sub-Saharan Africa 951

Marloes Janson

39 The Unfinished Business of Postcolonialism: Theological

Perspectives 979
Elias Kifon Bongmba

40 South Africa: Apartheid and Post-Apartheid 1005

Nancy L. Clark

41 The Pan-African Experience: From the Organization of

African Unity to the African Union 1031
Horace G. Campbell

42 Africa and Human Rights 1089

Edward Kissi

43 Education in Postcolonial Africa 1109

Peter Otiato Ojiambo

44 African Women and the Postcolonial State 1137

Alicia C. Decker

45 Young People and Public Space in Africa: Past and Present 1155
Mamadou Diouf

46 Colonialism and African Sexualities 1175

Xavier Livermon

47 Culture, Artifacts, and Independent Africa: The Cultural

Politics of Museums and Heritage 1193
Sarah Van Beurden

48 Building the African Novel on Quick sand: Politics of

Language, Identity, and Ownership 1213
Mukoma Wa Ngugi
 Contents xv

49 Music and Postcolonial Africa 1231

Eric Charry

50 Sports and Politics in Postcolonial Africa 1263

Hikabwa D. Chipande and Davies Banda

51 Media, Society, and the Postcolonial State 1285

Sharon Adetutu Omotoso

52 Between Diaspora and Homeland: The Study of Africa and

the African Diaspora in the USA 1305
Michael O. West

Index 1323
 Editors and Contributors

About the Editors

Martin S. Shanguhyia, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of African

History at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse
University, New York. He received his Ph.D. in African history at West
Virginia University, Morgantown. He is the author of Population, Tradition
and Environmental Control in Colonial Kenya, 1920–1963 (Rochester, NY:
University of Rochester Press, December 2015). His work has also been
published in the International Journal of African Historical Studies as well
as the Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History and in several chapters
in edited books on themes reflecting the intersection between colonialism,
environment, agrarian change, conservation, land, and conflict. His current
research focuses on the political economy of state–community and intercom-
munity relations across Kenya’s borderlands with Uganda, South Sudan, and
Ethiopia during the colonial period.
Toyin Falola, Ph.D. is the Frances and Sanger Mossiker Chair in the
Humanities and University Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of
Texas at Austin. He has received various awards and honors, including seven
honorary doctorates. He is the author and editor of over 150 books.

Contributors
Jamaine M. Abidogun, is Professor in history, Missouri State University,
holds a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction in secondary education,
minor in African and African-American studies, from the University of
Kansas. She is a two-time Fulbright Scholar recipient for her work ‘Gender
Perspectives in Nigeria Secondary Education: A Case Study in Nsukka’
(2004–2005) and ‘Strengthening Gender Research to Improve Girls’ and

xvii
xviii Editors and Contributors

Women’s Education in Nigeria’ (2013–2014). Her co-edited works with

Toyin Falola include Education, Creativity and Economic Empowerment in
Africa (2014) and Issues in African Political Economies (2016). Her pub-
lications include several chapters and articles in African and Education
Studies. She is the editor-in-chief of the African Journal of Teacher
Education (AJOTE), University of Guelph, Ontario and a member of
the Fulbright Academy and the Mid-America Alliance for African Studies
(MAAAS).
Augustine Agwuele, is an Associate Professor of linguistics in the
Department of Anthropology, Texas State University. As an interdisciplinary
scholar, he combines the conceptual rigors of theoretical linguistics with eth-
nographically grounded scholarship in socio-cultural anthropology. With this
he studies language, culture, and society, addressing common and habitual
practices involved in encoding, transmitting, and decoding messages. He
studies closely Yoruba people of Nigeria.
Chukwuemeka Agbo is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of
History, University of Texas at Austin. He is also affiliated to the Department
of History and Strategic Studies at the Federal University, Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo
(FUNAI), Nigeria. His research focuses on the labor history of Southeastern
Nigeria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Kwabena O. Akurang-Parry, is a Full Sabbatical Professor of Africana stud-
ies and world history at the University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana.
He received his Ph.D. in African history and comparative slavery as well as a
Post-Graduate diploma in refugee and migration Studies at York University,
Toronto, Canada. Professor Akurang-Parry has authored over 50 peer-
reviewed articles in major journals, including Slavery and Abolition, History
in Africa, African Economic History, The International Journal of African
Historical Studies, The International Journal of Regional and Local Studies, Left
History, Transactions of the Historical Society of Ghana, African Identities, and
International Working-Class and Labor History. He is the co-editor of African
Agency and European Colonialism: Latitudes of Negotiation and Containment
(2007). He has held teaching and research positions at: Tulane University,
New Orleans, USA; York University, Toronto, Canada; Shippensburg
University, Pennsylvania, USA; and the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.
Temilola Alanamu, is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the
University of Kent. Her current research focuses on the intersection of
gender and the life cycle in Southern Nigeria and encompasses the social
experiences of the sexes from birth until death. She has published articles and
book reviews in Africa, Gender and History and Church History and Religious
Culture amongst others. She also has other forthcoming projects in Oxford
Bibliographies, Journal of World History and The Journal of Colonialism and
Colonial History. She is currently co-editing the Encyclopaedia of African
Religions Beliefs and Practices through History with Douglas Thomas.
 Editors and Contributors xix

Ademola Araoye, has practiced political analysis, with particular focus

on conflict, mediation, and post-conflict reconstruction for over three dec-
ades. A former Nigerian diplomat, he was head of the Political, Policy
Planning Section of the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), and
later head of the Peace Consolidation Service of the mission. He is author of
Cote d’Ivoire: The Conundrum of a Still Wretched of the Earth and Sources of
Conflict in the Post-Colonial Africa State. He taught part time at the Ibrahim
Babaginda Graduate School of the University of Liberia.
Andrew E. Barnes, teaches history at Arizona State University in Tempe,
Arizona. He studies the history of Christianity in Africa and Europe. The
primary focus of his present research is Christian missions and their interac-
tions with African Christians during the era of European colonialism. He is
the author of Making Headway: The Introduction of Western Civilization in
Colonial Northern Nigeria (2009). His new book, Industrial Education and
the Christian Black Atlantic, is forthcoming from Baylor University Press.
Davies Banda, is an active researcher in the field of sport and international
development and is Deputy Director of the Unit for Child and Youth Studies
at York St. John University, UK. His research covers sport-for-development,
corporate social responsibility, national sports policies, and social inclusion
interventions. He has been engaged as a consultant for the Commonwealth
Secretariat, Euroleague Basketball, UK Sport, Laureus Sports for Good
Foundation and some charities in Zambia and the United Kingdom.
Judith A. Byfield, is an Associate Professor in the History Department,
Cornell University. She is the co-editor of Africa and World War II
(Cambridge University Press, 2015) and author of The Bluest Hands: A Social
and Economic History of Women Indigo Dyers in Western Nigeria, 1890–1940
(Heinemann, 2002). A former President of the African Studies Association
(2010–2011), Byfield has received numerous fellowships including the NEH
and Fulbright.
Kelly Duke Bryant, is an Associate Professor of History at Rowan
University (New Jersey), where she teaches African history. Her research
focuses on colonial education, children and youth, and political change in
Senegal. This research has generated several articles and a book, Education
as Politics: Colonial Schooling and Political Debate in Senegal, 1850s–1914
(2015).
Elias Kifon Bongmba, holds the Harry and Hazle Chavanne Chair in
Christian theology and is Professor of religion at Rice University, Houston,
Texas. His areas of specialization include African religions, theology, and phi-
losophy. His book The Dialectics of Transformation in Africa won the Franz
Fanon Prize. He has published widely on religion, theology, and is complet-
ing a monograph on same-sex relations in Africa.
xx Editors and Contributors

Nancy L. Clark, is an historian with over 25 years’ experience of teaching

and research in South African history. She serves as the Jane DeGrummond
Professor of history at Louisiana State University where she also served as
Dean of the Honors College for over 10 years. Her areas of research have
focused on twentieth-century South African history, with special emphasis
on the apartheid era. She has published extensively on the impact of seg-
regation and apartheid on the labor force, and most recently published the
third edition of The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, co-authored with William
Worger.
Horace G. Campbell, holds a joint Professorship in the Department of
African American Studies and Department of Political Science, Maxwell
School-Syracuse University. He has recently published Global NATO
and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa in the Forging of
African Unity (2013) and Barack Obama and twenty-first Century Politics:
A Revolutionary Moment in the USA (2010). He is also the author of
Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation
(2003), and Pan Africanism, Pan Africanists and African Liberation in the
twenty-first Century (2006). His most famous book, Rasta and Resistance:
from Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney (first published in 1985) is going
through its eighth printing. He co-edited (Howard Stein) Tanzania and
the IMF: The Dynamics of Liberalization (1992). He has published more
than 60 journal articles and a dozen monographs as well as chapters in
edited books. He was the Kwame Nkrumah Chair of African Studies at
the Institute of African Studies, University of Legon, Ghana during 2016–
2017.
Benedict Carton, is Robert T. Hawkes Professor of History and Africa
Coordinator of African and African American Studies at George Mason
University, Fairfax, Virginia. He is the author of Blood from Your Children:
The Colonial Origins of Generational Conflict in South Africa (University of
Virginia Press, 2000) and co-editor of Zulu Identities: Being Zulu Past and
Present (2008).
Tony Chafer, is a historian specializing in Francophone Africa and
French relations with Africa in the late colonial and postcolonial era. He
is Director of the Centre for European and International Studies Research
at the University of Portsmouth (UK). Recently he has published widely
on French military policy in Africa and is currently working on a new edi-
tion of his book The End of Empire in French West Africa: France’s Successful
Decolonization?
Eric Charry, is a Professor of Music at Wesleyan University. He has pub-
lished extensively on music in Africa, including dictionary and encyclope-
dia entries as well as the books Mande Music (2000) and Hip Hop Africa
(2012).
 Editors and Contributors xxi

Hikabwa D. Chipande, is a social historian of twentieth-century Africa. His

research work focuses on the relationship between popular culture and poli-
tics, particularly football (soccer) and sport. He earned his Ph.D. in African
history from Michigan State University in 2015 and is currently teaching at
the University of Zambia in Lusaka.
Gloria Chuku, is a historian with over 25 years of teaching and research
experience. She is Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, and Affiliate
Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, and the Language, Literacy and
Culture Ph.D. Program at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County,
USA. Her work centers on Nigerian history with particular focus on gender,
entrepreneurship, nationalism, ethnonationalisms and conflicts, and Igbo
intellectual history. She has published extensively in these areas, including:
a monograph, Igbo Women and Economic Transformation in Southeastern
Nigeria, 1900–1960 (2005); two edited volumes, The Igbo Intellectual
Tradition: Creative Conflict in African and African Diasporic Thought
(2013) and Ethnicities, Nationalities, and Cross-Cultural Representations in
Africa and the Diaspora (2015). She has also publsihed over 50 scholarly arti-
cles.
Alicia C. Decker is an Associate Professor of women’s, gender, and sexu-
ality studies and African studies at the Pennsylvania State University, where
she also co-directs the African Feminist Initiative. Her research and teaching
interests include gender and militarism, African women’s history, and global
feminisms. She is the author of In Idi Amin’s Shadow: Women, Gender, and
Militarism in Uganda (Ohio University Press, 2014), and co-author with
Andrea Arrington of Africanizing Democracies: 1980 to Present (Oxford
University Press, 2014).
Mamadou Diouf, is an historian, and has taught at the Université
Cheikh Anata Diop in Dakar (Senegal), and directed the Research and
Documentation Department of the Council for the Development of Social
Sciences Research. He was the Charles Moody Jr. Professor of History and
African and African American Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor. He is currently the Leitner Family Professor of African studies and his-
tory at Columbia University in the City of New York, and a Visiting Professor
at Sciences PIO, Paris (France). His research interests have focused on
African intellectual and urban histories and youth cultures. His more recent
publications include the co-edited book Tolerance, Democracy and the Sufis
in Senegal, (2014), and co-edited volumes The Arts of Citizenship in Africa.
Spaces of Belonging (with R. Fredericks), 2015); Les arts de la citoyenneté au
Sénégal. Espaces Contestés et Civilités Urbaines (with F. Fredericks, 2013);
Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic: Rituals and Remembrances, (with I. Nwankwo,
2010) and New Perspectives on Islam in Senegal: Conversion, Migration,
Wealth, Power and Femininity (with Mara Leichtman, 2009).
xxii Editors and Contributors

Joshua Eisenman, is Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at

Austin’s LBJ School of Public Affairs and senior fellow for China studies at
the American Foreign Policy Council in Washington, DC. His second book,
China and Africa: A Century of Engagement, co-authored with former US
Ambassador to Ethiopia David H. Shinn, was named one of the top three
books on Africa in 2012 by Foreign Affairs magazine. In 2007, he co-edited
China and the Developing World: Beijing’s Strategy for the twenty-first Century,
and wrote the book’s chapter on China–Africa relations.
Ibrahim J. Gassama, is the Frank Nash Professor of law at the University
of Oregon. His research interests include international humanitarian, human
rights, and economic law. His recent international law articles have appeared
in the international law journals of Brooklyn (2012), Fordham (2013),
Washington (2013), and Wisconsin (2014) Universities. Prior to becoming
a law professor, he worked for TransAfrica, the African-American lobby for
Africa.
Fikru Negash Gebrekidan, is an Associate Professor of History at St
Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. He regularly teaches courses on
African history, world history, and the history of genocide. His major publica-
tions have appeared in Northeast African Studies, the International Journal
of Ethiopian Studies, the Journal of Ethiopian Studies, Callaloo, and the
African Studies Review. He is the author of Bond without Blood: A History of
Ethiopian and New World Black Relations, 1896–1991 (2005).
Philip J. Havik, is senior researcher at the Instituto de Higiene e Medicina
Tropical of the Universidade Nova in Lisbon (IHMT/UNL) where he also
teaches the history of medicine. His multidisciplinary research centers upon the
study of public health and tropical medicine, state formation and governance,
cultural brokerage and entrepreneurship in West Africa, with special emphasis
on Lusophone countries, including Guinea Bissau. His most recent publications
include (with co-authors Alexander Keese and Maciel Santos) Administration
and Taxation in the former Portuguese Empire, 1900–1945 (2015).
Matthew M. Heaton, is an Associate Professor in the Department of
History at Virginia Tech. His research interests are in the history of health
and illness, migration, and globalization in Africa with particular emphasis on
Nigeria. He is the author of Black Skin, White Coats: Nigerian Psychiatrists,
Decolonization, and the Globalization of Psychiatry and co-author of A History
of Nigeria.
Isaac Indome is an M.Phil. History student at the Department of History,
University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast, Ghana. He obtained his B.A. (Hons)
degree in history from the University of Cape Coast in June 2015 and taught
in the same department during the 2015/2016 academic year. His research
interests are in migration in colonial Africa, specifically focusing on health and
migration in colonial Ghana.
 Editors and Contributors xxiii

Marloes Janson, is Reader in West African anthropology at SOAS,

University of London. Her areas of ethnographic interest include religious
reform (both Muslim and Christian), oral history, gender, and youth in
the Gambia and Nigeria. She has published extensively in these areas, most
recently Islam, Youth, and Modernity in the Gambia: The Tablighi Jamaʻat
(Cambridge University Press/International African Institute, 2014). She is
the book reviews editor of the Journal of Religion in Africa.
Kenneth Kalu, received his Ph.D. from the School of Public Policy and
Administration, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. He is currently
an Assistant Professor at Ted Rogers School of Management, Ryerson
University, Toronto, Canada. His research interests revolve around Africa’s
political economy; with special focus on the nature, evolution, and interac-
tions of economic and political institutions; the political economy of foreign
development assistance; and the history of foreign direct investment in Africa.
His essays have appeared in several edited volumes, and his article on state–
society relations in Africa is forthcoming in Development Policy Review. His
forthcoming book is on development assistance and the future of Africa. He
has held several senior positions in the public and private sectors in Nigeria
and Canada.
Edward Kissi, is Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies
at the University of South Florida. He studies the economic and diplomatic
history of Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa, and the comparative history of
genocide and human rights, and has published extensively on these subjects.
He is the author of ‘Obligation to Prevent (02P): Proposal for a Community
Approach to Genocide-prevention in Africa’ to be published in African
Security Review, in September 2016.
Kwasi Konadu, is Professor of history at The City University of New York.
Among other books, he is the author of The Akan Diaspora in the Americas
(2010), Transatlantic Africa, 1440–1880 (2014), and co-editor of The Ghana
Reader: History, Culture, Politics (2016). He is also the founding director of
the non-profit educational publisher Diasporic Africa Press, Inc.
Benjamin N. Lawrance, is Professor of African History at the University of
Arizona, and also the Editor-in-Chief of African Studies Review. His research
interests include comparative and contemporary slavery, human traffick-
ing, cuisine and globalization, human rights, refugee issues and asylum poli-
cies. Among his books are Amistad’s Orphans: An Atlantic Story of Children,
Slavery, and Smuggling (2014), and Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum
Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony (2015), with Galya
Ruffer; and, Trafficking in Slavery’s Wake: Law and the Experience of Women
and Children in Africa (2012), with Richard L. Roberts.
Xavier Livermon, is an Assistant Professor of African and African dias-
pora studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has published widely
xxiv Editors and Contributors

in the fields of African popular culture and African queer studies. His forth-
coming book Kwaito Futurity discusses the rise of post-apartheid South
African popular culture and its articulation with contemporary politics of
race, gender, and sexuality.
Paul E. Lovejoy, is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department
of History, York University, Toronto, and holds the Canada Research Chair
in African Diaspora History. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada
and was the founding director of the Harriet Tubman Institute for Research
on the Global Migrations of African Peoples. His recent publications include
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery: New Directions in Teaching and
Learning (2013), co-edited with Benjamin Bowser, and Jihád in West Africa
During the Age of Revolutions (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2016).
He has been awarded the Honorary degree of Doctor of the University, by
the University of Stirling in 2007, the Distinguished Africanist Award by the
University of Texas at Austin in 2010, a Life Time Achievement Award from
the Canadian Association of African Studies in 2011, and Faculty of Graduate
Studies Teaching Award at York University in 2011. He is General Editor of
the Harriet Tubman Series on the African Diaspora, Africa World Press.
Robert M. Maxon, is an historian with more than 45 years of teach-
ing, research and supervision of students at West Virginia University and
Moi University. His research interests include East African history, Kenyan
political and economic history, the economic history of western Kenya, and
Kenya’s constitutional history. He has published in these areas, most recently
Kenya’s Independence Constitution: Constitution-Making and End of Empire
(2011), Britain and Kenya’s Constitutions 1950–1960 (2011), and Historical
Dictionary of Kenya (3rd edn, 2014).
John Mukum Mbaku, is an economist, lawyer, and legal scholar with more
than 30 years of teaching and research experience. He is currently Brady
Presidential Distinguished Professor of economics and John S. Hinckley
Fellow at Weber State University (Utah, USA), a Nonresident Senior Fellow
at The Brookings Institution (Washington, DC), and an Attorney and
Counselor at law (licensed in Utah). His research interests are in constitu-
tional political economy and governance in Africa. He has published exten-
sively in these areas, most recently, Governing the Nile River Basin: The Search
for a New Legal Regime (2015), with Mwangi S. Kimenyi.
Enocent Msindo, is Associate Professor of History at Rhodes University,
South Africa. He has published widely on Africa’s social and political history.
He is the author of Ethnicity in Zimbabwe: Transformations in Kalanga and
Ndebele Societies (2012) and is currently completing a monograph on the
state, information policy and propaganda in Zimbabwe from 1890 to the pre-
sent.
 Editors and Contributors xxv

Mukoma Wa Ngugi, is an Assistant Professor of English at Cornell

University and the author of the novels Mrs. Shaw (2015), Black Star
Nairobi (2013), Nairobi Heat (2011), and a book of poetry, Hurling Words
at Consciousness (2006). Logotherapy (poetry) is forthcoming. He is the co-
founder of the Mabati–Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature and
co-director of the Global South Project—Cornell. The goal of GSP is to
facilitate public conversations among writers and scholars from Africa, Latin
America, and Asia as well as minority groups in the West. In 2013, New
African magazine named him one of the 100 most Influential Africans. In
2015 he was a juror for the Writivism Short Story Prize and the Neustadt
International Prize for Literature.
Oluwatoyin B. Oduntan, is an Assistant Professor of History at Towson
University in Maryland where he teaches courses in world, African and intel-
lectual histories, and historical methods. He focuses his research on elite for-
mation, cultural identity, and modernity in Africa.
Moses E. Ochonu, is Professor of African History at Vanderbilt University.
He holds a Ph.D. in African history from the University of Michigan, Ann
Arbor, and Graduate Certificate in conflict management from Lipscomb
University, Nashville. He is the author of three books: Africa in Fragments:
Essays on Nigeria, Africa, and Global Africanity (New York: Diasporic Africa
Press, 2014); Colonialism by Proxy: Hausa Imperial Agents and Middle Belt
Consciousness in Nigeria (Indiana University Press, 2014), which was named
finalist for the Herskovits Prize; and Colonial Meltdown: Northern Nigeria in
the Great Depression (Ohio University Press, 2009). Ochonu’s articles have
been published as book chapters and in several scholarly journals. He is cur-
rently working on a book project dealing with a unique form of colonial
patronage which saw British colonial authorities sponsor Northern Nigerian
emirs and other Muslim aristocrats to London and other metropolitan des-
tinations for sightseeing adventures. Ochonu is two-time recipient of the
research fellowship of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).
He has also received research grants and fellowships from the Harry Frank
Guggenheim Foundation, the Social Science Research Council (SSRC),
Rockefeller Foundation, Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the
Humanities (NEH), and the British Library.
Sharon Adetutu Omotoso, is a Philosopher (Applied Ethicist) with
years of teaching, research and supervision of students, formerly at Lead
City University and currently at the Institute of African Studies, University
of Ibadan. Her areas of research interest include Applied Ethics, Political
Communications, Media & Gender studies, Philosophy of Education, Socio-
Political Philosophy, and African Philosophy. She has published significantly
in these areas, most recently, a co-edited book: Political Communication in
Africa (Cham: Springer Publishers, 2017).
xxvi Editors and Contributors

Tanure Ojaide, is a writer and scholar, currently The Frank Porter Graham
Professor of Africana studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
He has won major awards for his poetry and scholarly works.
Peter Otiato Ojiambo, is an Associate Professor in the Department of
African and African-American Studies at the University of Kansas with several
years of teaching, research and student supervision experience. His areas of
research include: African-centered educational biographies, comparative and
international education, educational leadership and non-western educational
thoughts. He has written and published extensively on these areas. His recent
publication is entitled “Perspectives on Empowering Education”, 2014.
Meshack Owino, is an Associate Professor of History at Cleveland State
University, Cleveland, Ohio. He earned his B.Ed and M.A at Kenyatta
University, Kenya, and an M.A. and Ph.D.. at Rice University, Houston,
Texas. Owino’s areas of academic interests include the social experience of
African soldiers in pre-colonial and colonial wars; and the nature and per-
mutation of the modern African state. Owino has taught African History at
several universities, including Egerton University, Kenya and Bloomsburg
University, Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania. He has served as a Visiting Professor
of African history at Stanford University, Palo Alto, California, and as an
Adjunct Professor at Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas.
Adebayo Oyebade, is Professor of history and Chair of the History
Department at Tennessee State University at Nashville. He has authored
numerous journal articles and book chapters on African and African diaspo-
ran history. He is the author, editor, and co-editor of nine books including
United States’ Foreign Policy in Africa in the twenty-first Century: Issues and
Perspectives (2014).
Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, is Professor of art history and visual cul-
tures of global Africa at the University of California Santa Barbara. He
received his Ph.D. at Northwestern University and is the author of Ben
Enwonwu: The Making of an African Modernist (2008) which was awarded
the 2009 Herskovits Prize of the African Studies Association for best schol-
arly publication in African studies. He has also authored Making History:
The Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection (2011), and is editor of Artists
of Nigeria (2012). Ogbechie is also the founder and editor of Critical
Interventions: Journal of African Art History and Visual Culture. He is cur-
rently a Smithsonian Institution Senior Fellow at the National Museum of
African Art.
Ruth Rempel, is a historian in the international development studies pro-
gram at Canadian Mennonite University. Her research and teaching inter-
ests include global and African development history, structural adjustment
in Africa, narratives of African development since 1990, and development
 Editors and Contributors xxvii

theory. She has written on these and other topics, and has a forthcoming
book on African development history from 1970 to 2010.
David H. Shinn, has been teaching as an Adjunct Professor in the Elliott
School of International Affairs at George Washington University since 2001.
He previously served for 37 years in the US Foreign Service with assignments
at embassies in Lebanon, Kenya, Tanzania, Mauritania, Cameroon, Sudan,
and as ambassador to Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. Shinn, who has a Ph.D.
from George Washington University, is the co-author of China and Africa:
A Century of Engagement and the Historical Dictionary of Ethiopia, and
the author of Hizmet in Africa: The Activities and Significance of the Gülen
Movement. Shinn has authored numerous journal articles and book chapters
on China–Africa issues. He blogs at http://davidshinn.blogspot.com.
Charles G. Thomas, is an Associate Professor of comparative military stud-
ies at the Air Command and Staff College. He is the co-editor of Securing
Africa: Local Crises and Foreign Interventions (2013) and the Managing
Editor of the Journal of African Military History (Brill Academic Press).
Uyilawa Usuanlele, studied in Nigeria, Sweden, and Canada and majored in
African History, Peace, and Conflict Studies. He worked as a researcher with
the National Council for Arts and Culture, Nigeria. He was a founding mem-
ber/Coordinator of Institute for Benin Studies, Benin City, Nigeria. He has
contributed articles and chapters to journals and books. He currently teaches
African history, as well as peace and conflict Studies at State University of
New York (SUNY) Oswego, New York, USA.
Sarah Van Beurden, is an Associate Professor of African studies at
the Ohio State University. She received her Ph.D. from University of
Pennsylvania, and is the author of Authentically African: Arts and the
Transnational Politics of Congolese Culture (2015). She has also written
several articles and chapters on the colonial and postcolonial history of
Congo/Zaire, and cultural heritage and museum politics.
Natalya Vince, is a Lecturer in North African and French Studies at
the University of Portsmouth. Her subject area is modern Algerian and
French history, and her research interests include oral history, gender
studies, and state and nation building in Algeria and France, and more
broadly in Europe and Africa. Her monograph Our Fighting Sisters: Nation,
Memory and Gender in Algeria, 1954–2012 was published in 2015.
Michael O. West, is Professor of Sociology, Africana Studies and
History at Binghamton University. He has published broadly in the fields
of African studies, African diaspora studies, African-American studies,
Pan-Africanism, history, and historical sociology. His current research centers
on the Black Power movement in global perspectives.
 List of Figures

Map 1 Africa on the eve of European scramble and partition, circa 1880 vi
Map 2 Colonial Africa, circa 1914 vii
Map 3 Modern Africa: Countries that have experienced military rule viii
Map 4 Modern Africa: Countries that have experienced political conflict ix
Fig. 8.1 Total Revenue (c.1949–1972) 224
Fig. 16.1 Staged stick fight, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (c.1900) 396
Fig. 16.2 Xhosa women practice their martial arts, Eastern Cape,
South Africa (1981) 397
Fig. 16.3 Madam and children: Young Zulu servant in his kitchen suit,
Natal, South Africa (c.1900) 404
Fig. 18.1 Olowe of Ise, Palace Door. Wood and pigment, 20th Century
(copyright Femi Akinsanya African Art Collection) 434
Fig. 19.1 Masqueraders’ family house in Aperin, Ibadan 462

xxix
 List of Tables

Table 8.1 Population of Portugal’s former African colonies (1926–1970) 222

Table 22.1 Tax revenues in 1934 541
Table 36.1 Trends in social development 889

xxxi
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Martin S. Shanguhyia and Toyin Falola

This Handbook was conceived out of the necessity to demonstrate the extent
to which African history has expanded in scope, themes, and interpretations
since the early 1980s. It focuses on African colonial and postcolonial history,
the two eras of the continent’s history that seem inseparable, though the
extent to which they are similar or different has pervaded scholarly debates
for decades and is an aspect that some of the chapters in this volume explore.
The book benefits from contributions from established and up-and-com-
ing scholars in African studies, each using the vantage point of their study
of Africa and Africans to reveal how we have come to understand the conti-
nent’s historical trajectory since the professionalization of African history in
the 1950s.
The majority of the contributors are historians, while the rest are drawn
from diverse fields in African studies, particularly political science, anthro-
pology, art, music, literature, religious studies, education, and international
relations. Part of the initiative here is to demonstrate that African history has
not evolved in isolation from other disciplines that focus on Africa; rather, in
researching and interpreting what they study, historians of Africa have directly
and indirectly benefited immensely from other disciplines. One can also argue
contrariwise that scholars of African studies have tapped into African history

M.S. Shanguhyia (*)

History Department, Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs,
Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, USA
T. Falola
Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 1

M.S. Shanguhyia and T. Falola (eds.),
The Palgrave Handbook of African Colonial and Postcolonial History,
https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-59426-6_1
2 M.S. SHANGUHYIA AND T. FALOLA

to shed light on various aspects of their respective fields. It is fair to argue as

well that the production of African history has been, to a certain extent, the
result of an interdisciplinary effort.
Work of the nature attempted in this Handbook has been preceded by
past initiatives to appraise the state of African historiography, and these fine,
early efforts must be applauded. The Cambridge History of Africa remains
an important starting point for works of this kind. The UNESCO General
History of Africa volumes published in the early 1980s remain indispensable
as they immortalize initiatives of eminent pioneer scholars who virtually laid
the foundations of African history as a legitimate professional pursuit. Even
before the UNESCO effort, very engaging works reflecting on trends in Afri-
can history were rolled out in the 1960s and 1970s, a little more than a dec-
ade following the historical revisionism that had been launched in the 1950s.
Some of these works were concerned with general, broader trends of histori-
cal studies that covered Sub-Saharan Africa.1 Of these, A.D. Roberts’s work
that focused on colonial Africa is quite relevant to the kind of work partly
covered in this volume. Even so, Roberts was mainly concerned with the ear-
lier historiography of colonial Africa.2 Other studies tended toward regional
analyses, particularly on East and West Africa.3
Later studies on African historiography from the 1980s through the first
decade of the twenty-first century build on these earlier efforts, if only to
reflect ongoing debates on what direction the interpretation, methods, and
scope African history in particular was to take, either as an individual dis-
cipline or within the family of African studies. They depict a polarization
among historians of the day on interpretation, themes, and value to Africa
of African history.4 We briefly outline this subject below, as various debates
contributed to the evolution of the discipline into its present state. The place
of Africa in European imperial historiography, particularly that of Britain, has
also garnered attention, though many will argue about its validity to a ‘true’
African history, if such history ever exists, given its strong imperial focus.5,6
Since the publication of these earlier works, African colonial and postcolo-
nial histories have experienced expansion in interpretation and thematic focus,
the entire breadth of which has not been completely captured in a single vol-
ume. Perhaps a more recent effort in this direction is the Oxford Handbook
of Modern African History, edited by John Parker and Richard Reid. That
volume is an excellent analysis of some of the finest works that reflect recent
trends in modern African history. Our endeavor in this volume is to present
an expanded scope of themes that have formed the cache of African colo-
nial and postcolonial history over the last three or so decades, and to show
how those themes, both old and new, have been engaged by various scholars.
The themes in the volume illustrate the depth of African modern history, the
innovativeness and range of paradigms of its analysis, and the multidiscipli-
nary lens for understanding Africa’s past.
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of The art of music,
Vol. 07 (of 14), Pianoforte and chamber music
 This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with
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Title: The art of music, Vol. 07 (of 14), Pianoforte and chamber
music

Editor: Leland Hall

Edward Burlingame Hill
Daniel Gregory Mason
César Saerchinger

Release date: December 9, 2023 [eBook #72303]

Language: English

Original publication: New York: National Society of Music, 1915

Credits: Andrés V. Galia, Jude Eylander and the Online

Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ART OF

MUSIC, VOL. 07 (OF 14), PIANOFORTE AND CHAMBER MUSIC
***
 TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES
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THE ART OF MUSIC
 The Art of Music
A Comprehensive Library of Information
for Music Lovers and Musicians

Editor-in-Chief

DANIEL GREGORY MASON

Columbia University

Associate Editors

EDWARD B. HILL LELAND HALL

Harvard University Past Professor, Univ. of
Wisconsin

Managing Editor

CÉSAR SAERCHINGER
Modern Music Society of New York

In Fourteen Volumes
Profusely Illustrated
 NEW YORK
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC
 Home Concert

Painting by Fritz von Uhde

 THE ART OF MUSIC: VOLUME SEVEN

Pianoforte and Chamber Music

Department Editor:

LELAND HALL, M.A.

Past Professor of Musical History, University of
Wisconsin

Introduction by
HAROLD BAUER
 NEW YORK
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC
 Copyright, 1915, by
THE NATIONAL SOCIETY OF MUSIC, Inc.
[All Rights Reserved]
 PREFATORY NOTE
The editor has not attempted to give within the limits of this single
volume a detailed history of the development of both pianoforte and
chamber music. He has emphasized but very little the historical
development of either branch of music, and he has not pretended to
discuss exhaustively all the music which might be comprehended
under the two broad titles.

The chapters on pianoforte music are intended to show how the

great masters adapted themselves to the exigencies of the
instrument, and in what manner they furthered the development of
the difficult technique of writing for it. Also, because the piano may
be successfully treated in various ways, and because it lends itself to
the expression of widely diverse moods, there is in these chapters
some discussion of the great masterpieces of pianoforte literature in
detail.

The arrangement of material is perhaps not usual. What little has

been said about the development of the piano, for example, has
been said in connection with Beethoven, who was the first to avail
himself fully of the advantages the piano offered over the
harpsichord. A discussion, or rather an analysis, of the pianoforte
style has been put in the chapter on Chopin, who is even today the
one outstanding master of it.

In the part of the book dealing with chamber music the material has
been somewhat arbitrarily arranged according to combinations of
instruments. The string quartets, the pianoforte trios, quartets, and
quintets, the sonatas for violin and piano, and other combinations
have been treated separately. The selection of some works for a
more or less detailed discussion, and the omission of even the
mention of others, will undoubtedly seem unjustifiable to some; but
the editor trusts at least that those he has chosen for discussion may
illumine somewhat the general progress of chamber music from the
time of Haydn to the present day.

For the chapters on violin music before Corelli and the beginnings of
chamber music we are indebted to Mr. Edward Kilenyi, whose initials
appear at the end of these chapters.

Leland Hall
 INTRODUCTION
The term Chamber Music, in its modern sense, cannot perhaps be
strictly defined. In general it is music which is fine rather than broad,
or in which, at any rate, there is a wealth of detail which can be
followed and appreciated only in a relatively small room. It is not, on
the whole, brilliantly colored like orchestral music. The string quartet,
for example, is conspicuously monochrome. Nor is chamber music
associated with the drama, with ritual, pageantry, or display, as are
the opera and the mass. It is—to use a well worn term—very nearly
always absolute music, and, as such, must be not only perfect in
detail, but beautiful in proportion and line, if it is to be effective.

As far as externals are concerned, chamber music is made up of

music for a solo instrument, with or without accompaniment
(excluding, of course, concertos and other like forms, which require
the orchestra, and music for the organ, which can hardly be
dissociated from cathedrals and other large places), and music for
small groups of instruments, such as the string trio and the string
quartet, and combinations of diverse instruments with the piano.
Many songs, too, sound best in intimate surroundings; but one thinks
of them as in a class by themselves, not as a part of the literature of
chamber music.

With very few exceptions, all the great composers have sought
expression in chamber music at one time or another; and their
compositions in this branch seem often to be the finest and the most
intimate presentation of their genius. Haydn is commonly supposed
to have found himself first in his string quartets. Mozart’s great
quartets are almost unique among his compositions as an
expression of his genius absolutely uninfluenced by external
circumstances and occasion. None of Beethoven’s music is more
profound nor more personal than his last quartets. Even among the
works of the later composers, who might well have been seduced
altogether away from these fine and exacting forms by the
intoxicating glory of the orchestra, one finds chamber music of a rich
and special value.

This special value consists in part in the refined and unfailing

musical skill with which the composers have handled their slender
material; but more in the quality of the music itself. The great works
of chamber music, no matter how profound, speak in the language of
intimacy. They show no signs of the need to impress or overwhelm
an audience. Perhaps no truly great music does. But operas and
even symphonies must be written with more or less consideration for
external circumstances, whereas in the smaller forms, composers
seem to be concerned only with the musical inspiration which they
feel the desire to express. They speak to an audience of
understanding friends, as it were, before whom they may reveal
themselves without thought of the effectiveness of their speech.
They seem in them to have consulted only their ideals. They have
taken for granted the sympathetic attention of their audience.

The piano has always played a commanding rôle in the history of

chamber music. From the early days when the harpsichord with its
figured bass was the foundation for almost all music, both vocal and
instrumental, few forms in chamber music have developed
independently of it, or of the piano, its successor. The string quartet
and a few combinations of wind instruments offer the only
conspicuous exceptions. The mass of chamber music is made up of
pianoforte trios, quartets, and quintets, of sonatas for pianoforte and
various other instruments; and, indeed, the great part of pianoforte
music is essentially chamber music.

It may perhaps seem strange to characterize as remarkably fine and

intimate the music which has been written for an instrument often
stigmatized as essentially unmusical. But the piano has attracted
nearly all the great composers, many of whom were excellent
pianists; and the music which they have written for it is indisputably
of the highest and most lasting worth. There are many pianoforte
sonatas which are all but symphonies, not only in breadth of form,
but in depth of meaning. Some composers, notably Beethoven and
Liszt, demanded of the piano the power of the orchestra. Yet on the
whole the mass of pianoforte music remains chamber music.

The pianoforte style is an intricate style, and to be effective must be

perfectly finished. The instrument sounds at its best in a small hall. In
a large one its worst characteristics are likely to come all too clearly
to the surface. And though it is in many ways the most powerful of all
the instruments, truly beautiful playing does not call upon its limits of
sound, but makes it a medium of fine and delicately shaded musical
thought. To regard it as an instrument suited primarily to big and
grandiose effects is grievously to misunderstand it, and is likely,
furthermore, to make one overlook the possibilities of tone color
which, though often denied it, it none the less possesses.

In order to study intelligently the mechanics, or, if you will, the art of
touch upon the piano, and in order to comprehend the variety of
tone-color which can be produced from it, one must recognize at the
outset the fact that the piano is an instrument of percussion. Its
sounds result from the blows of hammers upon taut metal strings.
With the musical sound given out by these vibrating strings must
inevitably be mixed the dull and unmusical sound of the blow that set
them vibrating. The trained ear will detect not only the thud of the
hammer against the string, but that of the finger against the key, and
that of the key itself upon its base. The study of touch and tone upon
the piano is the study of the combination and the control of these two
elements of sound, the one musical, the other unmusical.

The pianist can acquire but relatively little control over the musical
sounds of his instrument. He can make them soft and loud, but he
cannot, as the violinist can, make a single tone grow from soft to
loud and die away to soft again. The violinist or the singer both
makes and controls tone, the one by his bow, the other by his breath;
the pianist, in comparison with them, but makes tone. Having caused
a string to vibrate by striking it through a key, he cannot even sustain
these vibrations. They begin at once to weaken; the sound at once
grows fainter. Therefore he has to make his effects with a volume of
sounds which has been aptly said to be ever vanishing.

On the other hand, these sounds have more endurance than those
of the xylophone, for example; and in their brief span of failing life the
skillful pianist may work somewhat upon them according to his will.
He may cut them exceedingly short by allowing the dampers to fall
instantaneously upon the strings, thus stopping all vibrations. He
may even prolong a few sounds, a chord let us say, by using the
sustaining pedal. This lifts the dampers from all the strings, so that
all vibrate in sympathy with the tones of the chord and reënforce
them, so to speak. This may be done either at the moment the notes
of the chord are struck, or considerably later, after they have begun
appreciably to weaken. In the latter case the ear can detect the
actual reënforcement of the failing sounds.

Moreover, the use of the pedal serves to affect somewhat the color
of the sounds of the instrument. All differences in timbre depend on
overtones; and if the pianist lifts all dampers from the strings by the
pedals, he will hear the natural overtones of his chord brought into
prominence by means of the sympathetic vibrations of other strings
he has not struck. He can easily produce a mass of sound which
strongly suggests the organ, in the tone color of which the shades of
overtones are markably evident.

The study of such effects will lead him beyond the use of the pedal
into some of the niceties of pianoforte touch. He will find himself able
to suppress some overtones and bring out others by emphasizing a
note here and there in a chord of many notes, especially in an
arpeggio, and by slighting others. Such an emphasis, it is true, may
give to a series of chords an internal polyphonic significance; but if
not made too prominent, will tend rather to color the general sound
than to make an effect of distinct drawing.
It will be observed that in the matter of so handling the volume of
musical sound, prolonging it and slightly coloring it by the use of the
pedal or by skillful emphasis of touch, the pianist’s attention is
directed ever to the after-sounds, so to speak, of his instrument. He
is interested, not in the sharp, clear beginning of the sound, but in
what follows it. He finds in the very deficiencies of the instrument
possibilities of great musical beauty. It is hardly too much to say,
then, that the secret of a beautiful or sympathetic touch, which has
long been considered to be hidden in the method of striking the keys,
may be found quite as much in the treatment of sounds after the
keys have been struck. It is a mystery which can by no means be
wholly solved by a muscular training of the hands; for a great part of
such training is concerned only with the actual striking of the keys.

We have already said that striking the keys must produce more or
less unmusical sounds. These sounds are not without great value.
They emphasize rhythm, for example, and by virtue of them the
piano is second to no instrument in effects of pronounced,
stimulating rhythm. The pianist wields in this regard almost the
power of the drummer to stir men to frenzy, a power which is by no
means to be despised. In martial music and in other kinds of
vigorous music the piano is almost without shortcomings. But
inasmuch as a great part of pianoforte music is not in this vigorous
vein, but rather in a vein of softer, more imaginative beauty, the
pianist must constantly study how to subject these unmusical sounds
to the after-sounds which follow them. In this study he will come
upon the secret of the legato style of playing.

If the violinist wishes to play a phrase in a smooth legato style, he

does not use a new stroke of his bow for each note. If he did so, he
would virtually be attacking the separate notes, consequently
emphasizing them, and punctuating each from the other. Fortunately
for him, he need not do so; but the pianist cannot do otherwise. Each
note he plays must be struck from the strings of his instrument by a
hammer. He can only approximate a legato style—by concealing, in
one way or another, the sounds which accompany this blow.