The lost chord

Madeline Goold's Mr Langshaw's Square Piano is an affectionate meander through the past, says Susan Tomes
Mr Langshaw's Square Piano by Madeline Goold

Mr Langshaw's Square Piano

by Madeline Goold

364pp, Corvo Books, £13.99

A piano is a piano is a piano, you may think. But each one is individual, and to the eye of love the serial number inside the case, indicating when and where it was made, acts like a name. Professional pianists who hire pianos for concerts often refer to them by the last few digits. "Isn't 731 in great shape?' they enthuse. "I had 945 in Birmingham the other day and the action felt lovely."

It was a serial number inside an antique piano which launched Madeline Goold on the quest to discover its first owner. Having become interested in historical keyboard instruments, she bought a "square" piano in an auction. This type of piano, much smaller and cheaper than the "grand" variety, became extremely popular in England at the start of the 19th century.

The square piano had a wooden frame, and slowly the tension of the strings caused the frame to warp. For this reason, many squares had a fairly short lifespan, and if they survived into the 20th century, central heating often hastened their end. Some were converted into dressing tables or writing desks - even, as Goold relates, into a chicken incubator with a light installed inside the lid. Neglected square pianos still turn up at auctions, but it's no small matter to come by all the materials and expertise needed to restore them. Tiny scraps of leather and felt, wire of many different gauges, pins, dowels, bits of ivory and tuning implements are all required to give the piano its voice.

Goold's piano, serial number 10,651, was made by Broadwood, an English piano-maker so confident that it sent one of its grand pianos as a gift to Beethoven. Amazingly, Broadwood still has most of its archive records of sales from the 1770s onwards. By searching through those records Goold was able to trace her piano's first owner, John Langshaw, a Lancaster organist, who bought it in 1807.

Langshaw might have felt uncomfortable to know that his chance possession of a piano would lever him into the limelight. He was a professional musician, turning his hand to all sorts of things in order to achieve a modest living. As well as being a church organist, he taught, composed and acted as a "country friend" of Broadwood, distributing pianos on their behalf and earning commission. In his youth, he had been to London, where he was a pupil of Charles Wesley, son of the Reverend Charles Wesley. In later years Langshaw returned to Lancaster and inherited the priory organist's job from his father.

Goold uses many historical sources to construct a speculative portrait of life for such a musician, his family and friends. She tells us about prices, incomes and the struggles of musicians to find their social niche. As specific evidence is sometimes scarce, she often resorts to guesswork ("He may have met him ... It is not hard to imagine that ... ").

It's not always clear what sort of book Goold is really writing. Despite the substantial bibliography, this isn't really a work of scholarship, nor is it a history of all the people who have owned the instrument, a survey of piano-makers in Georgian London or a serious social history. It isn't a work of fiction, nor a personal diary.

However, although Langshaw isn't an obvious candidate for biography, Goold's affectionate impulse to salute him across two centuries is justified. She describes the moment in the auction room when she found the piano, cautiously lifted the lid and touched a key. "A muffled, sour little note came out. It was the oldest voice I had ever heard. Time stopped." A flash of historical awareness had sparked her desire to pay sweet, respectful homage to the little piano's first owner.

· Susan Tomes's Beyond the Notes: Journeys with Chamber Music is published by Boydell Press

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