Angel at the keyboard

Pianists, pedestals, and politics.

“I heard that, if your pianist is good, the judges think you sang better.”

I spent the last few days at our regional National Association of Teachers of Singing vocal conference and competition, and caught those words while pushing through the hallway throngs. I don’t know who said them. What struck me was the surprise in the speaker’s voice, a whole kind of you guys! vibe. Imagine, it seemed to say, that the skill of a that person over there could affect what people think about me.

I was on my way to perform From the Diary of Virginia Woolf with my friend Jamie as one of the conference presentations. These eight songs by Dominick Argento are a tour-de-force for the performers, and I’ll say we each made each other look good. No, scratch that: together, we were good (tip of the hat to Chanda VanderHart, my editing mentor - fewer words are always better).

Afterwards, we got a standing ovation (at 2 pm at a conference, yes that is a flex), and many compliments, including one often offered to accompanists, clearly meant to be high praise but which always feels bad:

“Great job! That piece takes a real pianist!”

Later, at the winners’ concert, I thought about that comment, and about the hallway one, as each of the performers acknowledged their applause (if you’re not a member of our weird lil classical world, you have no idea how much energy is spent on this subject). After some of the winners performed, the pianists stood to bow in tandem with them. Other duos followed years of established stage protocol with the singer bowing first, then extending an arm toward toward the pianist, who then rose and bowed.

These two different practices are essentially political statements in our field, one a deliberate expression of equal partnership, the other expressing a hierarchy of soloist and assistant. In the latter, the soloist’s gesture seems to invite the audience to see the pianist for the first time, directing them to give some love to that person over there. Allowing them to do it, really.

The mighty pianist Carlos Avila posted on Facebook back in March 2022:

What people call a pianist in

Brahms Quintet: “pianist”

Brahms Quartet: “pianist”

Brahms Trio: “pianist”

Brahms Duo: “accompanist”

Brahms Solo: “pianist”

I’ll never know why.

That’s my experience too. Playing solo, I’m a pianist. Trios, quartets, and on up, it’s chamber music, so I’m a pianist. It’s only when I have one partner that I’m suddenly a collaborative pianist or accompanist or whatever, and this whole weird dance starts of who’s in charge. I’ve had to dig my heels in to be listed as a pianist rather than a collaborative pianist or an accompanist on programs. I’m playing the piano, and there are obviously other people on stage, why do we need a title to explain the exact meaning of my pianistic contribution?

This isn’t about semantics or feelings. Pianists who work in these partnerships continue to experience real, tangible effects on our status and compensation. In one of my workplaces, I tried to schedule a recital and was told that, since I was not a member of the “real piano faculty,” my duo partner would have to book the hall. In another workplace, I organized, programmed, and coached a recital involving multiple partners only to have them insist that my name appear last on the program. Carlos Avila tells the story of discovering he was making one-third of his instrumental partner’s fee from a presenter who, on the same concert series, paid a flute and guitar duo equally; when Carlos asked why, the presenter said “because there’s no accompanist in that other duo.”

Real pianists. Accompanists. Collaborators.

I wonder what Virginia Woolf would make of it all.

---

I’ve been re-reading a lot of Woolf in preparation for the Diary performances. Forty years ago I read her essay Professions for Women, in which she conjures up the “angel in the house,” a picture of ideal Victorian womanhood:

“…She sacrificed herself daily. If there was chicken, she took the leg; if there was a draught, she sat in it—in short she was so constituted that she never had a mind or a wish of her own, but preferred to sympathize always with the minds and wishes of others.”

Woolf said that, to become a writer, she had to kill that angel, to overcome her social training, to shut out the soft voice in her ear exhorting her to flatter critics and moderate her views.

Woolf took her cue from The Angel in the House, an incredibly long and crappy poem by Coventry Patmore (yes, really). Completed in 1862, it epitomizes “separate spheres” ideology: public life for the man, domestic life for the woman. Patmore exhorts women to adore husbands completely, even absent reciprocation:

She loves with love that cannot tire/And when, ah woe, she loves alone/Through passionate duty love springs higher/As grass grows taller round a stone.

The prize women win for this restriction is idealization:

The best half of creation’s best,
   Its heart to feel, its eye to see,
The crown and complex of the rest,
   Its aim and its epitome.
Nay, might I utter my conceit,
   ’Twere after all a vulgar song,
For she’s so simply, subtly sweet,
   My deepest rapture does her wrong.
Yet is it now my chosen task
   To sing her worth as Maid and Wife;
Nor happier post than this I ask,
   To live her laureate all my life.

Woolf was hardly the first critic of Mr. Patmore. Contemporaneous reviews of his poem were very bad. And then, of course, the poem became very popular. One of its early supporters was John Ruskin, the English art historian and political philosopher (do look the gentleman up to find out more about his own marriage - yowza). Eventually the phrase “angel in the house” became synonymous with Victorian womanhood.

Equality versus the pedestal: it’s been ever thus. I appreciate Virginia Woolf admitting how hard she battled to kill the angel: “she was always creeping back when I thought I had dispatched her.” Those Victorian ideals live in our own heads, that angel is always just around the corner.

It’s not lost on me that most of the music we use at classical competitions and in concerts is straight out of the Victorian era, as is the piano we play. In fact, the piano was the most acceptable instrument for young ladies to study in the 19th century, an appropriate vehicle of expression for women trained to modulate their voices and modify their opinions. The big wood-and-steel contraption had the added benefit of obscuring their bodies.

They were angels sitting demurely on their piano benches, singing sweetly and disappearing at the same time. We built a whole profession around them.

---

And by we, I mean pianists.

Specifically, solo pianists: the solo recital developed in the 19th century right alongside the angels. One person holding the stage for an evening was a new idea. Some renowned soloists kept a vestige of the old soirée musicale model; Clara Schumann’s concerts, for example, almost always had a singer designated as her assistant performing her husband Robert’s songs, as well as those of her fellow conservatives Mendelssohn and Brahms. But more and more often, pianists were out on stage alone, turning up the virtuosity, building major fanbases, and jacking up the fees (classical piano stars are still by far the richest instrumentalists in the business).

Aspiring solo pianists began carving out an identity separate from and superior to any journeyman. Certainly they were influenced by the century’s greatest rock star, Franz Liszt, who like his son-in-law Richard Wagner was packaging his concerts as church, his venues as temples, and himself as a high priest. Other instrumentalists taking the concert stage began to position themselves in a similar kind of spotlight, which could require their duo partners taking a humbler attitude on stage.

The orchestra had something to do with it too. Musicians led ensembles for centuries, but the Victorian era saw the rise of the specialist conductor happen right alongside the piano’s emergence as the classical savannah’s lion king. Middle class families, each with a piano at home, might have been singing songs and playing chamber music to pass the time, but concert hall performances were built around leaders and followers.

In the century of Victoria, with its public life so strongly coded as male, when the image of a demure woman at a keyboard was available in every bourgeois sitting room and the lions of the concert stage were men, accompanying became coded as female even if its practitioners included men and women. Like other “helping” professions, they came to be seen only in subordinate relationship to the soloists they supported. Like other professionals such as teachers and nurses who, despite their own distinct expertises, tend to be seen as low status seconds to their starrier superiors, these pianists came to be seen as adjunct to their partners. As they acted out their supporting roles, dressed in black, hair pulled back, bowing when acknowledged, they and their work began to disappear.

---

Accompanists speak of the “jukebox mentality,” which is the idea that any good accompanist can simply sit down and play anything. Strong sight-reading skills are certainly important in the profession, but this way of thinking complete ignores the very discrete, specific skills sets that pianists develop working with different musicians over time. This is what I mean by invisible labor. Our colleagues aren’t encouraged to think about the work we put in, and we aren’t encouraged to share it since we want them to choose us…yikes, it does sound like a date. And again, this isn’t about personal feelings or insecurity. One colleague of mine was approached by a fellow musician at her new job and asked if she’d play a recital with him. As soon as she asked to have input on the choice of repertoire, he said that he’d just find someone else.

Anyway, our work is sometimes treated much like the household items in this comedy sketch:

Do you think there’s an angel at the keyboard, a musical tooth fairy, magically making accompaniment appear?

---

Like Virginia said, the angel dies hard.

She lives in my head, and is right there every time I negotiate my fee, insist on a certain program format, or open the piano lid all the way. I don’t think men are from Mars and women from Venus, but a lot of people do. The separate sphere thing is currently surging with a non-metaphorical vengeance as influencer angels in their various houses fill our screens.

And although we know that what we see isn’t real, especially as exposés of child labor, abusive behavior and poor health behind the scenes continue to appear, we admire it anyway.

And of course the world is never just one thing. Plenty of soloists advocate for equitable fees with their duo partners. Institutions are trying to create jobs that will sustain and support the skilled pianists they need. It’s been several years since pianist Myra Huang got the Recording Academy to replace the word “accompanist” with “pianist” in Grammy nominations.

But collaborative piano jobs with large workloads and shocking compensation are still advertised on the regular. Pianists are still told not to dress or move in a way that draws any attention away from soloists. That darn angel has got to go.

We can do it the way Woolf did it. With words.

That’s what we’ve been trying to do, I think, with terms like “collaborative pianist.” What if it’s not what you call pianists, though, but rather how we talk about the work? What if every soloist/pianist pair was a duo? What if piano parts - and pianists - didn’t have to be virtuosic to be considered “real?” What if teachers encouraged students to learn pianists’ music, to know their physicality at the keyboard, as part of great chamber music practice? Might that not have a downstream effect on everything from advance planning to rehearsal preparation?

Obviously I’m feeling some kind of way at this moment in time. All I can tell you is that equal partnership is best, and not just for those of us who can put that freaking angel costume aside. Forget pedestals. Don’t miss the chance to truly connect with your partners, and to create environments where everyone can.

Thanks to VW for those essays, and to Sara Kühl for her essay "The Angel in the House" and Fallen Women. Thanks to Carlos and Chanda. Thanks to all you pianists and angel killers out there.