[CAUT] question for history buffs

[Gary H.]

Majorca is an island in the Mediterranean off the coast of Spain.  It was
part of Spain at that time for many centuries and along with its neighbor
Minorca, integral to British shipping during the Napoleonic Wars-Port Mahon,
on Minorca, was British held for many years.  It's mentioned often enough in
the Patrick O'Brian "Master and Commander" series of books-highly
recommended reading for anyone-and the classical music scene on Minorca was
well established in that period.

 

Anyway, I imagine there were at least a few competent piano tuners on the
island and more than a few pianos-and even more, possibly, on Minorca, just
a short boat trip away.

 

Gary

 

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of
tnrwim at aol.com
Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2010 11:46 PM
To: caut at ptg.org
Subject: [CAUT] question for history buffs

 

Last night I saw "A Song To Remember", on AMC, the story of Frederick
Chopin. According to Tom Osborne, a lot of liberties were taken with the
movie, including that he never went on a concert tour at the end of his
life. But the story does have him go to the island of Majorca, off the West
Africa coast. When he gets to the villa, he gets to play on a nice Pleyel
grand piano. Of course, in typical movie style, the piano is perfectly in
tune, (if was that piano in the first place). But this is the question I
want to ask.

 

Back in teh 1800's, Majorca probably wasn't exactly a place where a piano
tuner could make a living. So did Chopin tune his own pianos, or did Pleyel
send a piano tuner along with the piano to the island? 

 

Wim 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20100912/262b2798/attachment-0001.htm>