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Reviewed by:
  • Steinway & Sons
  • Gary J. Kornblith
Steinway & Sons. By Richard K. Lieberman (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997) 307 pp. $40.00 cloth $18.00 paper

Narrative history is back in fashion, and Steinway & Sons exemplifies why. Drawing on a wide array of business records, personal papers, press reports, and oral interviews, Lieberman deftly tells the intertwined stories of the famous piano-making firm and the family that controlled it for more than a century. The result is an entertaining and enlightening volume accessible to general as well as scholarly audiences. Whether it qualifies as interdisciplinary history is another matter.

Established in 1853, Steinway & Sons quickly emerged as the preeminent manufacturer of pianos in the United States. Lieberman gives most of the credit to William, Henry Jr., and C. F. Theodor Steinway, all sons of founder Heinrich Steinweg. Henry developed the distinctive Steinway system of over-stringing; after his death, Theodor introduced numerous other patented improvements. William, the firm’s president from its inception until 1896, provided the business acumen that made Steinway a household name. He thoroughly mastered the [End Page 148] American way of marketing in the Gilded Age—erecting Steinway Hall as a musical emporium in New York, sponsoring national tours of star pianists who endorsed Steinway products, and even bribing a judge to guarantee victory in the piano competition at the Centennial Exhibition. William was less successful at winning the hearts and minds of his employees. Workers struck repeatedly despite paternalistic gestures like the building of Steinway Village—complete with amusement park—near the firm’s factory in Queens.

On William’s death, management of Steinway & Sons passed to his nephews, Charles and Fred Steinway and Henry Ziegler. Lieberman traces the impact that ragtime, motion pictures, and other cultural phenomena had on the piano industry in the early twentieth century. Although Steinway & Sons lost market share to manufacturers of cheaper instruments, it maintained a stranglehold on the high-end segment of the trade. Charles died in 1919, but Fred and Henry lived to oversee a national advertising campaign for “the instrument of the immortals” in the 1920s.

The firm’s golden age ended with the Great Depression. After Fred died in 1927, his younger cousin Theodore E. Steinway became president. According to Lieberman, Theodore lacked both the temperament to lead effectively and a collaborator with whom to share the burden. The firm floundered during the 1930s and 1940s. Upon succeeding his father at the helm in 1955, Henry Steinway introduced new business practices and sought to streamline operations, but he failed to achieve lasting efficiencies. Competition from Yamaha in the 1960s and a lengthy strike in 1970 added to the firm’s woes. In 1972, the family sold out to The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS).

Although Lieberman’s accounts of marital problems and family feuds are hardly flattering, he presents his narrative mainly from the Steinways’ point of view. He says little about the experiences of the great majority of people who made their living at Steinway & Sons. Had he tracked employees into census, tax, and other records, he might have offered a fuller picture of the men (and the few women) who actually built the instruments celebrated by musicians the world over. Likewise, had he tied his case study to general theories of how firms behave at different stages in capitalist development, he might have derived greater meaning from the story that he tells. Yet, while he is careful to locate his narrative in the context of broad changes in American society, Lieberman shies away from systemic analysis. Scholars looking for innovative interdisciplinary history are likely to feel disappointed, even as they find reading pleasure in this well-crafted book.

Gary J. Kornblith
Oberlin College
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