Exonian Profiles
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All pianos are not created equal. Just ask Edmund Michael Frederick ’62, a piano scholar, amateur musician and founder, along with his wife, Patricia, of the Frederick Historic Piano Collection in Ashburnham, MA. “You can have all sorts of different kinds of string, different kinds of hammers, different kinds of sounding boards, more or fewer keys,” says Frederick. “You can get an enormous variety of sound among instruments all defined as pianos.” The concert piano as we know it today is a more or less standardized instrument, according to Frederick, but before World War I, designs were changing constantly. “Pianos by the major makers were often totally different in their construction from one end to the other,” he explains. “And composers wrote for the piano that they knew, capitalizing on its unique musical effects.” In other words, the classical piano repertory as performed on the modern-day concert piano is likely to sound quite different from the way in which it was originally conceived. Enter the Frederick Historic Piano Collection. Comprised of 18 grand pianos dating from 1790 to 1907 on display, and others that will be available in time, the Frederick Historic Piano Collection is unlike any museum or private instrument collection of its kind for its comprehensiveness and accessibility. Fastidiously assembled by the Fredericks over the past 25 years, the collection aims to match each instrument to a specific composer or generation of composers known to have used that make and vintage of piano. Run as a nonprofit study center, the Frederick Collection offers pianists, scholars and general music lovers the rare opportunity to hear and, more importantly, play a wide range of historic instruments. Frederick purchased his first period grand, an 1830 Stodart, for $2,000 from a piano broker in England. “I think it was just grim curiosity,” he says. “I mostly wanted to see what the heck the thing would be and how much work it would need.” Frederick had a longstanding fascination with both pianos and harpsichords dating back to his childhood in Mount Vernon, OH. He studied piano from age 7 right up through his senior year at Exeter and went on to study harpsichord building with Frank Hubbard, the famous scholar and builder. “After I got this first instrument, I began to realize that nobody really knew that much about pianos from the late 18th century up to the early 20th century,” he says. “I also learned that there were a number of these pianos out there that I could actually afford.” Prior to this time, music was strictly a recreational pursuit for Frederick, who earned a B.A. from Harvard, an M.A. from the University of Michigan and completed much of the work toward a Ph.D. from Harvard; his professional interests were in East Asian history and philosophy. He taught at Kenyon College for a few years, “just long enough to decide that academia and I were not going to get along too well,” he says. A brief period was then spent building harpsichords before he discovered his current passion for collecting, restoring and studying antique pianos. “Our collection is reviving and preserving a part of the cultural heritage of western music,” says Frederick. “My long-term goal is to raise enough money to keep the collection going long after we’re gone.” For more information on the Frederick Historic Piano Collection or its concert and lecture series, visit the website at: http:// www.ashburnham.org/Frederick collection/index.htm —Bill Ewing |
