Music from early keyboard museum floats back to Europe's classical era

Neither time nor distance was an issue at a local museum during an October tour.

About two dozen visitors to the Skagit Early Keyboard Museum near Snee-Oosh Beach were transported back centuries and across the Atlantic to the birthplaces of classical music.

Museum curators Tamara Friedman and George Bozarth literally pulled strings to make it happen.

Friedman, an acclaimed pianist, played selections from famed composers on several of the museum's original and replica instruments while Bozarth, a professor emeritus of music history at the University of Washington, shed light with insightful commentary on Europe's Classical era.

It was all part of a three-hour musical tour of the museum and its impressive collection of old-school fortepianos and related keyboard instruments.

Bozarth, noted for his expertise in early pianos (1700-1900), said the museum features concert quality Baroque and Classical clavichords, a Baroque Lautenwerck and numerous square and grand pianofortes in the Viennese and English traditions dating back to 1795.

Friedman, lauded for her renditions of Mozart, played lesser known of the legendary Austrian's works along with a French overture that was used to usher royalty and dignitaries into their theater boxes. She then moved over to a restored Broadwood square piano, which Bozarth said was "the most colorful in our collection."

"We coveted this instrument," Bozarth said, explaining it was purchased when the owner sold it to pay for custom work on a vehicle.

"It has a very colorful sound," Bozarth said before Friedman cued up a Joseph Haydn piece she said was "something extroverted, but not wildly extroverted."

"The whole classical style," said Bozarth, "is so rhetorical. This piece is a prime example of that with some humorous effects."

Traces of "Three Blind Mice" the popular nursery rhyme is, interestingly, rooted in the serious political climate of the English Tudor period. The three blind mice refer to Protestant loyalists accused of plotting against Queen Mary I, daughter of Henry VIII. Many were ultimately burned at the stake. The mice's blindness represented their Protestant beliefs.

Haydn, among the great Viennese composers, is known as "Father of the String Quartet."

"Haydn," noted Bozarth, "loved to put nationalistic things in his pieces."

Bozarth said Jane Austen, perhaps best known for penning "Pride and Prejudice" in 1813, played a similar instrument to the Broadwood.

From there, Friedman performed works by Mozart on a replica Anton Walter fortepiano.

"Mozart purchased an Anton Walter grand fortepiano when he moved from Salzburg to Vienna and resumed composing piano concertos," said Bozarth. "Mozart wanted the loudest piano he could find, something that would carry over orchestras."

Friedman's interpretation highlighted Mozart's playfully creative side.

"Anybody who has read about Mozart," Bozarth explained, "knows he had a silly streak about himself."

When she finished, a tour attendee remarked that her play "sounded like the spoken word."

Bozarth stressed that "Mozart's loud piano" produces a sound aesthetic that clearly defines the difference between English and Viennese instruments.

He pointed out that all the museum keyboard instruments are straight strung: the bass strings don't cross over the middle and treble strings, making the registers more distinct in tone, he said and less homogenous than modern pianos.

"The inner voices in music," said Bozarth, "stand out easily since their color is distinct."