Fazioli Concert Grand (F-308).
In American academic institutions it is now common practice, though by no means universal, to begin conferences, convocations, and even the occasional concert—though not yet, in my experience, sporting events—with land acknowledgements. These lay out in broadest terms the original residency of indigenous people and their displacement. Plans for restitution to the dispossessed or of the often disfigured land itself do not figure in these utterances.
Increasingly, emails, even those conveying the most banal administrative info like when the next faculty meeting is to take place, contain a link to the university’s official land acknowledgment. These declarations often include vague gestures towards engagement with the issues raised by the profession of guilt. Even if a few faculty members are working vigorously to help right some of these myriad wrongs, one can bet that the president and trustees are much more concerned with the state of the endowment than with the rights of real people long since removed from their lands.
It is not only the theft of the land that deserves, indeed demands, acknowledgment, but also what it brings forth, whether locally or from distant regions. Where do the precious metals for this laptop or that EV come from? A QR code affixed to every Tesla and MacBook Pro should link to a website that accurately catalogs the elements inside, their geographic origins and environmental consequences, like a surgeon general’s warning for the health of the planet. Companies would opportunistically describe their sourcing and supply chains in egregiously green terms, but at least these might foster a greater awareness of globalization’s insatiable and destructive reach.
The composition of our cars and computers would rightly be followed by an account of their decomposition—where they end up and what becomes of them, from the plastic dumping grounds of Turkey to the electronics graveyards of Ghana.
Many in the upper classes assume that they have the right to know where their wine is from, and also if those pre-Trump tariff blueberries consumed in winter came from Mexico or points farther south? Labels inform us of the select ingredients listed on that box of artisanal crackers, but also comprehensively catalog the contents in Doritos Cool Ranch Tortilla Chips in a litany that begins benignly enough with corn, but before the benediction of disodium guanylate runs through such miracles of science as monosodium glutamate, maltodextrin, corn syrup solids, sodium acetate, disodium inosinate, and the Holy Trinity of Artificial Colors—Red 40, Blue 1, and Yellow 5.
Thus art improves on nature. Deaf to the truth that birds were the first singers, and remain the best, many people hold that human-made instruments produce superior music. Yet in eloquent mottoes that adorned their instruments, makers often acknowledged their debt to the materials they used. A favorite of mine describes the transformation of wood: “Dum vixi tacui: mortua dulce cano” (While living I was silent; dead, I sing sweetly).
Industrial production put an end to such rhetorical and ethical niceties. For more than a century the piano served as the middle-class entertainment center, felling elephants and ebony in vast numbers. According to National Association of Piano Dealers 261,197 pianos were sold in 1904, compared to 22,000 cars. Five years later annual sales of pianos had climbed to 364,545.
We are long past the piano’s zenith as a cultural commodity. Units sold has now dipped below 30,000 annually, yet upper-end firms like Steinway still tout their exotic veneers in Mahogany, Walnut, Kewazinga Bubinga, East Indian Rosewood, and Macassar Ebony. Many of these are threatened woods.
The Italian virtuoso, Maurizio Pollini, who died a year ago last week, was a Steinway Artist. His endorsement helped to sell pianos, and he was richly rewarded by the firm in kind and in cash. The company signed him on in 1960 after he won the Warsaw International Chopin Competition at the age of eighteen. That year he affirmed that “Steinway grand pianos are the best in the world.” In a storied career across six decades he appeared in the world’s most famous concert halls on pianos with “Steinway & Sons” stenciled in gold letters on the cheek of the instruments so that the audience couldn’t help but see the brand name.
Higher up the luxury ladder than even Steinway, and costing three times as much, latecomers Fazioli want nearly $300,000 for their 10-foot concert grands. Their advertising touts their soundboards taken from trees in the “Valley of Violins” in the mountains of northern Italy a hundred miles from their factory. It is from these same carefully managed forests that Antonio Stradivari drew the wood for his famed creations, by far the most expensive musical instruments by weight ever made.
Yet can these fragile valley hillsides sustain the nearly two hundred giant instruments that the Fazioli company makes each year?
Instead of only a brand name on the side of the piano, a QR code would tell audiences of the sources of the precious materials used in its fabrication and also remind us of the condition of the ecosystems where the woods for the soundboard and veneers came from.
Other necessary news would also be imparted. In October of 2018, a devastating storm, nicknamed Vaia, laid waste to much of the red spruce forest of the Val die Fiemme, home to the “Forest of Violins.” Yet Fazioli’s production schedule continued undeterred.
Aftermath of Tempesta Vaia, October, 2023, Vale.
People generally come to concerts for a mix of uplift and distraction. In the ritual of the concert, art not only improves on nature, but helps escape it. Musical evocations of alpine vistas, woodland walks, cathartic thunderstorms, goodly shepherds and their goodly sheep, and oracular birds are better than the real thing—less dirty, less taxing, less violent, and seemingly less perishable. A trip to the concert hall is not meant to be a guilt trip, though charity performances of Handel’s Messiah in the mid-18th century to BandAid in the late 20th play on the feeling of music lovers for those in distress.
In dutifully listing their products’ ingredients, companies like Fazioli would capitalize on kindred sensibilities, doubtless asking audiences to pay into environmental funds that would probably do little to combat threats to the ecosystems their business relies on. Even in museums, institutions not so exposed to commercial considerations, the sourcing of materials for antique instruments is still rarely acknowledged. This must change. We need to know what environmental costs and crimes make possible those captivating musical strains, the very ones so intent on soothing our spirits and our consciences.
© Counter Punch
