In the eighteenth century you would usually have to go to church or to a concert to hear music. Then the square piano arrived on the scene, an musical instrument which took London society by storm in the 1790s, but which more importantly brought music into the home in a revolutionary new way. The fiddles and flutes that had been played in a domestic context before the square were exclusively for men but this early piano was for ladies to master. Madeline Goold has just published a book tracing her relationship with one particular square piano which she found at an auction and had restored. She talks to reporter Victoria Shepherd about why she made the decision to trace its previous owners back to the original - a Mr Langshaw, a man whose story shows just how quietly revolutionary the arrival of the piano was for domestic culture, and for women in the home. Mr Langshaw’s Square Piano’ is published by Corvo Books ISBN-10: 0954325591
