The First Fleet Piano Debate

Description

A piano was brought out to Botany Bay on the First Fleet. No one disputes this fact. Many scholars and antique hunters have looked for it. Has it been found?
Elaine Phillips surveys the information that is available to us today. Much of it is word of mouth or assumptions based on anecdotal evidence.
Given the lack of hard evidence, the links between individuals and families are used as a basis for a theory that upholds what we do know about an old battered square piano that an antiques dealer found in a laundry in 1942 and the piano that came out on the First Fleet.

Table of Contents

• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Chapter 1
  • The First Fleet’s Extraordinary Cargo
  • Seeing Double
  • What is a ‘Square Piano’?
  • Plain or Pretty Legs?
  • What Is ‘Campaign Furniture’?
  • Utility or Otherwise of ‘Hinged Cabriole Legs’
• Chapter 2
  • George Worgan, his Musical Family, and Connections to the Longman & Broderip Company
  • The Piano and the Elements at Sydney Cove
  • The Macarthur Piano after 1793
• Chapter 3
  • Did Mrs Macarthur’s Second Piano replace the First One?
  • Bill Bradshaw
  • Red Herrings
  • Hearsay, Assumptions, and the Windsor Floods
• Chapter 4
  • The Longman & Broderip Piano in the Laundry
  • Joining the Links from the Macarthurs to the Mathews Family
  • The Allports at Elizabeth Farm
  • The Allports and the Adams
  • Deceased Estates
  • Bill Bradshaw’s Will
• Conclusion
• Suggested Worgan Piano Timeline

Length: 63 pages.
Colour and black & white photos throughout.

ISBN: 9780646898315
Publication date: 2024