Anzac Day: Michael Atherton on history of pianos during World War II

Before electricity brought us the gramophone, the radio and eventually the TV, the piano was central to family and community life.

Emeritus Professor Michael Atherton told RNZ the remarkable efforts of troops to get pianos to the front during World War II.

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His book A Coveted Possession: The Rise and Fall of the Piano in Australia looks at everything from the instruments that floated ashore at Sydney Cove in the late 18th century to their use at the front lines of war.

Atherton said pianos were a very important instrument in Australasian cultural life at the time.

"I don't doubt that the men and women who served in the war fronts ... would have had a very strong connection with this instrument when it was near them, or they came near to it, because it wasn't just a symbol of Europe. It was about the cultural continuity, yes, but it was more than that.

"This was the ancient karaoke machine ... it was also a shrine, it was a mini orchestra, it was there in jazz, it was in the church. These 5000 pieces that made up a piano were a very important part of our lives."

Although primarily a lute and guitar player, he was first drawn to the piano when he saw it in his grandmother's living room in England, and was forbidden from touching it, he said.

"When I did get to ... noodle away on it, it's so easy to get a single note. We didn't really have any music in our lives ... but that's where it began."

Once he began music research, he realised the instrument presented a different side of Australian history, which had been very sport-focused, he said.

Almost every household in colonial Australia, however humble, had a piano.

"Even if you were a poor miner in Lithgow [New South Wales], you'd spend every possible penny you could gather to make sure there was a piano for your daughter could learn.

"It was a status symbol; it was also a means of education and a house wasn't really complete without one - and I'm sure it [was] the same in New Zealand."

Pianos often appeared on the manifests of ships bringing settlers from Europe - as many as 1000 in one year alone, he said.

When it came to the world wars, there was always a piano on troop ships.

"That piano would be hauled between decks; it could be there on a Sunday morning for church, it would be covered in beer stains and cigarette butts, and of course it was there for the vaudeville entertainment, for the jazz and concert parties.

"When we send the piano to the tip [now], we should be very careful, because it has a lot of history and a lot of meaning."

He had uncovered a photo from Australian archives of a piano outside a Second World War bunker, and obviously used by diggers [Australian and NZ soldiers].

Another photo showed soldiers playing an old piano that had been found after the liberation of New Guinea, in the former Japanese commander's headquarters in the jungle.

"So concerned [were soldiers] about getting a good instrument... there was a story about a piano that was dragged back into the barracks in Changi [Prison in Singapore] under darkness.

"A group of performers went through the wire [fence] because they knew there was a piano in the village, and they dragged it 2km - a very heavy, Thai-made piano - into the barracks and left it in the middle of the square because they needed a piano for their entertainments which was a very important part of their music therapy."

The next day, the Japanese pretended it was not there as its appearance would be a loss of face. But that piano was played for the next three years, and eventually ended up in the Australian War Memorial in Singapore, he said.

Pianos can be biographical - for example, inside that "Changi" piano were the signatures of several hundred prisoners of war.

"If you've got your grandma's piano, you'll know the keys will show evidence of wear and contact...

"[The piano has] been with us, it's part of us and it's something very potent and powerful in our lives."