The Joyce Project : Ulysses : Collard grand
Collard grand
Collard
grand
In Brief
Father Cowley recalls an 1895 concert in which Professor
Goodwin's alcohol habit interfered with his work of piano
accompaniment: "There was a slight difference of opinion
between himself and the Collard grand." Collard & Collard
was an English company that manufactured pianos throughout the
19th century and well into the 20th. Their pianos were
exported all over the world. This one probably reached Ireland
the same way the mail did: by
train to Holyhead, Wales and thence by ship to Kingstown.
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In Multiple Joyce: 100 Short Essays about James Joyce's
Cultural Legacy (2022), David Collard understandably
devotes one short essay to Collard pianos. He writes: "F. W.
Collard was a director of the company Clementi & Co., a
well-respected piano manufacturer founded by the pianist,
composer and music publisher Muzio Clementi around 1800. When
Clementi died in 1832 the firm was renamed Collard &
Collard and soon became one of the great British piano makers
of the 19th century. The modest 'cottage style' of the kind
acquired by the Pooters in The Diary of a Nobody
(1892) by George and Weedon Grossmith were small uprights,
although the company also made concert grands. The make of
piano in Ulysses not only seems right for the context
but also offers, in this most musical episode of the novel, a
satisfying echo of 'Dollard'" (84-85).
The two sounds do chime together, because Ben Dollard is part
of the conversation with Father Cowley and Simon Dedalus in
this part of Sirens. His slight difference of opinion
with some borrowed concert trousers occurred at the same
concert.
Source: antiquepianoshop.com.