A Brief History of Toy Pianos

Toy pianos are musical instruments designed and built as a children’s toys, but they have also been used in serious musical works. The first child’s toy piano was built by German immigrant Albert Schoenhut. He created the “toy” in his workshop in Philadelphia in 1872. This instrument had the ability to stand up to the rough treatment that it would have to during play. THeis original device had the characteristic gamelan-like timbre that we associate today with a child’s piano.

The toy is often little more than a scaled-down replica of a piano, usually only 12 inches (50 cm) across. Today the mini piano is made from wood or plastic and are usually miniature grand pianos. The first toy piano models built in the mid-19th century, however, were normally uprights. These original miniature pianos sell today for anything from a few dollars to a many hundreds of dollars.

Since its inception the A. Schoenhut Company had manufactured over forty styles and sizes of the toy pianos by 1935. In 1935 prices ranged from fifty cents to twenty-five dollars. The company’s 1903 catalogue boasts “a piano for every purse and taste”. The instruction manual that shipped with the miniatures taught a child such American classics as “Home Sweet Home” and “Yankee Doodle”. During the 1950s, Schoenhut merged with the rival toy piano manufacturer Jaymar.

The more costly models were between nineteen and twenty-four inches high. They were made with raised black keys instead of the usual imitation painted keys seen today. Keys on these piano were also full-width wooden keys. The “toys” also had a range of two to three octaves.

Unlike a regular pianos where notes are played as hammers hit the strings, the toy piano makes music when hammers hit metal rods or bars. A mechanism very much like the one inside a keyboard glockenspiels connects the hammers to the keys and plays individual notes.

Miniature pianos use the same musical scale as full size pianos, though the tuning in all except the priciest models is usually estimated and not very accurate. As we already said, the range of a toy piano is typically one to three octaves.

The cheapest models do not have a chromatic scale and can only play a diatonic scale, or usually a more or less tuned version of it. These models do not have black keys as such, as the black keys may only be painted on. The diatonic toy pianos normally have only eight keys and can play only one octave.

The original toy piano was intended to be an educational tool, and even though they were initially regarded as toys, they have been used in serious musical works. The best known work is the popular “Suite for Toy Piano” by John Cage. Other classical music pieces that use the miniature piano include “Ancient Voices of Children” by George Crumb and several works by Mauricio Kagel.

A recent article report in the New York Times claims that Wendy Mae Chambers “is possibly the world’s foremost virtuoso of the toy piano.” Chambers started playing the toy piano in 1978 when she performed on both a “real” piano and a “toy” piano in George Crumb’s “Ancient Voices of Children”.

In 1983 she wrote her own musical work “Suite for Toy Piano”. This allowed her to give performances in venues that did not have a piano. Since then she has commissioned a number of composers from New York and New Orleans to write pieces for her “toy” piano. Chambers is also now the official spokesperson for Schoenhut Toy Pianos. Today the toy piano is a favorite of certain legendary alternative rock, post-rock bands and experimentalists.

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