General Collection

Discover Bartolomeo Cristofori’s life at the Medici court and the conditions that fostered the invention of the piano. Drawing on newly uncovered financial records, this dissertation reconsiders Medici patronage, economic security, and artistic risk in late Medici Florence, offering fresh insight into the piano’s earliest origins.

Explore how self-taught craftsmen of the antebellum Backcountry built ingenious pianos without formal training. Drawing on surviving instruments and primary sources, this thesis traces creativity, cultural exchange, and new soundscapes along the Great Wagon Road, revealing how amateur makers reshaped early American musical life culture.

A doctoral dissertation completed in 1982 towards a Doctor of Philosophy (American Culture) at the University of Michigan. Study covers large and small instrument makers of all types (except church organ builders) working primarily in Manhattan between the 1600s and 1890. Vol. 1 covers the history and development of the trade, labor and economic history related to instrument making, the impact of immigrant craftsmen and unions, and the social and cultural history of musical instruments in New York City. 

Part Two of Groce’s dissertation consists of a Biographical Dictionary of New York instrument makers working between the mid-1600s and 1890, primarily in Manhattan. It was subsequently revised and published by Pendragon Press as Musical Instrument Makers of New York: A Directory of the Eighteenth-And Nineteenth-Century Urban Craftsmen (1991). The study features street addresses and information on small and large firms making and selling all types of musical instruments, except church organs. Data is drawn primarily from period city directories, newspapers and trade journals, and state and federal censuses and tax records.