Eleanor Pearre Abbot P \u201925 had an expansive knowledge of art, music and literature. (Photo contributed by Crissy Hawthorne<\/em>)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nThat day came in the summer of 2025, when Hawthorne donated the piano to William & Mary. It was difficult to part with the instrument that meant so much to her friend, but Hawthorne knew that she was making the right decision.<\/p>\n
The Music Arts Center at William & Mary, completed in 2024, is a state-of-the-art venue for musical performance, practice and study. A room dedicated to historic keyboards in the new Music Arts Center was first proposed by Tom Marshall, university organist and instructor of organ, piano and harpsichord at William & Mary. Another keyboard in the historic collection is an 1816 Broadwood piano \u2014 made by the same manufacturer that Beethoven favored.<\/p>\n
The music department offers a course in which students practice on the instruments in the historic keyboard room, one of the main reasons why Hawthorne chose to give the piano to W&M rather than other interested institutions (including Cornell University). The donation was also encouraged by her cousins, William & Mary alumni Randy Hawthorne \u201967, J.D. \u201970, M.L.T. \u201971 and Shelby Smith Hawthorne \u201967, M.A.Ed. \u201975.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is really a feather in our cap,\u201d says Richard Marcus, chair of the music department and director of bands at W&M. \u201cMs. Hawthorne had the piano fully restored, so it\u2019s in absolutely beautiful condition.\u201d <\/p>\n
One of the assets of these historic keyboards is their authentic sound. When played with period music, you can hear how the music was originally supposed to sound, which is often different than how we experience it today.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Broadwood piano has a very light sound compared to a grand piano,\u201d Marcus says. \u201cWhen you hear Beethoven\u2019s music played on it, you can understand that he was writing for that particular instrument.<\/p>\n
These historic instruments need to be carefully maintained: Only students taking lessons with Marshall are allowed to play them, and they are kept in a climate-controlled space. But Hawthorne is also emphatic about the need to put the cycloid piano to use.<\/p>\n
\u201cAn instrument needs to be played to have a life,\u201d she says. \u201cIf you don\u2019t use it, it dies.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a delicate balancing act, to use the piano as it was intended while keeping an eye on its preservation. With this treasured piano\u2019s return to Williamsburg, the next movement in its score begins. <\/p>\n
Annie Powell, University Marketing<\/a><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source news.wm.edu \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The following story originally appeared as an online exclusive for the W&M Alumni Magazine. \u2013 Ed. Step inside William & Mary\u2019s new Music Arts Center on Jamestown Road, and you\u2019ll see a shining glass room filled with historic keyboards. The latest addition to the Historic Keyboard Room is a nearly 150-year-old Lindeman Cycloid piano, a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2453384,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2453383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/A-stunning-addition-to-WMs-Music-Arts-Center-\u2013-WM.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2453383"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453383\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2453385,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2453383\/revisions\/2453385"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2453384"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2453383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2453383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2453383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wmit-news-prod.s3.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/09093841\/Abbot.jpeg\")