Boisselot & Fils
Boisselot & Fils was a French piano manufacturer founded by Jean Louis Boisselot in Marseille in 1831 and later managed by his sons Louis-Constantin and Xavier Boisselot and grandson Franz Boisselot.
Jean-Luis Boisselot era
Production at Boisselot began with the table pianos, which were still in great demand at the time . Three years later, in 1834, the first grand pianos were made, and from 1836 high pianos as well .
The rapid increase in production with 70 workers and 300 pianos in 1834 shows that father and sons had carefully thought out and prepared their cause.
The preparation included Louis Constantin Boisselot's apprenticeship as a piano maker in Paris and Nimes from 1826 to 1827, and a stay in England in 1834 , which was then the leading piano maker nation.
The Boisselots employed piano specialist Frederic Schultz as production manager until he went into business for himself in 1839. He was succeeded by Mr. Timmermans. Boisselot & Fils also strengthened itself with piano-making staff with special skills, which were acquired partly from Germany and partly from England.
The constant expansion led to the employment of 150 workers and the production of approx. 400 grand pianos , table pianos and upright pianos in 1848 . This success was confirmed by the gold medal of 1844, which was awarded to the Boisselot company at the 10th Paris industrial exhibition. Among other innovations the company. Boisselot first presented at the exhibition a mechanism for Non-Attenuates leaving the sounds that the pressure on the new, then as Sostenuto become known pedal were played and the next rang in the uninfluenced by pedal sequence sounds.
The choice of Marseille as the manufacturing location turned out to be wise: Boisselot & Fils was one of the largest piano manufacturers in France in the 1840s . The geographical position opened up advantages: lower labor costs, cheaper access to exotic woods in the port, easy access to the export markets in Spain, Italy and the French colonies.
In 1847 the Boisselots opened a branch in Barcelona.
Louis-Constantin and Xavier Boisselot era
After the death of his father, Louis Constantin Boisselot took over the management of the company. However, he only outlived his father by three years. The death of his older brother in 1850 prompted Xavier Boisselot to break off his promising career as a composer in Paris and to take over the management of his father's company in Marseille.
Franz Boisselot era
In 1865, Xavier Boisselot handed over the management to his nephew Franz Boisselot (1845–1908), the son of his brother Louis Constantin, who was baptized after the composer and friend of the Franz Liszt family .
Franz Boisselot ran the company Boisselot & Fils from 1893 until his death in 1908. After that, it was renamed “Manufacture Marseillaise de pianos”. The First World War marked the end of the company.
Boisselot & Fils and Franz Liszt
Franz Liszt, a personal friend of the family from his early days in Paris, where he had met the composer Xavier Boisselot, had also opened the Salle Boisselot with a piano concert, a concert hall built by Boisselot in Marseille based on the model of the halls in Paris the competitors Érard and Pleyel had built. On his last concert tour along the Black Sea, Franz Liszt played an 1846 concert grand by Boisselot, much to the annoyance of Érard in Paris, whose grand pianos had always been used by Liszt.
Franz Liszt then continued to use this Boisselot grand piano in Weimar for his compositional work. Today it can be estimated that this instrument was Franz Liszt's favorite instrument throughout his career as a concert pianist and composer. The instrument exists in Budapest, but in an unplayable condition. The way in which the grand piano was supported against the ever stronger string tension, realized with steel support struts below the soundboard, did not prove to be durable for many years and probably led to a gradual end of its usability during Liszt's lifetime. Competitors Broadwood , Érard, Pleyel and then the American piano companies such as Chickering & Sons and Steinway & Sons had developed better concepts against the string puller.
The Czech-American specialist Paul McNulty made a replica of this instrument, which is now in concert in Budapest .
Web links
- Pianos Boisselot website
Individual evidence
- ^ Pianos Romantiques: "Boisselot & Fils" . Retrieved August 18, 2018.
- ↑ Pianos Boisselot: HISTOIRE D'UNE MANUFACTURE MARSEILLAISE: "Boisselot & Fils, l'élégance et la convivialité, inventeur de la pédale tonale" . Boisselot.com. Archived from the original on November 30, 2012. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Accessed MARCH 14, 2013.
- ^ Stanley Sadie: The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians . Macmillan, London 2001, ISBN 0333231112 .
- ↑ Martha Novak Clinkscale: Makers of the Piano: 1820-1860 . Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0198166257 , p. 38.
- ↑ a b c Pianos Romantiques: Jean-Louis Boisselot . Pianos Romantiques. Retrieved March 14, 2013.
