Claude Montal

Claude Montal (born July 28, 1800 in Lapalisse , † 1865 ) was a French piano maker.

Claude Montal went blind from typhoid at the age of six. In 1817 he was accepted into the Parisian Institution royale des Jeunes Aveugles founded by Valentin Haüy . Here he made rapid progress in his training and soon worked as a teacher. He supported Charles Barbier in the further development of his so-called night writing, which inspired Louis Braille to use Braille , and invented geometric relief maps for mathematics lessons.

In 1830 it became one of the first blind piano tuners in Paris to go into business for himself. He was soon working for the Conservatoire de Paris and was considered the best piano tuner in town. In 1836, Montal's book L'Art d'accorder soi-même son piano (“The Art of Tuning Your Piano”) was published, which carefully deals with acoustic and harmonic principles, with questions of maintenance and with the history of the piano and its preforms employed. The work was dedicated to the important Parisian piano maker Camille Pleyel .

In the same year Montal opened its own piano manufacturing company. In 1851 he was named a Knight of the Legion of Honor; from 1853 he was purveyor to the court of Emperor Napoleon III. , from 1854 also of the Imperial Court of Brazil and the King of Hanover. In 1857 Pierre-Armand Dufau wrote the font Claude Montal, facteur de pianos (aveugle) together with other authors ; sa vie et ses travaux ("Claude Montal, (blind) piano maker; his life and work"). At the London World's Fair in 1862 , Montal exhibited his pédale de prolongement , a further development of the mechanism that Jean Louis Boisselot first presented at the Paris Exposition nationale in 1844, now known as the tone-holding or sostenuto pedal .

Montal's pianos and grand pianos were of high quality, but too expensive to be able to hold their own on the market over the long term. This cost him his fortune, so that he was completely destitute when he died in 1865.

Individual evidence

↑ E-book on books.google.de, as of June 13, 2012.
↑ E-book on digital.lib.uiowa.edu, as of June 13, 2012.
^ Stanley Sadie (ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd edition, Macmillan, London 2001, keyword “Sostenuto pedal”.

personal data
SURNAME	Montal, Claude
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	French piano maker
DATE OF BIRTH	July 28, 1800
PLACE OF BIRTH	Lapalisse
DATE OF DEATH	1865

[1] E-book on books.google.de, as of June 13, 2012.

[2] E-book on digital.lib.uiowa.edu, as of June 13, 2012.

[3] Stanley Sadie (ed.): The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 2nd edition, Macmillan, London 2001, keyword “Sostenuto pedal”.