Giraffe piano
The giraffe piano is a further developed harp piano whose resonance chamber stands upright. It looks like a raised, upright grand piano , the strings of which run in a vertical, one-sided curved case. Giraffe pianos belong to the fortepiano and were in use at the beginning of the 19th century.
The Viennese piano makers Joseph Wachtl, Jakob F. Bleyer and Martin Seuffert , who built the first instruments of this kind around 1805, are considered the inventors of the Forte-Piano en Giraffe . A dispute about authorship is documented, within which Bleyer published a historical description of the upright forte pianos in the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung of November 1811 , in which he writes:
“Every inventor has the right to indicate on his product that he is the inventor, but it is ridiculous when someone promises to be honored as an inventor through a poorly successful creation.
But if someone imitates the invention of another and wants to claim the honor of the invention, this is not just ridiculous, but also stupid. *) This ridiculous - audacity is committed by the local piano maker Martin Seufert; he imitates our invention and writes on every name tag: Invented by Martin Seuffert in Vienna. I wish to know what justifies this wretched arrogance ? "
Half a year later, Seuffert replied in the same sheet as a justification:
"Bleyer [...] entered into mutual intercourse with me and Wachtl 7 years ago, we worked on the invention of new mechanics and a better shape of the upright fortepianos Intelligence-Blatte is sufficiently set apart, and as equal shareholders in the whole company we put our names together on advertisements and signs.
During this six-year association, Bleyer never let himself be misled into wanting to be the sole inventor of these improvements [...] "
Upright fortepiano was already known at the end of the 18th century. For example, the Ditanaklasis was built around 1800 . Bleyer criticized the quality of the work of his predecessors, who had built instruments that were "only rarely served as delicacies" and where you could see "the sweat drops of the inventor". For his workshop he claimed to have made the first usable instruments of the vertical type, the first of which had a pyramid-shaped case - the asymmetrical shape was only used in subsequent models.
swell
- Giraffe piano. In: Curt Sachs: Real Lexicon of Musical Instruments. Julius Bard, Berlin 1913, p. 158 b ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
Individual evidence
- ↑ JF Bleyer: Historical description of the upright forte pianos, from the invention of Wachtl and Bleyer in Vienna. in: Intelligence sheet for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung November 1811, Nº. XVII, Sp. 73–77 full text in the Google book search
- ↑ Martin Seuffert: Justification . in: Intelligence sheet for the Allgemeine Musikalische Zeitung May 1812, Nº. V, Col. 21–22 full text in the Google Book Search
Web links
- Burkhart M. Schürmann: The piano maker Seuffert - instruments. December 21, 2011, accessed on December 14, 2012 (history of the Seuffert workshop with a collection of images of preserved instruments).
- Burkhart Matthias Schürmann: giraffe wings. In: Keys wiki. Stefan Schektiven, February 13, 2012, archived from the original on June 20, 2012 ; Retrieved December 15, 2012 .