John Broadwood & Sons
John Broadwood & Sons is the name of an English piano manufacturing company founded by Burkhardt Tschudi (1702–1773) in1728and led by his son-in-law, John Broadwood (1732–1812)from 1772, and which has been producing instruments since the 18th century.
history
In 1718, 16-year-old Burkhardt Tschudi came to London from Schwanden in Switzerland and became an apprentice to the leading harpsichord maker Hermann Tabel . 1728 opened Tschudi, his name later in Burkat Shudi anglifizierte , own workshop, in which in the 1750s consisting of the Franconian Fürth originating Silbermann -Students Johann Christoph Zumpe (1726-1790) and the 1761 from the Scottish Cockburnspath originating furniture and cabinet maker John Broadwood entered as apprentices. In 1769 Broadwood married Shudi's youngest daughter, Barbara Shudi (1749–1776), and in 1770 he made him a business partner in the growing and increasingly successful company. In 1771 Shudi handed over management to his son of the same name Burkhat Shudi (1738-1803) and his daughter Barbara with husband John Broadwood, to whom the company passed after his death in 1773. From 1772 Broadwood ran the business alone.
1777 John Broadwood joined with the English piano maker Robert Stodart and the Dutch-English piano maker Americus Backers and developed an instrument with hammer action , which as a fortepiano ( fortepiano increasingly that) Harpsichord displaced from the market.
In 1795 John Broadwood made his eldest son James Broadwood a partner and from then on signed his instruments with John Broadwood and Son . When the younger son Thomas Broadwood entered the business in 1808, the company was called John Broadwood & Sons .
The two sons James Shudi Broadwood (1772-1851), from his first marriage, and Thomas Broadwood, from his second marriage, continued the business after John Broadwood's death in 1812. In 1818 Thomas Broadwood gave Ludwig van Beethoven a fortepiano . In 1836, Henry Fowler Broadwood, the eldest son of James Broadwood, from his first marriage, entered the business. In 1848 the Frédéric Chopin company provided three instruments for his England tour. In the meantime the annual production had grown to over 2500 instruments. Franz Liszt also played a Broadwood grand piano on his last visit to London in 1886 .
Classification of the work of John Broadwood
John Broadwood was - together with the Englishman Robert Wornum - the first piano maker whose workshop turned into a factory, where a Taylorist division of labor resulted in the abandonment of the manual principles of instrument making and a massive reduction in production costs. His work marks the beginning of industrial piano manufacturing.
The work of John Broadwood and his English contemporaries is also significant insofar as their mechanical instruments with pushrods, as used by Bartolomeo Cristofori at the beginning, helped to achieve a long-term breakthrough against the southern German or Viennese mechanism (bounce mechanism ) - albeit the English one at the time of Broadwood Repetition was not yet complete, something that Sébastien Érard only succeeded in doing in Paris in the 1820s . Broadwood's work showed that grand pianos with tappet mechanics could be louder than Viennese grand pianos and thus delight an ever growing middle-class audience in ever larger concert halls - an advantage that also caused Ludwig van Beethoven, in his progressive deafness, to purchase a Broadwood grand piano to be gladly accepted as a gift.
Fortepiano by John Broadwood were among the top products in keyboard instrument making in their day. Previously, this was the case for harpsichords made by the Antwerp instrument maker family Ruckers and for pianos made by the southern German instrument maker Johann Andreas Stein , then after Broadwood for the Austro-French maker Ignace Joseph Pleyel and the Franco-German instrument maker Sébastien Érard , and since the end of the 19th century and later . a. for the German-American piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons . Broadwood grand pianos are therefore undoubtedly one of the icons of historical music performance practice and collectors too.
2000s
In 2003, Broadwood pianos were moved to a small factory in Moss , Norway .
In 2008 the company was bought by Alastair Laurence, a piano maker and technician whose family connections with Broadwood date back to 1787. In connection with the change of ownership, new capacities for the restoration and conservation of Broadwood instruments were established in Finchcocks ( Goudhurst , Kent , England ). The production of the famous high pianos with green frames will be relocated from Moss to Finchcocks and continued in the traditional craftsmanship. John Broadwood & Sons Ltd. has been Schwelmer Rud since production ceased . Ibach Sohn in 2007 became the oldest, continuously producing piano manufacturing company in the world.
As a manufacturer of pianos, Broadwood & Sons has again held the title of purveyor to the court of the English royal family since May 2008 . Broadwood restored a Broadwood grand piano from Buckingham Palace for the royal family .
Web links
- Web presence of John Broadwood & Sons Ltd.
- John Broadwood & Sons Ltd. Manufacturer site , at Surrey County Council
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.broadwood.co.uk/ Web presence of John Broadwood & Sons Ltd.
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original dated February 3, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) 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. Self-declaration of the owner on a website of friends of square piano making
- ^ Entry for John Broadwood & Sons Ltd. , at: The Royal Warrant Holders Association
