Mangeot
Mangeot was a company for the manufacture of pianos and grand pianos based in Nancy in the 19th century and then in Paris in France from 1880 . From 1868 onwards, Mangeot worked for several years with the piano manufacturer Steinway & Sons to produce high-quality grand pianos.
history
The exact origin of a Nancy-based organ builder Mangeot is unknown.
Pierre Hyacinthe Mangeot was born in Nancy on December 3, 1808, to André Mangeot and Mary Rose Cheullet. André Mangeot's father had a grocery store in Sivry ( Meurthe ).
After training with the first piano manufacturers in Paris ( Henri Herz , Sébastien Érard , Ignace Pleyel ), Pierre Hyacinthe Mangeot founded a piano production facility in Nancy in 1830. On December 15 of the same year, he married 19-year-old Jeanne Caye in Nancy. She was on 17 December 1810 in Nancy, the daughter of carpenter born Joseph Caye and Margaret Neubel.
Their first son, Alfred André Mangeot, was born on September 2, 1831 at home on Rue Faubourg Saint Georges. There the company produced good quality pianos . In 1833 Mangeot won the silver medal at the Nancy Exhibition, which was followed by a gold medal at the Nancy Exhibition in 1838.
His second son, Edouard Joseph Mangeot, was born on April 24, 1835. The family's new home was now on Rue des Dominicains. From 1840 the clientele began to grow. The pianos received a gold medal at the Nancy Exhibition in 1843.
One of the most important employees at Mangeot was Jean Brulard, a piano maker who was born in Forbach in 1807. For him, Mangeot was best man on September 6, 1838, when Brulard married his wife Jeanne Adéle Reitz, the ironer and was born in Toul. Marie Jeanne Mangeot, the daughter of Pierre Hyacinthe Mangeot, was born on April 8, 1845 at 9 Rue de la Constitution in Nancy.
Pierre Hyacinthe Mangeot took part in the first world exhibition in Paris in 1855.
Alfred Mangeot married Amélie Delarue in 1858, 23 years old, who was born in Vieux-Thann in Alsace. They had a daughter Jeanne in 1859. The Mangeot family continued to live at 9 rue de la Constitution.
Mangeot brothers
In 1859, Pierre Hyacinthe Mangeot handed over his business to his two sons, Alfred and Edouard Mangeot, who gave the company a new boost. They equipped the workshop in the Rue de la Constitution with a steam engine and new machine tools that contributed all the essentials that were required in the manufacture of their pianos: body , keyboard , playing mechanics , string spinning . In 1867 they had 60 employees and produced 360 pianos, the majority of which were exported , mostly to Australia .
At the exhibition in London in 1862 they presented "a piano with hidden strings, with a beautiful tone, which was equipped with a suitable system against the tension of the strings."
In the same year, Pierre Hyacinthe Mangeot died in Nancy on June 14th. The company was renamed "Mangeot Frères" (Mangeot Brothers).
On February 7, 1868, Edouard Joseph Mangeot married Leah Marie Jeanne Christine Lapoulle, 21 years old, who was born on the Meuse in Commercy.
Cooperation with Steinway & Sons
The Mangeot brothers took part in the second Paris World's Fair in 1867 . They were surprised by the quality and sound of the American Steinway pianos (Steinweg) and tried to become a contractual partner for Steinway in France for the manufacture and sale of grand pianos based on licenses for the US models.
At the exhibition in Paris they met Theodor Steinweg , who had moved to New York two years earlier (1865) after the death of two of his brothers at the request of his father and younger brother William , and had previously transferred his parents' business in Braunschweig to his partner Grotrian and had sold the employees Helfferich and Schulz. In view of the great success of their grand pianos, the Steinways, father and sons, were already looking for new manufacturing opportunities in Europe.
They decided to cooperate with the Mangeot brothers. The main product was to be the “Style II” salon grand piano , with a length of 2.20 meters, the normal grand piano model for wealthy private households. For this purpose, the Mangeot brothers were supposed to build the casings of the grand pianos, complete, set, regulate and intone the sound systems ( harp frames and soundboards ) and game mechanics supplied from New York , and then sell the “Mangeot Steinways” made in this way in France and Great Britain .
Edouard Mangeot traveled to New York to study the manufacture of these grand pianos . A grand piano manufactured in 1867 with the serial number 14561 is one of the first instruments manufactured in an exchange between Steinway and Mangeot. The Mangeot brothers sold it to the Guere brothers in Paris on January 8, 1868, who specialized in the manufacture of carved furniture . The grand piano case is made of maple and lemon wood ; the grand piano was sold in 2006 to the Lyon lawyer and auctioneer Maître Jean-Claude Anaf.
At some point in the first few years of the 1870s (around 1873) the episode with the Mangeot Steinways came to an early end: The Americans were now looking for their own European manufacturing facility and initially considered London as a location , where the second " Steinway Hall " was built after New York and also became a manufacturing facility for a few months. William Steinway terminated the contract with the Mangeot brothers. Since Mangeot apparently continued to sell the already built grand pianos and possibly also continued to use the delivered kits to build new pianos, the cooperation ended in legal disputes over alleged illegal replicas or " fakes of Steinway instruments" from the hands of the Mangeot brothers.
A few years later, in 1875/1876, these disputes before French courts were followed by an unpleasant private story. William Steinway's wife had proven unfaithful in her husband's absence on business and brought home an illegitimate son. When William found out about his wife, he put her and her youngest son on a steamer to Europe - Regina Roos Steinway landed in Nancy, where she got into new difficulties by connecting with the then Mangeot sales manager Louis Dachauer, but who was already married. The corresponding scandal, unleashed by Dachauer's angry wife, caused quite a stir in the media. Madame Dachauer filed for divorce. The media coverage in the France of Napoleon III. also reached New York and there led to the divorce of the marriage of William Steinway and Regina Roos Steinway.
So the activity, which had only begun in good faith and the old European collaboration between the piano makers Steinweg and Mangeot, ended in scandals and disputes.
In the professional world of piano making, it is disputed what number of Mangeot Steinways were created according to the Steinway-Mangeot Treaty and the American license, and how many were possibly "illegally" created in the final phase at Mangeot after New York terminated the cooperation . Experts assume there were around 200 sound systems that went from New York to Nancy from 1868 and were built into Mangeot Steinways there over a few years. Today's inquiries to Steinway & Sons about the Mangeot Steinways result in the answer that Steinway has no information about this. Which is not surprising, because the Steinway company donated old business documents, production records, delivery books and also William Steinway's private diaries in 1985 on the initiative of the last family manager, Henry Ziegler Steinway, to the municipal museum " La Guardia Archives " in Queens , Long Island , where they however can be seen. The "Official Guide to Steinway Pianos", a book by Steinway & Sons in English, only mentions the unpleasant end of the story: William Steinway allegedly had to sue the Mangeot brothers in France for their illegal replicas of Steinway grand pianos fail.
Another story of Mangeot Frères
In 1876, the now large family met for a photo at 9 Rue de la Constitution in Nancy: the older brother Alfred Mangeot (45 years old), his wife Christine Delarue (40), and their four children Jeanne (17), Lucien (13), Martha (11), Marguerite (5 years). Then the younger brother Edouard Joseph Mangeot (41), his wife Marie Jeanne Lapoulle (30) and their four children Madeleine (7), Pierre (5), Auguste (3 years), Jeremy (2). As well as Jeanne (65), the mother of the brothers, and the unmarried sister Jeanne Marie Mangeot (31).
The year 1878 became important and key for the Mangeot brothers. It began with her participation in the third world exhibition in Paris, where the famous artist Auguste Majorelle (1825–1879) from the Ecole de Nancy presented her pianos. The decoration of this piano is lacquer painting in the manner of the Martin brothers and consists of Chinese and Japanese motifs ( lap dogs Fô and Japanese women in kimonos ). It is inscribed on the keyboard flap with "Pianos Franco-Américains Mangeot Frères et Cie / Décoré par Majorelle Nancy". The piano is in the museum of the Ecole de Nancy.
More important for the Mangeot brothers in this exhibition was the presentation of a grand piano with two opposing keyboards on top of each other. For this spectacular innovation, the Mangeot brothers received a gold medal at the fair. This instrument connects two keyboards in such a way that the longest string of the first keyboard is opposite the shortest of the second keyboard. The Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels is showing a copy of the six double keyboards made by Mangeot.
Jeanne Amelie Stephanie Mangeot, Alfred Mangeot's eldest daughter, married Louis Lucien Comettant (25) on December 7, 1878 in Nancy, who was born in New York in 1853, a representative of the Mangeot Fréres company in the USA and the son of the well-known writer Oscar Comettant . Charles Gounod was the best man; He composed his famous Ave Maria and the song “Le Ciel a visité la Terre” (“Heaven has visited the earth”) especially for the ceremony in Nancy Cathedral .
Mangeot in Paris
In 1880 the Mangeot family and the Mangeot brothers' piano manufacturing company moved to the capital Paris . They settled in a prominent location at 334 Rue Saint Honoré.
The Parisian period of the Mangeots' success was short-lived; it ended with the death of Alfred Mangeot at the age of 58 on April 29, 1889. In 1890, his brother Edouard Mangeot succeeded him in the management. However, the piano manufacturing company Mangeot no longer existed in 1900.
To this day, Mangeot grand pianos enjoy an excellent reputation for outstanding workmanship among lovers of old pianos. Questions about the special "Mangeot Steinway" grand pianos arise regularly in forums, in particular whether these instruments are to be regarded as "real Steinways", after all, in addition to their condition, a highly value-determining question or u. U. crucial whether restoration expenses are worthwhile. The attitude of the American company on this is apparently generally negative. In detail, however, it will have to be differentiated when exactly such a "Style II" or Parlor Grand or Salon grand piano was built in order to determine whether it came under the license agreement when it was manufactured.
Sources and bibliography
- ↑ Pierre Constant
- ^ Susan Goldenberg: Steinway - From Glory to Controversy - The Family - The Business - The Piano. Mosaic Press, Oakville (Ontario, CDN) 1996, ISBN 0-88962-607-3
- ↑ "The Official Guide to Steinway Pianos", Roy Kehl, David Kirkland, New York 2011
- Constant Pierre: "Les facteurs d'instruments de Musique"
- Nancy School Museum: Selected Works
- Oscar Comettant: "La Musique, les Musiciens et les instruments de musique chez les différents peuples du monde"
- Susan Goldenberg: Steinway - From Glory to Controversy - The Family - The Business - The Piano. Mosaic Press, Oakville (Ontario, CDN) 1996, ISBN 0-88962-607-3
- Ronald V. Ratcliffe, “Steinway,” Chronicle Books, San Francisco, USA, 1989, ISBN 0-87701-592-9
- Richard K. Lieberman, “Steinway & Sons,” ISBN 0-300-06364-4 , Yale University Press, 1995