Orphica

Orphica in the Museo Nazionale degli Strumenti Musicali di Roma

The Orphica is one of Carl Leopold Röllig invented portable pianoforte to play outdoors, to the accompaniment of song and serenades .

invention

The inventor Carl Leopold Röllig (1740–1804) was generally regarded as a versatile and interesting personality. Initially music director in Hamburg, he staged an opera in 1771, from 1797 he was an official of the court library in Vienna, where he also became known as a composer, music writer and glass harmonica virtuoso. In 1786 he constructed a glass harmonica with a keyboard and in 1795 the orphica. In 1801 he invented a " musical violin bow instrument with a keyboard ". This was preceded by numerous attempts to make a string instrument that could be played with a keyboard. Röllig called it Xanorphica.

Röllig commissioned the piano maker Matthias Müller to produce a Xänorphica. For the first time Röllig presented an orphica in his font Orphica. A musical instrument. Invented by C. L. Röllig (1795). He granted the privileges for the manufacture of the new instrument to the piano maker Joseph Dohnal (1759–1829). According to a printed note in an orphica, replicating was forbidden if there was a “fine of one hundred imperial ducats”.

A later, unknown model of the Orphica was owned by Clara Wieck , who noted in her diary on September 18, 1830: “D. 18. I received an orphica for the present from Mr. Andr. [Eas] Stein franco. "

General

The orphica belongs to the group of " wandering pianos" and, like all hammer pianos, is assigned to keyboard, string and percussion instruments. The orphica was played around the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Century, mostly in the great outdoors. Similar to the guitar , it was hung over the shoulders with a tape and played while standing or on the lap. It is, if you will, a descendant of the baroque vending machine spinet and a forerunner of the modern Keytar.

The number of copies of the Orphica, which was only built in Vienna between 1795 and 1810, is small. Today no more than thirty have survived. They are exhibited u. a. in museums in Berlin, Christiania, Görz, Göttingen, Leipzig, Markneukirchen, Munich, New York, Nuremberg, Paris and Vienna.

Structure, mechanics and keyboard

The stock that has been preserved to this day reveals two different types of construction:

a rounded case shape on the right with an almost linear course of the rear spar ,
a housing shape with a wave-shaped triple curved rear spar and an almost linear right side.

The harp-like frame is made of hard ebony , which runs into a free-standing snail on the left. The side walls are covered with mahogany , the frame is painted black. A small attachment board is attached above the keyboard. A keyboard with hammer technology is inserted into the sound body itself. The frame of the keyboard is pushed in flat. The soundboard leads across the whole of the mechanics. The vertebrae are in groups of three and rows of three on the far right. The strings are attached to the rear spar, the string cover is single-choir so that the instrument can be tuned very quickly.

The Orphica does not have a bump tongue mechanism based on the Viennese pattern, but a jack mechanism with a hammer chair. After the stop, the hammer only falls back so far that it can be repeated when the key is held down. The orphica is thus the first example of a simple but fully functional repetition mechanism.

The range of the keyboard is approx. 37 notes, from f to f3. The lower key pad is made of bone , the upper key blocks are made of ebony.

Compositions for orphica

Ludwig van Beethoven is one of the few composers who composed works for orphica . As can be seen from a letter that Beethoven's childhood friend Franz Gerhard Wegeler wrote to Anton Schindler on December 23, 1827 , Wegeler owned “2 pieces for the orphica that Bhven compoirte for my wife.” This refers to the two pieces composed in 1798 WoO 51, which used to be erroneously referred to as the "easy piano sonata".

In addition, two undated composition fragments for Orphica by Johann Nepomuk Hummel have survived.

literature

Carl Leopold Röllig, Orphica. A musical instrument. Invented by CL Röllig , Vienna 1795
Johann Christian Ernst Müller, The Orphica, a new musical instrument. In: Journal des Luxus und der Moden , February 1796, pp. 87–98 ( digitized version )
Benjamin Vogel, Orphicas, Genuin, Less Genuin and Fakes. In: The Galpin Society Journal , No. 57, May 2004, pp. 19-45 and 204-205
Andreas Beurmann, The Book of the Piano. The Beurmann Collection in the Museum of Art and Industry in Hamburg and at Gut Hasselburg in Ostholstein , 2008
Klaus Martin Kopitz , Beethoven as a Composer for the Orphica: A New Source for WoO 51. In: The Beethoven Journal , Vol. 22, No. 1 (Summer 2007), pp. 25–30 ( PDF )

Web links

Commons : Orphica - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Clara Schumann, Youth Diaries 1827–1840 , ed. by Gerd Nauhaus and Nancy B. Reich , Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2019, p. 59
↑ Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Ed.) U. a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 2: Lachner - Zmeskall. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , p. 788.
↑ London, British Library , Add MS 32236, fol. 15f.

[1] Clara Schumann, Youth Diaries 1827–1840 , ed. by Gerd Nauhaus and Nancy B. Reich , Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 2019, p. 59

[2] Klaus Martin Kopitz , Rainer Cadenbach (Ed.) U. a .: Beethoven from the point of view of his contemporaries in diaries, letters, poems and memories. Volume 2: Lachner - Zmeskall. Edited by the Beethoven Research Center at the Berlin University of the Arts. Henle, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-87328-120-2 , p. 788.

[3] London, British Library , Add MS 32236, fol. 15f.