Vincent Bach

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Vincent Bach Corporation

logo
legal form Corporation
Seat Mount Vernon , New York
Branch Musical instrument making
Website www.bachbrass.com

The Vincent Bach Corporation was an American manufacturer of brass instruments and accessories, especially mouthpieces . This was after multiple acquisitions today's brand Vincent Bach apparent in the possession of the Group , Inc. Conn-Selmer is. Conn-Selmer uses the Vincent Bach brand to sell a full range of all common brass instruments. Conn-Selmer sells further developments of original Bach constructions under the premium brand Bach Stradivarius .

The founder

Vincenz Schrottenbach (born March 24, 1890 in Baden near Vienna ; † January 8, 1976 in New York ) first learned the violin , but later switched to the trumpet . Although he successfully graduated from the Vienna Mechanical Engineering School, he decided to pursue a career as a musician under the stage name Vincent Bach. At the beginning of the First World War he emigrated to the USA, where, after initial difficulties, he found employment with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and later as the first trumpeter with the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera in New York .

In 1918 , Bach began producing mouthpieces for trumpets and cornets in a back room of the New York music store Selmer , initially as individual pieces and in small series. Later he manufactured mouthpieces with industrial precision in series and systematically researched connections between the structural design of mouthpieces on response, intonation, sound and general playing behavior. He also developed a system for their identification, which other manufacturers still use to this day.

history

From 1924 Bach made trumpets, from 1928 also trombones . In the course of time, production was expanded to include several series of trumpets, cornets, flugelhorns and trombones. Depending on the grade, the various series bore the brand names Apollo , Minerva , Mercury , Mercedes and Stradivarius .

1953 Bach decided that production from the cramped premises in the Bronx in the peaceful town of Mount Vernon in the state of New York to lay.

In 1961 the aged Vincent Bach finally sold his company to the Selmer Company, which initially continued to produce the entire range unchanged. In 1965 , Selmer relocated production from New York to Elkhart in the US state of Indiana .

Although Bach cannot directly be described as the inventor of the modern American trumpet with three Périnet valves, he undoubtedly made a decisive contribution to perfecting this instrument. In particular, instruments from the time in New York and Mount Vernon are sought after and are sometimes considered to be collector's items.
Quite a number of trumpeters are of the opinion that the instruments manufactured after this period under the aegis of Selmer in Elkhart and elsewhere did not achieve their quality standard for a long time.

Selmer in 2002 was in the group Conn-Selmer, Inc. , which in turn is a subsidiary of Steinway Musical Instruments, Inc. is.

Researchers and journalists who delved into the company's history include Roy Hempley , Doug Lehrer , Gary Gardner Fladmoe, and Andre Smith .

See also

Web links

Commons : Vincent Bach  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files