The French grand piano

Erard ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 51-57
Author(s):  
Robert Adelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Wind Instruments ◽  
Large Space ◽  
European Development ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
Grand Piano

The first pianos, built by Cristofori in Florence near the turn of the eighteenth century, were already ‘grand’ pianos, their shape derived from that of the harpsichord. The invention gradually began to spread across the continent, and by the mid-1780s grand pianos were common instruments in London. This pan-European development stands in stark contrast to the grand piano’s reception in France, where the harpsichord reigned supreme. Indeed, until the 1760s, the piano—regardless of its size or shape—was almost completely absent from the French musical scene, and it was not until around 1810 that the grand piano became a frequently used instrument in France. Without a sonorous instrument capable of projecting an interesting palette of nuanced effects in a moderate to large space, it was difficult to develop an independent repertoire for the piano. The eventual adoption of the grand piano in France was largely due to the efforts of the Erard brothers, who were familiar with this type of instrument from their contacts with the Silbermanns in Strasbourg and English builders in London. The Erard grand piano responded to an increasing desire on the part of French musicians for pianos with a stronger tone, undoubtedly to better balance other string and wind instruments which were also evolving towards more sonorous models.

The politics of classical allusion at the end of the eighteenth century: radical or redundant?

2010 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 95-139
Author(s):  
Matthew Hiscock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Classical Tradition ◽  
Basic Question ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Basic Assumptions ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stark Contrast

My epigraphs offer a stark contrast in their basic assumptions about the place of classical allusion in eighteenth century writing. The second, published only last year in a series devoted to classical reception, implies that allusion – whether conscious or unconscious – is always ‘significant’; the first, fifteen years old and from the first number of the International Journal of the Classical Tradition, suggests that it is largely incidental and superficial. To be fair to Kennedy, the passage quoted above comes from an abbreviated history of classicism from the Hellenistic period to the twentieth century which could not be expected to offer a nuanced account of the nature of classical allusion in the various periods it discusses; but the basic question remains: is classical allusion in the eighteenth century ornamental or essential?

Erard

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Adelson
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Close Relationships ◽  
Musical Life ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Instrument Building ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Evidence ◽  
Grand Piano

Sébastien Erard’s (1752–1831) inventions have had an enormous impact on instruments and musical life and are still at the foundation of piano building today. Drawing on an unusually rich set of archives from both the Erard firm and the Erard family, Robert Adelson shows how the Erard piano played an important and often leading role in the history of the instrument, beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing into the final decades of the nineteenth. The Erards were the first piano builders in France to prioritise the more sonorous grand piano, sending gifts of their new model to both Haydn and Beethoven. Erard’s famous double-escapement action, which improved the instrument’s response while at the same time producing a more powerful tone, revolutionised both piano construction and repertoire. Thanks to these inventions, the Erard firm developed close relationships with the greatest pianist composers of the nineteenth century, including Hummel, Liszt, Moscheles, and Mendelssohn. The book also presents new evidence concerning Pierre Erard’s homosexuality, which helps us to understand his reluctance to found a family to carry on the Erard tradition, a reluctance that would spell the end of the golden era of the firm and lead to its eventual demise. The book closes with the story of Pierre’s widow Camille, who directed the firm from 1855 until 1889. Her influential position in the male-dominated world of instrument building was unique for a woman of her time.

‘The Uttermost Perfection of all Wind Instruments’: Franz Tausch (1762–1817) as Virtuoso Clarinettist and Director of the Conservatorium Der Bläseinstrumente in Berlin

2020 ◽  
Vol 101 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-269
Author(s):  
Emily Worthington
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Social Hierarchy ◽  
Formative Period ◽  
Wind Instruments ◽  
Musical Culture ◽  
Musical Education ◽  
Written Sources

Abstract The life of clarinettist Franz Tausch (1762–1817) spanned a formative period of development both for his instrument and the culture he operated within, yet he has been neglected because of his lack of association with a major composer. Tausch received his musical education at the Mannheim and Munich courts, where he was exposed to broad cultural and musical influences. His compositions for clarinet show his playing to have foreshadowed the virtuosity associated with his pupils Heinrich Baermann and Bernhard Henrik Crusell. This can particularly be seen in his exploitation of the new possibilities afforded by instruments with a fully chromatic bottom octave, as well as in his incorporation of extreme high-register writing in his concertos. Tausch’s transition from a life of court service to successfully establishing himself within the diverse musical culture and social hierarchy of Berlin is documented in the changing nature of his compositions as well as contemporary written sources. His life is a case study of a trajectory typical of many musicians working at the end of the eighteenth century.

Emperor Charles VI: The Early Years of the Reign

1962 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 63-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. W. Stoye
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Central Europe ◽  
Early Years ◽  
The Other ◽  
Peter The Great ◽  
History Of ◽  
European Development ◽  
The One ◽  
East Prussia ◽  
Great Northern War

The second decade of the eighteenth century in Europe was an era of administrative experiment and reform. In certain respects, these were as impressive as the measures ofso-called ‘enlightened’ absolutists after the Seven Years War. The earlier, like the later, period discloses the attempt of governments to undo the consequences of prolonged warfare; in this case, also, in some areas, to soften the fearful effects of disease which decimated populations and their livestock in 1710–14, during the last major visitation of bubonic plague in the history of central Europe. Peter the Great tried to give a more settled form to the changes hastily improvised to take the strain of his war with Sweden. Frederick William I set to work on those schemes which led to the resettlement of derelict areas in East Prussia, and to the organization of the General Directory. In France, leaving aside the abortive constitutional reaction afterLouis XIV's death, the gigantic problem of the debt was tackled by orthodox financiers and administrators as well as by John Law. In this setting, it seems worth asking whether the Austrian Habsburgs, faced by similar problems, sought similar remedies. Such an inquiry may help to give a clearer picture of the main outlines of European development immediately after 1713, in the period which is still occasionally regarded as a featureless interim between the fiercer climaxes of the War of the Spanish Succession and the Great Northern War on the one hand, and the age of Frederick, Catherine and Maria Theresa on the other.

Domesticating Religious “Fanaticism” in Eighteenth-Century Germany

2018 ◽  
Vol 98 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-138
Author(s):  
Simon Grote
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
Commercial Success ◽  
History Of ◽  
Stark Contrast ◽  
The University

Abstract The decline of “fanaticism” in eighteenth-century Germany, a myth propagated by self-proclaimed proponents of Enlightenment, continues to shape historians’ representations of the ascendancy of “religious” Enlightenment. To discredit this myth and suggest a means of replacing it, this essay departs from the conventional attention to university theology as a history of ideas and proposes adding a book-historical perspective. Its focus is the German Pietist theologian Joachim Lange (1670–1744). Condemned by critics as a “fanatic” by virtue of his alleged intellectual kinship with French Reformed theologian Pierre Poiret (1646–1719), Lange is best known today for his vehement and ultimately ineffectual opposition to Enlightenment’s theological standard-bearers at the University of Halle. But Lange’s kinship with Poiret was only partial, and the stark contrast between the careers of two of Lange’s textbooks reveals that although his theological star was falling by the 1730s, elements of Lange’s ostensibly outmoded theology continued to find an audience into the nineteenth century, through the enormous commercial success of his Latin grammar.

The Lilien Partbooks in the Sonsfeld Collection (D-HRD Fü 3741a): A Reconsideration of the Role of Eighteenth-Century Prussian Hautboisten and their Engagement in ‘Art’ Music

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 ◽  
pp. 68-178
Author(s):  
Georg Corall
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Primary Source ◽  
Art Music ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Wind Instruments ◽  
String Instruments ◽  
Wind Bands ◽  
German Speaking

In assuming that the violin family of instruments is the staple of Western instrumental art music, Hautboisten, among the most important musicians of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, constitute a neglected area of research. Hautboisten are known to have been among the major suppliers of musical entertainment in the German-speaking lands in the first half of the eighteenth century. The term Hautboistenbande has often been translated by contemporary scholars as ‘oboe band’. Indeed, these ensembles developed into wind bands known as Harmoniemusik; Hautboisten, however, were originally routinely trained to perform on multiple wind instruments as well as string instruments.The Lilien Partbooks, which are part of the Sonsfeld Collection (the Sonsfeldsche Musikalien Sammlung; now held in the Bibliotheca Fürstenbergiana in Herdringen; D-HRD Fü 3741a), represent the most comprehensive primary source of music for such an ensemble. A detailed incipit catalogue of the compositions compiled in these partbooks draws together our current knowledge of the Lilien Partbooks and of eighteenth-century Prussian Hautboisten. The extensive catalogue of the works collated in the six partbooks constitutes a valuable aid for future research.

NARRATIVES OF GERMAN HISTORY AFTER THE REFORMATION

1998 ◽  
Vol 41 (3) ◽  
pp. 875-883
Author(s):  
C. SCOTT DIXON
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
German History ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Cornell University ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
State And Society ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
European Development ◽  
To Come

Die katholische Konfessionalisierung. Edited by Wolfgang Reinhard and Heinz Schilling. ‘Schriften des Vereins für Reformationsgeschichte’, Vol. 198. Gütersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1995. Pp. xiii+472. ISBN 3-579-01666-0. DM 148.The Salzburg transaction: expulsion and redemption in eighteenth-century Germany. By Mack Walker. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1992. Pp. xvi+242. ISBN 0-8014-2777-0. $38.50.War, state and society in Württemberg, 1677–1793. By Peter H. Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xvii+294. ISBN 0-521-47302-0. £18.95.Kaiser Maximilian II. Kultur und Politik im 16. Jahrhundert. Edited by Friedrich Edelmayer and Alfred Kohler. ‘Wiener Beiträge zur Geschichte der Neuzeit’, Vol. 19. Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 1992. Pp. 263. ISBN 3-486-0317-3. ÖS 396.Post-Reformation development in Germany has few of the features that encourage historians to describe an age with a catchy noun or turn of phrase. As a land comprised of hundreds of principalities, dioceses, and free imperial cities, Germany does not easily lend itself to descriptions of the evolving state. Equally, as the German lands were divided by confessional alliance and subject to a wide range of intellectual currents and traditions, it has proven difficult to come up with a term comprehensive enough to include the full sweep of social, religious, and intellectual life. Most of the concepts we use to define European development in this age fall short when applied to Germany. In view of this, historians tend either to emphasize certain aspects of the nation's development, or to isolate events that seem to reveal something central. Both approaches have been taken in the books under review.

Seti Space Missions

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 761-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claudio Maccone
Keyword(s):  
Electromagnetic Waves ◽  
Space Missions ◽  
Gravitational Lens ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Space Antenna ◽  
Focal Distance ◽  
Large Space ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Space Antennas ◽  
New Space

AbstractSETI from space is currently envisaged in three ways: i) by large space antennas orbiting the Earth that could be used for both VLBI and SETI (VSOP and RadioAstron missions), ii) by a radiotelescope inside the Saha far side Moon crater and an Earth-link antenna on the Mare Smythii near side plain. Such SETIMOON mission would require no astronaut work since a Tether, deployed in Moon orbit until the two antennas landed softly, would also be the cable connecting them. Alternatively, a data relay satellite orbiting the Earth-Moon Lagrangian pointL2would avoid the Earthlink antenna, iii) by a large space antenna put at the foci of the Sun gravitational lens: 1) for electromagnetic waves, the minimal focal distance is 550 Astronomical Units (AU) or 14 times beyond Pluto. One could use the huge radio magnifications of sources aligned to the Sun and spacecraft; 2) for gravitational waves and neutrinos, the focus lies between 22.45 and 29.59 AU (Uranus and Neptune orbits), with a flight time of less than 30 years. Two new space missions, of SETI interest if ET’s use neutrinos for communications, are proposed.

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