Content area
Full text
Sabine K Klaus
U NTIL NOW, NOT MUCH HAS BEEN PUBLISHED about German square pianos of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries beyond descriptions of their actions. 1. Most earlier authors dealing with the different kinds of actions found in German square pianos concentrate on instruments preserved in Europe. 2. However, a remarkable number
* I am most grateful to Laurence Libin, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, for his help in arranging an Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship to undertake this research project, and for his and Kathryn S. Libin's great support during my year in the U.S.A. Further, I would like to thank Herbert Heyde, Cynthia Adams Hoover, John Koster, Darcy Kuronen, André Larson, Joseph Peknik, Stewart Pollens, and Richard Rephann for their help, interest, and encouragement of my work, and for permission to examine instruments under their care. I also want to thank Klaus Martius for promptly sending me information about instruments at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum and archives in Nuremberg.
1. Recent articles about German square pianos include Bernard Brauchli, ''Christian Baumann's Square Pianos and Mozart,'' The Galpin Society Journal 45 (1992): 29-49; Laurence Libin, ''The 'Lying Harp' and Some Early Square Pianos,'' Early Keyboard Studies 8, no. 3 (July 1994): 1-8; Michael Cole, ''Johann Socher's Square Piano of 1742,'' Fellowship of Makers and Researchers of Historical Instruments Quarterly 83 (1996): 75-84; and Cole, '' Tafelklaviere in the Germanisches Nationalmuseum: Some Preliminary Observations,'' The Galpin Society Journal 50 (1997): 180-207. Three catalogues containing more detailed descriptions of square pianos are Hubert Henkel, Besaitete Tasteninstrumente (Frankfurt am Main: Erwin Bochinsky, 1994); John Koster, Keyboard Musical Instruments in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994); and Sabine Katharina Klaus, ''Studien zur Entwicklungsgeschichte besaiteter Tasteninstrumente bis etwa 1830 unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Instrumente im Musikinstrumentenmuseum im Münchner Stadtmuseum'' (Ph.D. diss. [5 vols.], Tübingen University, 1994), vol. 4, Tafelklaviere (microfiche edition, Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1998).
2. For example, Rosamund E. M. Harding, The Pianoforte: Its History Traced to the Great Exhibition of 1851 (2nd ed., London: Heckscher & Co., 1978) and Walter Pfeiffer, Vom Hammer (3rd ed., Frankfurt am Main: Erwin Bochinsky, 1979).
p.27
of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century German square pianos are also to be found in American museum collections. This...