Castagnari

Last updated
Officine Meridionali Orchestra with a Castagnari instrument (2022) Officine Meridionali Orchestra Rudolstadt-Festival 26.jpg
Officine Meridionali Orchestra with a Castagnari instrument (2022)

Castagnari is an Italian maker of accordions and melodeons, based in Recanati.

Contents

Background

Castagnari has been producing accordions since 1914. The company was founded by a man named Giacomo Castagnari who had been an apprentice of the famous accordion maker Philip Guzzini. Castagnari opened up his own workshop and eventually handed the business down to his sons. As of 2013, the company has been passed down through three generations.

The Castagnari company is unusual in continuing traditional methods of producing accordions, such as drying the wood in a way that helps enhance the acoustics of the instrument. They have used the same techniques for over a century, and may make an instrument from a single block of wood. Castagnari accordions are known for their distinctive sound. [1] [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accordion</span> Bellows-driven free-reed aerophone musical instrument

Accordions are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free reed aerophone type. The essential characteristic of the accordion is to combine in one instrument a melody section, also called the diskant, usually on the right-hand manual, with an accompaniment or Basso continuo functionality on the left-hand. The musician normally plays the melody on buttons or keys on the right-hand side, and the accompaniment on bass or pre-set chord buttons on the left-hand side. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist.

Celluloids are a class of materials produced by mixing nitrocellulose and camphor, often with added dyes and other agents. Once much more common for its use as photographic film before the advent of safer methods, celluloid's common contemporary uses are for manufacturing table tennis balls, musical instruments, combs, office equipment, fountain pen bodies, and guitar picks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aerophone</span> Musical instruments that are played by vibration of air

An aerophone is a musical instrument that produces sound primarily by causing a body of air to vibrate, without the use of strings or membranes, and without the vibration of the instrument itself adding considerably to the sound.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stradivarius</span> String instruments built by Stradivari family, particularly Antonio

A Stradivarius is one of the violins, violas, cellos and other string instruments built by members of the Italian family Stradivari, particularly Antonio Stradivari, during the 17th and 18th centuries. They are considered some of the finest instruments ever made, and are extremely valuable collector's items.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avedis Zildjian Company</span> Musical instruments manufacturer

The Avedis Zildjian Company, simply known as Zildjian, is a musical instrument manufacturer specializing in cymbals and other percussion instruments. Founded by the ethnic Armenian Zildjian family in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire, the company relocated to the United States in the 20th century. Today, it is the largest cymbal and drumstick maker in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. F. Martin & Company</span> American guitar manufacturer established in 1833

C.F. Martin & Company is an American guitar manufacturer established in 1833 by Christian Frederick Martin. It is highly respected for its acoustic guitars and is a leading manufacturer of flat top guitars. The company has also made mandolins and tiples, as well as several models of electric guitars and electric basses, although none of these other instruments are still in production.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bandoneon</span> Musical instrument

The bandoneon is a type of concertina particularly popular in Argentina and Uruguay. It is a typical instrument in most tango ensembles. As with other members of the concertina family, it is held between the hands, and played by pulling and pushing air through bellows, routing it through sets of tuned metal reeds by pressing the instrument's buttons. Unlike most accordions, bandoneons always employ the same sets of reeds to produce their sound, and do not usually have the register switches common on accordions. Nevertheless, the bandoneon can be played very expressively, using various bellows pressures and other techniques.

In music, a bow is a tensioned stick which has hair coated in rosin affixed to it. It is moved across some part of a musical instrument to cause vibration, which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, and bass, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hohner</span> German musical instrument manufacturer

Hohner Musikinstrumente GmbH & Co. KG is a German manufacturer of musical instruments, founded in 1857 by Matthias Hohner (1833–1902). The roots of the Hohner firm are in Trossingen, Baden-Württemberg. Since its foundation, and though known for its harmonicas, Hohner has manufactured a wide range of instruments, such as kazoos, accordions, recorder flutes, melodicas, banjos, electric, acoustic, resonator and classical guitars, basses, mandolins and ukuleles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Button accordion</span> Musical instrument

A button accordion is a type of accordion on which the melody-side keyboard consists of a series of buttons. This differs from the piano accordion, which has piano-style keys. Erich von Hornbostel and Curt Sachs categorize it as a free reed aerophone in their classification of instruments, published in 1914. The sound from the instrument is produced by the vibration of air in reeds. Button accordions of various types are particularly common in European countries and countries where European people settled. The button accordion is often confused with the concertina; the button accordion's buttons are on the front of the instrument, where as the concertina's are on the sides and pushed in parallel with the bellows.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pump organ</span> Free-reed organ musical instrument

The pump organ is a type of free-reed organ that generates sound as air flows past a vibrating piece of thin metal in a frame. The piece of metal is called a reed. Specific types of pump organ include the reed organ, harmonium, and melodeon. The idea for the free reed was imported from China through Russia after 1750, and the first Western free-reed instrument was made in 1780 in Denmark.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Flutina</span> Free-reed musical instrument

The Flutina is an early precursor to the diatonic button accordion, having one or two rows of treble buttons, which are configured to have the tonic of the scale, on the "draw" of the bellows. There is usually no bass keyboard: the left hand operates an air valve. A rocker switch, called a "bascule d'harmonie" is in the front of the keyboard. When this switch is thumb activated, it would open up a pallet (a pad that covers a tone hole, at the other end of the key button, for a simple Tonic/Dominant drone: Tonic on the draw and Dominant on the press, e.g. Tonic notes C/g, and Dominant G/d, without any major or minor thirds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tenor guitar</span> Four-stringed guitar

The tenor guitar or four-string guitar is a slightly smaller, four-string relative of the steel-string acoustic guitar or electric guitar. The instrument was initially developed in its acoustic form by Gibson and C.F. Martin so that players of the four-string tenor banjo could double on guitar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schrammel accordion</span> Musical instrument

A Schrammel accordion is an accordion with a melody keyboard in the chromatic B-Griff system and a twelve-button diatonic bass keyboard. It is named for a traditional combination of two violins, accordion or clarinet, and contraguitar known as a Schrammelquartet – a group that played Schrammelmusik in the Vienna chamber music tradition.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Resonator guitar</span> Fretted string instrument modified for loudness

A resonator guitar or resophonic guitar is an acoustic guitar that produces sound by conducting string vibrations through the bridge to one or more spun metal cones (resonators), instead of to the guitar's sounding board (top). Resonator guitars were originally designed to be louder than regular acoustic guitars, which were overwhelmed by horns and percussion instruments in dance orchestras. They became prized for their distinctive tone, and found life with bluegrass music and the blues well after electric amplification solved the problem of inadequate volume.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Klingenthal</span> Town in Saxony, Germany

Klingenthal is a town in the Vogtland region, in Saxony, south-eastern Germany. It is situated directly on the border with the Czech Republic opposite the Czech town of Kraslice, 29 km southeast of Plauen, and 33 km northwest of Karlovy Vary.

Valco was a US manufacturer of guitar amplifiers from the 1940s through 1968.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gibson Brands</span> American guitar manufacturer

Gibson Brands, Inc. is an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and professional audio equipment from Kalamazoo, Michigan, and now based in Nashville, Tennessee. The company was formerly known as Gibson Guitar Corporation and renamed Gibson Brands, Inc. on June 11, 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Herbert Wurlitzer</span>

The company Herbert Wurlitzer Manufaktur für Holzblasinstrumente GmbH is a German clarinet manufacturer based in Neustadt an der Aisch, Bavaria with a second production site in Markneukirchen, Saxony. It was founded in 1959 by Herbert Wurlitzer. His father Fritz Wurlitzer operated since the 1930s in Erlbach, now a district of Markneukirchen, a manufactory for the production of clarinets. The company W. Wurlitzer makes clarinets with German System and with the "Reform Boehm system", developed by Fritz Wurlitzer in the late 1940s, an instrument with Boehm fingering system and the sound of an Oehler Clarinet.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Schwenk & Seggelke</span> German clarinet manufacturer

Seggelke Klarinetten, is a German clarinet manufacturer based in Bamberg in the Bavarian Upper Franconia. The company manufactures clarinets according to the German system and the French system as well as in a combination of both systems, starting from the Boehm system. A specialty of the company is the reproduction of historical clarinets.

References

  1. "Our Story". Castagnari. Retrieved 26 January 2013.
  2. "Castagnari Since 1914". Castagnari. Retrieved 26 January 2013.