| Type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Musical instruments |
| Founded | 1728 |
| Founder | John Broadwood |
| Headquarters | , |
| Products | Pianos |
| Website | broadwood.co.uk |
John Broadwood & Sons is an English piano manufacturer, founded in 1728 by Burkat Shudi and continued after his death in 1773 by John Broadwood. [1]
John Broadwood (1732–1812), a Scottish joiner and cabinetmaker, came to London in 1761 and began to work for the Swiss harpsichord manufacturer Burkat Shudi. [2] He married Shudi's daughter eight years later and became a partner in the firm in 1770. As the popularity of the harpsichord declined, the firm concentrated increasingly on the manufacture of pianos, abandoning the harpsichord altogether in 1793. [3]
Broadwood's son, James Shudi Broadwood, had worked for the firm since 1785, and, in 1795, the firm began to trade as John Broadwood & Son. [2] When Broadwood's third son, Thomas Broadwood, became a partner in 1808, the firm assumed the name of John Broadwood & Sons Ltd, which it retains to this day. [2] The firm's busiest time period was during the 1850s, when approximately 2,500 instruments were produced annually. [4]
Broadwood produced his first square piano in 1771, after the model of Johannes Zumpe, and worked assiduously to develop and refine the instrument, moving the wrest plank of the earlier pianoforte, which had sat to the side of the case as in the clavichord, to the back of the case in 1781, [5] straightening the keys, and replacing the hand stops with pedals. [2] In 1785 Thomas Jefferson, later to be third President of the United States, visited Broadwood in Great Pulteney Street, Soho, to discuss musical instruments. In 1789, at Jan Ladislav Dussek's suggestion, he extended the range of his grand piano beyond five octaves to CC in the treble, and again to six full octaves in 1794. [6] The improved instruments became popular with musicians such as Joseph Haydn, who used them on his first visit to London in 1791. [6]
Ludwig van Beethoven received a six octave Broadwood in 1818, a gift from Thomas Broadwood, [7] which he kept for the rest of his life. Although his impaired hearing may well have prevented him appreciating its tone, [8] he seems to have preferred it to his Erard which had a similar range. Above the company label on the front edge of the pin block the following text can be read: ″Hoc Instrumentum est Thomae Broadwood (Londrini) donum propter ingenium illustrissime Beethoven.″ [This instrument is a gift from Thomas Broadwood of London in recognition of the most illustrious genius of Beethoven.]
Frédéric Chopin played Broadwood instruments in Britain, including at the last concert of his life given at Guildhall, London, in 1848. Although he liked Broadwoods, he appears to have preferred the French make Pleyel. [9]
After a long period of decline ending in near bankruptcy, the business was rescued in the mid 1980s by a consortium headed up by Geoffrey Simon, [10] a keen amateur pianist and successful businessman from Birmingham. Mr Simon took on the mantle of CEO and under his stewardship John Broadwood & Sons entered a period during which a number of innovations were developed. These included the limited edition 'Linley piano' [11] an upright piano designed by Viscount Linley and his partner Matthew Rice, plus the design and patenting of the 'barless' grand piano in 1997 [12] which was manufactured by Birmingham firm of Ladbrooke Pianos, who produced half a dozen a year.
The company holds a royal warrant as a manufacturer and tuner of pianos. [13] Following the death of Geoffrey Simon in 2006, the company was acquired in 2008 by Alastair Laurence, a piano builder and technician with family ties to the Broadwood firm dating back to 1787. To coincide with the change in ownership, new restoration and conservation workshops are now located at Finchcocks, Goudhurst, Kent, England. [14]
The company's archives are held at the Surrey History Centre. [15]
The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when pressed on the keys. Most modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys: 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter black keys raised above the white keys and set further back, for sharps and flats. This means that the piano can play 88 different pitches, spanning a range of a bit over seven octaves. The black keys are for the "accidentals", which are needed to play in all twelve keys.
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers that are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital pianos. Other keyboard instruments include celestas, which are struck idiophones operated by a keyboard, and carillons, which are usually housed in bell towers or belfries of churches or municipal buildings.
Jan Ladislav Dussek was a Czech classical composer and virtuoso pianist. He was an important representative of Czech music abroad in the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. Some of his more forward-looking piano works have traits often associated with Romanticism.
A fortepiano[ˌfɔrteˈpjaːno], sometimes referred to as a pianoforte, is an early piano. In principle, the word "fortepiano" can designate any piano dating from the invention of the instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori in 1698 up to the early 19th century. Most typically, however, it is used to refer to the mid-18th to early-19th century instruments for which composers of the Classical era, especially Haydn, Mozart, and the younger Beethoven wrote their piano music. Starting in Beethoven's time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the musical scene for many decades. In the 20th century the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance. Fortepianos are built for this purpose in specialist workshops.
Johann (Georg) Andreas Stein was an outstanding German maker of keyboard instruments, a central figure in the history of the piano. He was primarily responsible for the design of the so-called German hammer action. Pianos with this hammer action, or its more developed form known as the Viennese action, may be said to be appropriate for the performance of the piano music of Haydn, Mozart, and the early Beethoven.
John Broadwood was the Scottish founder of the piano manufacturer Broadwood and Sons.
Thomas Waldo Story was an American sculptor, art critic, poet and literary editor, living for most of his life in Rome, Italy.
Johannes Zumpe was a leading maker of early English square pianos, a form of rectangular piano with a compass of about five octaves. The pianos sounded like mellow harpsichords, and had a damper stop in the left cheek of the case. Zumpe is known as the creator of English square pianos.
Ernst Pauer was an Austrian pianist, composer and educator.
Piano pedals are foot-operated levers at the base of a piano that change the instrument's sound in various ways. Modern pianos usually have three pedals, from left to right, the soft pedal, the sostenuto pedal, and the sustaining pedal. Some pianos omit the sostenuto pedal, or have a middle pedal with a different purpose such as a muting function also known as silent piano.
Burkat Shudi was an English harpsichord maker of Swiss origin.
The Kirkman family were English harpsichord and later piano makers of Alsatian origin, active from the 1770s until the late 1800s.
The harpsichord was an important keyboard instrument in Europe from the 15th through the 18th centuries, and as revived in the 20th, is widely played today.
James Shudi Broadwood was a piano maker in Middlesex and a magistrate in Surrey.
Robert Wornum (1780–1852) was a piano maker working in London during the first half of the 19th century. He is best known for introducing small cottage and oblique uprights and an action considered to be the predecessor of the modern upright action which was used in Europe through the early 20th century. His piano manufacturing business eventually became Robert Wornum & Sons and continued half a century after his death.
Americus Backers, sometimes described as the father of the English grand pianoforte style, brought the hammer striking action for keyboard instruments from his master Gottfried Silbermann's workshop in Freiburg to England in the mid-18th century. Unlike the eleven other ex-apprentices of Silbermann who followed him to England and built square pianos with his action, Backers developed Silbermann's action into a reliable, powerful and responsive form that he built into a grand harpsichord case and added two tonal effects – una corda and damper lift – activated by pedals built into the dedicated trestle stand, again his original innovation. This new instrument altered the landscape of English music, causing composers and musicians to consign the plucked string harpsichord and its music to history. It is upon Americus's design that the modern grand pianoforte we know today is based.
Major George Henry Benton Fletcher was a collector of early keyboard instruments including virginals, clavichords, harpsichords, spinets and early pianos. His collection is currently housed and kept in playing condition by the National Trust in Fenton House, a beautiful late 17th century merchant's house in, Hampstead, north London.
Alfred James Hipkins FSA was an English musician, musicologist and musical antiquary.
Music technology is the study or the use of any device, mechanism, machine or tool by a musician or composer to make or perform music; to compose, notate, playback or record songs or pieces; or to analyze or edit music.
Mechanical music technology is the use of any device, mechanism, machine or tool by a musician or composer to make or perform music; to compose, notate, play back or record songs or pieces; or to analyze or edit music. The earliest known applications of technology to music was prehistoric peoples' use of a tool to hand-drill holes in bones to make simple flutes. Ancient Egyptians developed stringed instruments, such as harps, lyres and lutes, which required making thin strings and some type of peg system for adjusting the pitch of the strings. Ancient Egyptians also used wind instruments such as double clarinets and percussion instruments such as cymbals. In Ancient Greece, instruments included the double-reed aulos and the lyre. Numerous instruments are referred to in the Bible, including the horn, pipe, lyre, harp, and bagpipe. During Biblical times, the cornet, flute, horn, organ, pipe, and trumpet were also used. During the Middle Ages, hand-written music notation was developed to write down the notes of religious Plainchant melodies; this notation enabled the Catholic church to disseminate the same chant melodies across its entire empire.
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