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Schiedmayer is the name of a German Instrument-manufacturing family. Established in 1735 as a keyboard instrument manufacturer, it is still active today as a family business. [1]
The first instrument maker in the family was Balthasar Schiedmayer (1711-1781), an organ and piano maker in Erlangen, who built his first instrument in 1735. Three of his sons also learned the art of piano making:
In 1809, Johann David's son Johann Lorenz Schiedmayer (1786-1860), together with Carl Dieudonné, founded the firm of Dieudonné & Schiedmayer in Stuttgart. The firm soon became well known in the area. When the composer Friedrich Silcher moved to Stuttgart, he lived for two years in Schiedmayer's home. After the death of Dieudonné, the workshop was renamed Pianofortefabrik von Schiedmayer, and after 1845, when Adolf and Hermann Schiedmayer, the older sons of Johann Lorenz Schiedmayer, joined the firm, Schiedmayer & Sons, Pianoforte Factory. From 1821 to 1969 the factory was on what was then Neckerstrasse 14-16 and is now Konrad Adenauer Strasse in Stuttgart. This lot is occupied today by the State University of Music and Performing Arts and Representative Arts and by the House of History (Haus der Geschichte Baden-Württemberg).
In 1909, a major exhibit to commemorate the centenary of the firm was held in Stuttgart at the Royal Center for Industry and Trade (Today House of Commerce). Among the visitors were Württemberg’s King William II and his wife Charlotte.
Johann Lorenz Schiedmayer sent his two younger sons Julius and Paul to Paris, where they studied harmonium construction, and also met Victor Mustel, who some years later invented the celesta. After returning to Stuttgart, they founded in 1853 the firm of J & P Schiedmayer, which soon started building pianos and later celestas. They also built unusual instruments, like the Schiedmayer-Scheola (a mixture of organ, harmonium and celesta) and some mechanical autoplay instruments.
The firm was located near Schiedmayer & Sons. The firm later changed its name to Schiedmayer Pianoforte Factory.
In 1969, the owner of Schiedmayer & Sons, Georg Schiedmayer, took over the Schiedmayer Piano Factory, previously J & P Schiedmayer, from their then owners, Max and Hans Schiedmayer. Piano production was terminated in 1980, and the firm specialized on the manufacture of celestas and glockenspiels. In 1992, upon the death of Georg Schiedmayer, his widow, Elianne Schiedmayer, inherited the firm of Schiedmayer & Sons GmbH & Co. KG as well as Schiedmayer Pianoforte Factory, previously known as J & P Schiedmayer. In 2008 the firm of Schiedmayer Pianoforte Factory was officially liquidated at the Registry of Companies.
In 1995 Elianne Schiedmayer launched Schiedmayer Celesta GmbH, (formerly Schiedmayer Celestabau GmbH), located since 2000 in Wendlingen am Neckar near Stuttgart. Worldwide, Schiedmayer celestas and keyboard Glockenspiel are used, among others, in operas and concert halls.
The Müller-Schiedmayer factory was founded in 1874 in Würzburg by the son of a daughter of Johann Lorenz Schiedmayer; he learned his trade at J & P Schiedmayer and Schiedmayer & Sons, as well as at Steinway & Sons in New York City. The business was liquidated in 1968. The last bearer of the name was Erwin Müller-Schiedmayer.
The piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when the keys are pressed. Most pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys: 52 white keys for the notes of the C major scale and 36 shorter and thinner 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.
The celesta or celeste, also called a bell-piano, is a struck idiophone operated by a keyboard. It looks similar to an upright piano, albeit with smaller keys and a much smaller cabinet, or a large wooden music box (three-octave). The keys connect to hammers that strike a graduated set of metal plates or bars suspended over wooden resonators. Four- or five-octave models usually have a damper pedal that sustains or damps the sound. The three-octave instruments do not have a pedal because of their small "table-top" design. One of the best-known works that uses the celesta is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from The Nutcracker.
A fortepiano, 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 and Hummel, wrote their piano music.
The pump organ or reed 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 American reed organ, the Indian harmonium, the physharmonica, and the seraphine. The idea for the free reed was derived from the Chinese sheng through Russia after 1750, and the first Western free-reed instrument was made in 1780 in Denmark.
Johann (Georg) Andreas Stein was an outstanding German maker of keyboard instruments, a central figure in the history of the piano.
John Broadwood & Sons is an English piano manufacturer, founded in 1728 by Burkat Shudi and continued after his death in 1773 by John Broadwood.
Gottfried Silbermann was a German builder of keyboard instruments. He built harpsichords, clavichords, organs, and fortepianos; his modern reputation rests mainly on the latter two.
Sébastien Érard was a French instrument maker of German origin who specialised in the production of pianos and harps, developing the capacities of both instruments and pioneering the modern piano.
Christian Friedrich Ludwig Buschmann was a German musical instrument maker and inventor, often credited with inventing the harmonica and also the accordion.
Schweighofer was a piano manufacturer from Vienna, Austria.
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.
The keyboard glockenspiel (French: jeu de timbre) or organ glockenspiel is an instrument consisting of a glockenspiel operated by a piano keyboard. It was first used by George Frideric Handel in the oratorio Saul (1739). It was also used in the 1739 revivals of his Il Trionfo del Tempo and Acis and Galatea, and the next year in L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato. Half a century later, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart employed a strumento d'acciaio in The Magic Flute (1791) to represent Papageno's magic bells, and this instrument is believed to have been a keyboard glockenspiel. This part is nowadays sometimes taken by a celesta. Maurice Ravel preferred the keyboard version of the instrument because it can play a true ff dynamic for brilliance and iridescence in orchestral climaxes. In the late 20th century, the firm of Bergerault began manufacturing a three-octave (F2–E4) mallet instrument with a damping mechanism operated by a foot pedal, which is capable of dealing with the wide range called for in contemporary scores.
Karl Friedrich Schall was a German precision engineer and co-founder of the company Reiniger, Gebbert & Schall (RGS) in Erlangen. RGS was a manufacturer and supplier of durable medical equipment and a pioneer in the supply of x-ray equipment worldwide with offices in Berlin, Wien, London, Paris, Rome, Chicago and Sydney.
Johann Lorenz Schiedmayer was a German piano maker.
W. Ritmüller & Sohn AG was a piano manufacturer originated in Göttingen, Germany.
Carl Dieudonné was a co-founder of Dieudonné & Schiedmayer, a firm in Stuttgart that built pianos. He founded the firm together with Johann Lorenz Schiedmayer, and the Schiedmayer firm continued to build pianos well into the 20th century.
Sauter Pianofortemanufaktur GmbH & Co KG is a German piano manufacturer in Spaichingen, Baden-Württemberg.
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