Sohmer & Co. was a piano manufacturing company founded in New York City in 1872. Sohmer & Co. marketed the first modern baby grand piano, and also manufactured pianos with aliquot stringing and bridge agraffes, as well as Cecilian "all-inside" player pianos and Welte-Mignon-Licensee reproducing pianos. Sohmer pianos were owned by U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, and composers Victor Herbert and Irving Berlin. Sohmer is now a line of pianos manufactured by Samick Music Corporation in Korea.
Hugo Sohmer (1845-1913) was born as the son of a physician in Dunningen, a village near Rottweil, on the foothills of the Black Forest, Germany. He was educated in literary and scientific subjects as well as music and the piano, and emigrated to New York City in 1863, where he apprenticed as a piano-builder in Schuetze & Ludolff's factory. He spent two years travelling in Europe continuing to study piano making, and returned to New York in 1870. In 1872 he founded Sohmer & Company, in partnership with Joseph Kuder (April 26, 1831 - July 24, 1913), [1] a pianomaker originally from Vienna who had worked in New York since 1853, first for Steinway & Sons, and later Lighte, Newton & Bradburys as foreman, before working for Marschall & Mittauer, as well as their successor J. H. Boernhoeft. [2]
Sohmer & Co. manufactured and sold pianos at Marschall & Mittauer's former address at 149 East 14th street. They expanded to 155 East 14th street and added Brooklyn showrooms by 1879, and in 1883 moved all but their warerooms to 143 East 23rd Street, formerly the factory of reed organ manufacturers Carhart & Needham. [3] In 1885, the facilities at the corner of 14th st. and 3rd ave. were altered according to plans drawn by Berger & Baylies, [4] and in 1886 purchased a large waterfront plot on Jamaica Avenue, Long Island—near Steinway & Sons' new factory—and erected a six story factory, also designed by Berger & Baylies. [5] The factory was expanded with a six-story addition completed in 1907, and in 1919 erected a six story office and showroom at 31 West 57th Street, on New York's "Piano Row".
Sohmer advertised their upright and square pianos [6] had been awarded the First Medal of Merit, as well as the Diploma of Honour at the 1876 Centennial International Exhibition in Philadelphia and displayed the awards in later instruments although the system of awarding prizes had led to notable public disagreement among piano manufacturers. [7] They also advertised first prizes received in Montreal in 1881 and 1882.
Hugo Sohmer marketed the first modern "bijou," or baby grand piano, built with a symmetrical case design which he patented in 1884. [8] "Only five feet long," these pianos were advertised as "the smallest grand ever manufactured," [9] having "great power and volume of tone, together with the tone-sustaining quality and elastic touch heretofore only found in the concert grand." [10] The company also patented improvements in agraffe bars and actions in 1882, and in 1887 an agraffe for a quadruple strung "reverbation scale" and a pianissimo pedal in uprights, and bridge agraffes in 1890. [11]
Harry J. Sohmer succeeded his father in 1913, and incorporated the company in 1940. In 1971 he was succeeded by his sons, Harry J. Sohmer Jr., president, and Robert H. Sohmer, secretary and treasurer. The Sohmer brothers sold the company in 1982 to Pratt, Read & Co., the largest American manufacturer of piano actions and keyboards, and moved to their facilities in Ivoryton, Connecticut. The Sohmer brothers initially continued their involvement in the company but eventually were succeeded as managers by Dave Campbell.
In 1985 Sohmer & Co. bought Mason & Hamlin and William Knabe trademarks and equipment from the receivers of the bankrupt Aeolian Corporation, and in 1986, Pratt, Read & Co. sold Sohmer Holding Co. to a group of investors headed by Robert MacNeil. [12] Production was moved to a new facility in Elysburg, Pennsylvania.
In 1989, MacNeil sold Sohmer & Co., which then included Mason & Hamlin, Knabe, and George Steck, to Bernard G. Greer, who owned a controlling interest in the Falcone Piano Co. Lloyd W. Meyer, a former CEO of Steinway & Sons, was put in charge of reorganizing the two companies. [13]
In 1996 Kirk and Mark Burgett, as Music Systems Research, of Sacramento, California, manufacturers of PianoDisc player systems, purchased Sohmer as part of the then bankrupt Mason & Hamlin's assets.
Samick Music Corporation, a large piano manufacturer based in Korea, holds the rights to the Sohmer name as well as several other traditional piano companies such as William Knabe, Pramberger, and Seiler. [14] However, Samick no longer produces or distributes Sohmer-branded pianos. [15]
Lyon & Healy Harps, Inc. is an American musical instrument manufacturer based in Chicago, Illinois and is a subsidiary of Salvi Harps. Today best known for concert harps, the company's Chicago headquarters and manufacturing facility contains a showroom and concert hall. George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy began the company in 1864 as a sheet music shop. By the end of the 19th century, they manufactured a wide range of musical instruments—including not only harps, but pianos, guitars, mandolins, banjos, ukuleles and various brass and other percussion instruments.
Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway, is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in Manhattan by German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg. The company's growth led to the opening of a factory in New York City, United States, and later a factory in Hamburg, Germany. The factory in the Queens borough of New York City supplies the Americas, and the factory in Hamburg supplies the rest of the world.
Piano construction is by now a rather conservative area; most of the technological advances were made by about 1900, and indeed it is possible that some contemporary piano buyers might actually be suspicious of pianos that are made differently from the older kind. Yet piano manufacturers, especially the smaller ones, are still experimenting with ways to build better pianos.
HDC YoungChang is a South Korean manufacturer of pianos and industrial wood working machinery, headquartered in Incheon, South Korea. Young Chang currently holds 50% of the South Korean piano market. The company is among the largest and most automated of the world's piano manufacturers.
Samick Musical Instruments Co., Ltd. is a South Korean musical instrument manufacturer. Founded in 1958 as Samick Pianos, it is now one of the world's largest musical instrument manufacturers and an owner of shares in several musical instrument manufacturing companies.
Mason & Hamlin is a piano manufacturer based in Haverhill, Massachusetts. Founded in 1854, they also manufactured a large number of pump organs during the 19th century.
Wm. Knabe & Co. was a piano manufacturing company in Baltimore, Maryland, from the middle of the nineteenth century through the beginning of the 20th century, and continued as a division of Aeolian-American at East Rochester, New York, until 1982. The name is currently used for a line of pianos manufactured by Samick Musical Instruments.
Joseph J. Pramberger (1938–2003) was a piano engineer/designer and the founder of the Pramberger Piano Company.
Lindeman was a name used by a series of piano manufacturers in New York in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The concern was founded by William Lindeman (1794–1875) on a small scale in Dresden in about 1822, and reestablished by him in New York City in 1835 or 1836, where it grew to a medium size within twenty years. American piano historian Daniel Spillane credited him as one of the first successful immigrant German piano makers in the United States.
American Piano Company (Ampico) was an American piano manufacturer formed in 1908 through the merger of Wm. Knabe & Co., Chickering & Sons, Marshall & Wendell, and Foster-Armstrong. They later purchased the Mason & Hamlin piano company as their flagship piano. The merger created one of the largest American piano manufacturers. In 1932, it was merged with the Aeolian Company to form Aeolian-American Co.
Frederick Mathushek was a piano maker who worked in Worms, Germany, and in New York City and New Haven, Connecticut, during the second half of the nineteenth century. His name was used by several different piano manufacturers through the 1950s, and was filed independently as a trademark for musical instruments in 2005 and 2008.
The Aeolian Company was a musical-instrument making firm whose products included player organs, pianos, sheet music, records and phonographs. Founded in 1887, it was at one point the world's largest such firm. During the mid 20th century, it surpassed Kimball to become the largest supplier of pianos in the United States, having contracts with Steinway & Sons due to its Duo-Art system of player pianos. It went out of business in 1985.
Steck was a brand of pianos manufactured from 1857 to 1985. They were initially made by George Steck & Company before combining with the Aeolian Company in 1904. The Aeolian Company went bankrupt in 1985. The Steck piano brand was then sold to Sohmer & Co., and then to America Sejung Corporation, which dissolved in 2013.
Hugo Sohmer was an American piano builder and manufacturer of German descent.
Grotrian-Steinweg, known as Grotrian in the US, is a German manufacturer of prestige pianos. The company is based in Braunschweig, Germany, commonly known as Brunswick in English. Grotrian-Steinweg makes premium grand pianos and upright pianos.
The Cable Company was an American manufacturer and distributor of pianos and reed organs that operated independently from 1880 to 1936.
The Weber Piano Company is a former piano manufacturing company based in New York City and East Rochester, New York from the middle of the 19th century through the beginning of the 20th century, and continued as a division of Aeolian-American at East Rochester, New York until 1985, when Aeolian went out of business.
Sohmer and Company Piano Factory is a historic piano factory located in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, New York City. It was built in 1886 by Sohmer & Co., and is a six-story, L-shaped, Rundbogenstil / Romanesque Revival style brick building. The corner features a clock tower with a copper trimmed mansard roof. The building was expanded about 1906–1907. It was converted to residential usage starting in 2007.
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