Grand by franz jacob Späth/Spath
Southern German / Oberammergau (1761)

At present in the state of documentation resp. plan reestablishment

Our  documentation faces several tasks and challenges: First documentation and researching the very extensive chinoiserie decoration of the 1760s, secondly the exploration of its assumed original state and the changes during the reshaping into a single-manual piano. Even in its present state it represents a spectacular and important cultural and technical monument deserving detailed research.

An obviously rather common procedure to get rid of an expensive leftover was making it a lottery win. It indicates that the object in itself found no more buyers but apparently was interesting enough to allure a raffle.

A lottery for a two-manual grand, as explained a combination of harpsichord and piano, should take place before christmas 1784 in Munich.The ad indicated it might have been an interesting and worthy potential christmas present offer.

The indication of a box present reveals the instrument had not been unpacked as sent from the workshop to Munich but hadn't found a buyer.

Even if this Munich lottery had probably nothing to do with this (probably originally similar) instrument from Oberammergau, it gives a sideview on instruments like these by Späth, and when this type of instrument went out of fashion (and the idea arose of modernising).

1764 the 28^th of July he wrote again that while being in his 50^th year and his strength slowly fading and not having a male successor but 3 daughters he made the decision to make a good christian and able subject, having excelled in organ making, perfectly happy. Since he assumes that I am familiar with organ makers within  a fair district around Straßburg he would accept a heavenly benefit if I could recommend an able subject, at best one of my disciples.

On the side he mentioned; Thank God he has a harpsichord of 2000 florins in progress again.

The same year 1764 the 11t^h of Octobre he repeated his previous intention and his oldest daughter is just 14. he would be pleased if he had a young man who could play keyboard well, is inventive, learning to make, refine and tune a a good pipe. He knows a young organ maker journeyman formerly under contract with him, but no proper player, in urge to become a perfect organ builder. With him the opportunity is insufficient. Therefore he wanted to recommend this just fellow meanwhile working in Saxony asf.

1774 the 12^th of December Mr Spath  again wrote a polite letter reporting God presented an able son in law by the name of Schmahl organ maker's son from Heilbronn on Neckar. He notes that one had made his honours at [my] blessed brother's in Dresden, welcomed gratiously but could not enter [the workshop] because of my [Späth's] contract. He, however, still has a marriage-minded daughter who he would wish an able artisan of our arts for. This letter he signed Spath & Schmahl.  This artist makes a big fuss about his harpsichord-work as can be read p.226 [here above]. A Duke of Waldburg who visited us in 1777 has seen his instruments, and would not praise them.

So even Johann Andreas Stein worked at similar concepts in those years.

"Modernisations" like these appear to have been not uncommon, despite all declarations to the opposite. Its mode clearly different from Späth leads to the assumption that this was not done by Späth & Schmahl  but by someone, roughly familiar with piano manufacture and action but outside the prominent workshop traditions.

That the generation of disciples of Silbermann, Späth, Friderici and Stein had no second thoughts about  conversions like those, is revealed by an ad of a rather unknown former apprentice or journeyman (and nephew) of Stein, Johann Georg Kuppler,  in Bayreuther Zeitungen of 27^th of March 1786, who is rather keen to spread all his experience and his produce following his former masters Stein and Friederici:

Kuppler, who soon later moved to Nürnberg  and his offers may appear - after his history and experience as producer of Stein's inventions Melodica and Vis-à-vis-grand - less astonishing than his direct approach to the music lovers of the 1780s  so bothered and „burdened“ by their old harpsichords - und Kuppler's readiness to adapt these by conversion to the new tastes. He certainly was not the only maker of his generation with such ideas and offers to his customers.

Another who offered similar conversions but also hardly responsible for this instrument's considering the distance was Johann Benedikt Ernst Wegmann in Frankfurt on Main, who placed an ad on 13th of October 1786 in the local "Intelligenzblatt der freien Stadt Frankfurt" [p.890]:"... auch macht derselbe aus Flügeln, die noch brauchbar sind, Forte Piano nach der neuesten Art." (... the same produces, from grands [harpsichords] still usable, pianos after newest fashion...) These conversions represent a rather unnoticed transition area between harpsichord and piano culture.

In the  1760s new keyboard music flourished. Unfortunately it is unknown today what music was performed at its assumed first destination, Ettal monastery, since the music scores vanished after its dissolution 1803 but at Regensburg where the instrument was built, the editor and publisher of the local newspaper, the "Regensburger Diarium", regularly published ads about the recent music publications available in his shop.

So he recomm]en[ded in an advertissement in No. VII 17^th of August 1762, one year later, the newest music for harpsichord by Wagenseil, Josef Antonín Štěpan  and [Carl Philipp Emanuel] Bach. by then the most popular composers from Vienna and Berlin. Whether this met the taste of the buyer of this particular instrument is unknown but it certainly represents the majority tastes of the time.

In the vicinity the tastes were characterized by the sonatas of the Landsberg organist Johann Anton Kobrich (1714-1791), published in series from1748 on in the publishing house of Haffner in Nürnberg.
(ex. of Badische Landesbibliothek Karlsruhe)