Louis Dulcken in Munich

music sample:
Franz Xaver Pokorny, Sonata F major, 1st mov., Allegro spirituoso
played by Christoph Hammer
Instrument: Louis Dulcken, München 1805


After 1800 besides Vienna other new centres of piano making emerged, particularly in post-Napoleonic capitals of the new kingdoms of Bavaria or Württemberg while piano making in the former dominating Imperial cities like Augsburg and Regensburg slowly declined. Two of the most important piano workshops in Southern Germany then were those of the Dulcken family in Munich, last descendants of a renowned Flemish harpsichord makers' dynasty, and the Stein disciple Johann Baptist Schiedmayer in Stuttgart.

In those residential cities a new group of noble and citizen amateur musicians amoung court officials, higher military ranks, well off dignitaries and tradespeople determined musical taste, in spite of court orchestras and theaters. Rather like in Britain, the piano became a bourgeouis  instrument and its external appearance following the principal taste of their time mattered almost as much than its musical qualities, These instruments were more or less designed for use in dignified living rooms or salons, neither too loud nor too ostensible, but concise enough that their environment of curtains, carpets, upholstery and other furniture details did not too much impede their impressive potential. Their sound should be audibly differing from concert hall instruments like the Walter or Johann Andreas Stein grands with their more direct touch and with greater differences between treble and bass and  with increased sensitivity of action.

At the end not the concert hall but the domestic instruments set the marks how the "proper" piano should sound like. The replacement of leather by felt for hammer covers not only added to size and weight of the hammers which helped using strings of greather thicknesses but also caused a sort of "veiled" sound, a sound character matching the sound absorbing furniture and decorations of 19th c. domestic furniture. Even the popular decorative elements placed atop - like vases, cloth covers, busts, papers and the like, detrimental to sound projection of higher frequencies - were calculated wthin overall sound expectations.

So the instruments by Dulcken, Deiß (sound sample below), Schiedmayer and others represent a time of change in music and society which itself did not last for long. After mid-century a process of centralisation began, leading to but a few manufacturers of pianos of often world wide importance at the end of the 19th century.

music sample:
Franz Lachner, Klavierstück op. 9 Nr. 6
played by Christoph Hammer
Instrument: Gregor Deiß, Munich c1815

 
 
 

© Greifenberger Institut für Musikinstrumentenkunde | info@greifenberger-institut.de