Concertina
The Concertina (also: Concertina or Constantina ) is known a name for a group of like - and wechseltönigen Handzuginstrumenten with four -, six- or eight-sided housing and the general public primarily as a typical instrument of clowns. In contrast to the accordion a concertina has no permanently installed chords, but consistently single tones.
English Concertina
In 1844, Charles Wheatstone patented his gleichtönige English concertina, after he was already on June 19, 1829 granted a patent for the precursor of the concertina, the Symphonion. The English concertina was characterized by a continuous, distributed on the left and right side chromatic tone sequence. Due to the key distribution it was particularly suitable as a melody instrument, usually with piano accompaniment. The chromatic key layout and the arrangement of the voting records were the real innovation. Charles Wheatstone was particularly interested in the scientific literature in the French language, thus the former scientific publications on studies with resounding tongues him were known or accessible. In the London music business of his uncle all kinds of musical instruments were offered, also from German, French and Austrian production. During his apprenticeship with his uncle, he had the opportunity to explore modern punch tongue instruments. But he broke his teaching prematurely because he lacked the necessary manual dexterity, according to his uncle. After the early death of his uncle, he took with his brother whose music business as well as his father's business. Later, Charles Wheatstone, a Sheng was send from St. Petersburg. In later years he also improved the speech engine of Wolfgang von Kempelen.
Unlike Carl Friederich Uhlig or other contemporary instrument makers in Vienna or Paris, was Wheatstone's concertina interest primarily because it offered the technical possibility to study acoustic phenomena. He had recently published a scripture that dealt with music-theoretical principles.
That his ideas were ultimately marketed, Charles Wheatstone had to thank his brother. The technical development depended not only by Charles Wheatstone. They picked very early the necessary skilled labor for production. Thus, the Swiss watchmaker Louis Lachenal and John Crabb have been set. Lachenal was responsible for the technical design and Crabb for the design.
Charles Wheatstone, but dealt with recurring calculations and experiments, which were directly related to the concertina. So he was looking for alloys for reeds, which promised better results. He wanted reeds, which retained the pitch exactly. When Symphonion the reeds were first made of silver and later of gold, for the English concertina was ultimately the common steel.
The English concertina was in first line an instrument for the upscale audience. Nevertheless, she experienced a boom in early England. Already in 1850 there were 100 factories for the English Concertina. The manufactured concertinas were partly luxuriously appointed and decorated with, for example, gold or silver buttons.
One of the leading virtuoso of the Wheatstone type of concertina was Giulio Regondi, who was also the leading guitarist of his time. Regondi concerted on the concertina as part of his concert tour 1840/41 in Vienna. He probably (also: Dubetz ) there with Johann Dubez contacted, who also played concerts at the Wheatstone concertina. Regondi and also the contemporary sources to Johann Dubez speak mostly from Melophon that was indeed used interchangeably with the term concertina, however, is an instrument of a different design. Dubez concert tours (including the Balkans and Constantinople Opel ) and his work in Vienna procured the concertina to the late 1880s, attention outside England.
Construction
A particularly detailed description we owe a book that Hector Berlioz wrote in 1839 ( Grande Traité d' instrumentation et d' orchestration modern (1844 ), German translation: Peters 1905). This manual has been transferred from Doflein into German and later revised even by Richard Strauss. He writes:
Mood
As can be seen from the above text, the mood was originally meantone. Today, most concertinas are converted to equal temperament. The pitch of the reference tone are often not the usual today 440 Hz concertinas that used the Salvation Army, were usually tuned higher.
English system concertinas were tuned with pure fifths and thirds. In gleichstufiger mood some sounds are then duplicated ( Dis / It and G / As). But the traditional mean tone was pure fifths and thirds, this meant that these sounds slightly differed in pitch. When the tones Dis and there the differences to 21.5 cents accumulate (see syntonic comma).
Tonvorrat:
It is essential that all the chords do not sound as good in this voting practice.
Train
The first school was built around 1845 for Concertina (Joseph Warren, Complete Insruktiones for the Concertina, London, 3rd edition 1855, 9th edition 1905), in 1848, Alfred B. Sedgwick school "Complete system for the Concetina " London by Levesque, Fdmeades and Co., 1852 E. Chesney 's New insructions for the Concertina " London by E. Chesney; 1852 also brings J. Haskins be " Tegg 's Concertina Pre- Ceptor " published in London. 1877 will see a method for learning without a teacher: Ch Roylance, How to learn the English Without a Master ", London by C. Roylance.
1848 Chopin learned the instrument on a trip to Scotland to know. He felt the sound and the way you play not particularly positive, " It seems as if each of these creatures ( Scottish ladies who played the concertina) would be unscrewed. What a strange lot! God forbid! "
Today
Concertinas were made very long by the companies Lachenal and Wheatstone in the traditional way. Very many historical instruments are still well preserved and are trading at relatively high prices. In contrast to the cheaper accordion style the rest of Europe, the instruments are well-documented. Most also a note of the exact date of manufacture in the original production records available online is available. There are some museums that deal specifically with the concertina. Hardly any instrument is so well documented and traceable.
Today, there are still a few traditional Concertinabauer. For example, in England ( Colin Dipper ), Germany ( Jürgen Suttner ) and the USA ( Wim Wakker ).
Concertinas are also reproduced in the U.S. today, but usually with standard accordion harmonica from Italy. Even cheap replicas from China and Italy are commercially available. However, since the construction differs significantly from the traditional design, they are sonically hardly comparable. There are now pinblocks built similar to the accordion.
German Concertina
The Chemnitz clarinetist and instrument maker Carl Friedrich Uhlig (1789 -1874) made on a trip to Vienna with an accordion from the manufacturing Cyrill Demian acquaintance, changed it, but held on to the diatonic and wechseltönigen key assignment. Already Demian had anticipated that his instrument can also consist of two mirror-like boxes, resulting in the doubling of tones, whether such instruments were then sold in Vienna, is not clear.
Constructed in 1834 Carl Friedrich Uhlig, practically without knowing of the English concertina, as this was also not yet produced a small wechseltönige concertina, which eventually 1924 to 64 keys ( 128 tones) has been extended. He had with this instrument good business successes, in 1854 he exhibited at the Industrial Exhibition in Munich and got an honor coin.
Are seen on both sides only single tones and no chord or bass mechanics, as provided by the accordion. These instruments are similar in size to the bandoneon and usually have a square case. In addition to this there is the Chemnitz Concertina Concertina Carl fields, which mainly differ in the arrangement of sounds.
The original rather small instrument with a rectangular housing ( later with hexagonal housing), the German concertina, has also survived in parallel and will be held today, just as the English concertina, active proliferation, particularly in the folk scene of the British Isles. As the bandoneon or the Styrian harmonica is too wechseltönig, ie it will sound on a button to train a different tone than on pressure.
Anglo Concertina
The Anglo-German Concertina (English German Anglo concertina or even Anglo ) was developed in 1850 by George Jones. He joined the German with the English concertina to a German - English concertina and gave the instrument the so concise hexagonal shape. In addition, he expanded the instrument to a number of other buttons on which further semitones, but also fundamental tones are mainly, which facilitate the game. This allowed, in contrast to the German concertina chromatic playing in all keys when the gripping chords are certain limits by the Wechseltönigkeit because some notes are available only to train and some only on pressure, all tone combinations are not playable, as z. B. on accordion with piano keyboard.
More Konzertinatypen
Another well-known development of the German concertina is the bandoneon, which has become widespread, especially in South America and in Europe in the 50s a revival with the popularization of the tango music experienced their most popular representatives probably Astor Piazzolla was and is.
In England, further Duet concertinas were developed. These are like the concertina Uhlig'sche a melody and a bass side, but are gleichtönig. Occupies a special position among a Hayden Duet concertina. Through their shifted 6 -plus -6 keyboard has keys for all the same fingering as far as the scope of the buttons allows.
All Konzertinatypen mentioned here were built in hundreds of variants since the late nineteenth century, the instrument was generally not as standardized and much more experimental than at the present time.