Jean-Henri Pape

Jean -Henri Pape ( German: Johann Heinrich Pape, born July 1, 1789 in Sarstedt, † February 2, 1875 ) was a French piano maker in the early 19th century German birth.

Pape came to Paris in 1811 and found employment with Pleyel, whose piano construction company he led for several years. 1815 Pape founded his own piano building companies. For almost forty years he improved his pianos annually with inventions. His first wing to follow the English system by John Broadwood & Sons and Tomkinson, but it was not long until the construction Pape only improved and then the design principles completely changed.

Pape focused on drawbacks and errors in the panel upright and grand pianos that open up to the hammer gap between reed block and soundboard. The solution is to place the hammers on the strings, had been, then and finally thought ahead of Marius Hildebrand by Andreas Streicher in Vienna, but instead of levers and counterweights used Papes arrangement, a coil spring to the hammer that quickly and almost without adverse effect on stop feeling raise. This system was very successful, but with wings lacked something at ease and subtlety. The changes which he introduced in upright pianos, gave his instruments considerable force.

The work of this gifted piano maker was on September 19, 1832 with favorable reports from the French Society for the National Industrial praised ( " Société d' encouragement pour l'industrie nationale" ) and 1833 by the Académie des beaux -arts de l' institut de France. Pape was awarded a gold medal at the World Exhibition in 1834. Too, a medal of the Legion of Honor was awarded Pape 1839. Knowledgeable in all aspects of mechanics, Pape invented a machine to saw wood or ivory veneers in coils or to peel and put them 1827. One of his pianos was veneered with sheets of ivory in a length of nine feet and a width of two feet.

A small pamphlet reminded of his contributions to this instrument ( Notice sur les inventions et perfectionnements apportes par H. Pape dans la fabrication des pianos Paris, Loquin: 11 pages with three lithographs ).

1875 Pape died in Asnières -sur -Seine, near Paris, where he had researched his life on the piano construction. For a time lived a son and a nephew continued the factory founded by Pape.

Swell

• Fétis, FJ (1867, 1880) Universal Biography of musiciens. Didot frères, Paris.
• Vahlbruch, Werner: In Paris, much reminiscent of a Sarstedt. Johann Heinrich Pape immigrated in 1811 - and revolutionized as Jean -Henri Pape in France to build modern pianos. In: Home country. Journal of History, Conservation, Culture care. Hanover. Born 2013, pp. 42-46