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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
What gives a piano charm? Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Always something to admire: Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
So, what more can I say? It’s great to be here, it’s very marvelous to be anywhere. Yes I do love the feminine form, add that to a gorgeous piano, and I think it’s a ‘Winning’ combo...in my mind!! Enjoy the Forum: Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Grand Piano, 1720
On view: Gallery 684 Last Updated April 5, 2011 Bartolomeo Cristofori was the first person to create a successful hammer-action keyboard instrument and, accordingly, deserves to be credited as the inventor of the piano. This example is the oldest of the three extant pianos by Cristofori. In the last years of the seventeenth century, he began to work on an instrument on which the player could modulate the volume solely by changing the force with which the keys were struck. By 1700, he had made at least one successful instrument, which he called “gravicembalo col piano e forte” (harpsichord with soft and loud). His instrument still generally resembled a harpsichord, although its case was thicker and the quill mechanism had been replaced by a hammer mechanism. Cristofori’s hammer mechanism was so well designed and made that no other of comparable sensitivity and reliability was devised for another seventy-five years. In fact, the highly complex action of the modern piano may be traced directly to his original conception. Source: Made by Bartolomeo Cristofori: Grand Piano (89.4.1219) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Multi instrumentalist, what an awesome talent Move Over Rover, Let Jimi Take over...: Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Piano Tuner Wanted!! !!! !! !!! Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Couple of favourite album covers. Ray Bryant Up Above The Rock Dale Jacobs “we miss you” Cobra: Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
NEW YORK, NY. The Metropolitan Museum of Art Showcasing more than 230 works of art drawn primarily from the Museum’s extensive holdings, which are among the most important in the world, the new installation of Western musical instruments will focus attention on individual masterworks by exploring each within its musical and cultural context, by offering exciting comparisons of how individual makers realized the same concept, and by introducing examples of the various instruments’ developments. Among the wide range of objects on view—keyboard, string, percussion, woodwind, and brass instruments—a highlight will be the famed “Batta-Piatigorsky†‘cello made in Cremona, Italy, by Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737), on loan from a private collection. Built in 1714, the cello—which was owned by the distinguished cellists Alexandre Batta (Dutch, 1816-1902) and Gregor Piatigorsky (Russian, 1903-1976)—is regarded as one of the best examples of the maker’s work. Iconic pieces from the museum’s collections will be back on display, including the oldest extant piano in the world, built by the inventor of the instrument, Bartolomeo Cristofori of Florence in 1720; violins by the Amati family and Antonio Stradivari; and two guitars that once belonged to the guitarist Andrés Segovia. The installation also includes such masterpieces as an exquisitely carved, small plucked stringed instrument called a Chittarino (ca. 1400), one of the few surviving Renaissance instruments; a Venetian spinet (1540) that was skillfully carved for Eleonora della Rovere, daughter of Isabella d’Este; and a clarinet that was one of the last to be used by Benny Goodman. Another highlight is the extraordinary harpsichord by Michele Todini of Rome (bapt. 1616-1689), with a case and accompanying statues depicting the story of Polyphemus and Galatea. The ensemble—representing one of the largest pieces of baroque sculpture in the Museum—has been undergoing conservation in the Museum’s laboratories for nearly a year. An interesting feature in the reinstalled gallery is the comparison of two violins by Antonio Stradivari. One of the instruments, which was built in 1693 and has been restored back to the original setup at the time of its creation, will be displayed next to an example from 1694 that is in modern playing condition. The technical differences between the two instruments—changes in fingerboard length, neck angle, and strings, for example—are explained. A nearby display presents five masterpieces of violin construction, including an extremely rare, 16th-century decorated violin by Andrea Amati, widely considered the inventor of the instrument; an example by his grandson Nicolò Amati, the presumed teacher of Stradivari; a 1711 “golden period†violin by Stradivari; a decoratively carved violin by the Hamburg maker Joachim Tielke of about 1685; and a beautifully inlaid English instrument dating to around 1630. Besides the instruments, the installation features several European paintings, including a portrait of Charles Rousseau Burney, composer and nephew of the musicologist Charles Burney, painted by Thomas Gainsborough, and a recently acquired portrait of an 18th-century French nobleman playing guitar (purchased for the Museum by The Bradford and Dorothea Endicott Foundation), as well as a Renaissance-style table and a Meissen porcelain figure. The installation retains the built-in cases that were set up in 1970, but the gallery has been refurbished with new case lighting and a new color scheme, with freshly painted walls in ivory, blue, and green. The display cases have been newly configured with ultra suede fabrics, and larger fonts and graphics are employed for the labels, offering the visitor better learning experiences.
The Metropolitan Museum’s Department of Musical Instruments holds approximately 5,000 instruments from six continents and the Pacific Islands, dating from about 300 B.C. to the present.
Many of the instruments are playable and can be heard in concerts and on recordings, as well as in lecture-demonstrations. Special exhibitions featuring objects from the collection, with loans from other institutions and private collectors, are mounted from time to time, such as the current exhibition Sounding the Pacific: Musical Instruments of Oceania. Grand Pianoforte, Erard et Cie, Ca. 1840, London. Wood, various materials Case L. (perpendicular to keyboard) 247 cm (97 1/4 in.), w. (parallel to keyboard) 149.5 cm (58 7/8 in.), case depth (without lid) 32 cm (12 5/8 in.), total H. 95.3 cm (37 1/2 in.), 3-octave span 49.7 cm (19 5/8 in.), string L. of longest string 178.7 cm (70 3/8 in.), string L. of shortest string 4.9 cm (2 in.), L. of c2 28.7 cm (11 3/8 in.) Gift of Mrs. Henry McSweeney, 1959 Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Some/sum of the parts that makes the whole: Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
My tuning forks aren’t quite like these; Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Some early pianos had shapes and designs that are no longer in use. The Square Piano had horizontal strings arranged diagonally across the rectangular case above the hammers and with the keyboard set in the long side. This design is attributed to Gottfried Silbermann or Christian Ernst Friderici on the continent, and Johannes Zumpe or Harman Vietor in England and it was improved by changes first introduced by Guillaume-Lebrecht Petzold in France and Alpheus Babcock in the United States. Square pianos were built in great numbers through the 1840s in Europe and the 1890s in America, and saw the most visible changes of any type of piano: the celebrated iron framed over strung squares manufactured by Steinway & Sons were more than two and a half times the size of Zumpe’s wood framed instruments from a century before. Their overwhelming popularity was due to inexpensive construction and price, although their performance and tone were often limited by simple actions and closely spaced strings. Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Steinway Square Grand in Marble Rosewood: Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
Grand piano, ca. 1790
Not on view Last Updated April 5, 2011 This extraordinarily rare piano from about 1790 has a pedal board with eighteen notes that are played like pedals on an organ. Pedal stringed-keyboard instruments were not uncommon in the eighteenth century. Johann Sebastian Bach is known to have owned a pedal harpsichord and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s piano by Anton Walter supposedly had a pedal mechanism at one point. Mozart’s D-minor piano concerto, K. 466, requires the use of a pedal mechanism as it cannot be performed with the range of the manual alone. This example is attributed to Johann Schmidt of Salzburg, a friend of the Mozart family, whom Leopold Mozart (Wolfgang’s father) helped to secure the job of court organ and instrument maker in Salzburg. Indeed, cleaning done in the 1980s revealed the initials of Wolfgang Mozart scratched inside long ago. It is possible that Mozart played this piano in Salzburg. This rather plain grand piano has a cherry wood veneer. The keys are black-stained wood naturals with bone-topped accidentals. The entire keyboard is double-strung (two strings tuned in unison for each note). Knee levers operate the dampers and a “soft” stop, moving a leather pad to rest between the hammers and strings. A hand lever operates a “bassoon” stop, which presses a piece of parchment paper against the lowest twenty-six pairs of strings and causes a buzzing sound. Related Source: Johann Schmidt: Grand piano (89.4.3182) | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
I’ve always had an affinity for close ups and especially love a great macro shot: Chas Image Attachments
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Redhotpoker
Total Posts: 3601
Joined 11-18-2010 status: Guru |
She was one of those rare breeds,
Chas Image Attachments
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