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The Woman Who Built Beethovens Pianos
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/06/arts/music/beethoven-piano.html
Nannette Streicher has been marginalized by history, but she was one of Europes finest keyboard manufacturers.
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With a warehouse that produced 50 to 65 grand pianos a year, Nannette Streichers firm was considered by many to be the finest in Vienna.Credit...Bildagentur-online/Universal Images Group, via Getty Images
By Patricia Morrisroe
Published Nov. 6, 2020Updated Nov. 7, 2020, 9:31 a.m. ET
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Nannette Streichers marginalized place in history is encapsulated in these scribbled lines. While she was indeed one of the closest friends of Beethoven, whose 250th birthday will be celebrated this December, she was also one of the finest piano builders in Europe. She owned her own company employing her husband, Andreas Streicher, a pianist and teacher, to handle sales, bookkeeping and business correspondence. But many Beethoven scholars, perhaps finding it inconceivable that an 18th-century woman could build a piano, have turned Andreas into the manufacturer and Nannette into his shadowy helpmate.
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Nannette had already expanded her keyboards range from five octaves to six and a half, but she was slow to make other major alterations to her fathers original design. It was a stressful time. By 1802, she was the mother of two small children, and a 6-year-old son had recently died. She was also engaged in a dispute with her brother; the siblings eventually decided to dissolve the company and strike out separately.
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By 1809, Nannette had considerably reworked her fathers design, turning out some of the largest, loudest and sturdiest pianos in Vienna. With a warehouse that produced 50 to 65 grand pianos a year, the Streicher firm was considered by many to be the finest in the city.
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A keyboard made by the company inherited by Nannette and her brother Matthäus from their father.Credit...The Metropolitan Museum of Art
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That would seem to have been the end of Nannettes legacy. But her instruments live on, in museums around the world and in the strong, nimble hands of women she inspired. In the mid-1960s, as Margaret Hood, an artist and calligrapher, raised two young children, she started making harpsichords. After doing research in Europe, she began specializing in reproductions of Streicher pianos, producing them in her Platteville, Wis., workshop. She was building an 1816 Streicher six-and-a-half-octave grand when she died, in 2008.
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A replica of an 1816 Nannette Streicher piano, begun by Margaret Hood and finished by Anne Acker.Credit...Anne Acker
The piano the work of three women over two centuries had its debut at the Boston Early Music Festival in 2019. It was the year of Nannettes 250th birthday.
Correction: Nov. 7, 2020
Response to marble falls (Original post)
Chin music This message was self-deleted by its author.
marble falls
(56,353 posts)diva77
(7,604 posts)Hotler
(11,353 posts)smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)That was really remarkable for those times. Thank you for posting!