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marble falls

(56,353 posts)
Sat Nov 7, 2020, 11:08 AM Nov 2020

The Woman Who Built Beethoven's Pianos

The Woman Who Built Beethoven’s 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 Europe’s finest keyboard manufacturers.

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With a warehouse that produced 50 to 65 grand pianos a year, Nannette Streicher’s 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

-snip-

Nannette Streicher’s 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.

-snip-

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 father’s 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.

-snip-

By 1809, Nannette had considerably reworked her father’s 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

-snip-

That would seem to have been the end of Nannette’s 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 Nannette’s 250th birthday.
Correction: Nov. 7, 2020

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The Woman Who Built Beethoven's Pianos (Original Post) marble falls Nov 2020 OP
This message was self-deleted by its author Chin music Nov 2020 #1
She's pretty interesting. It was hard to get this down to four paragraphs. marble falls Nov 2020 #2
K&R!!! diva77 Nov 2020 #3
Thanks for sharing. nt Hotler Nov 2020 #4
Really fascinating! smirkymonkey Nov 2020 #5

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