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J. C. Bach and the Early Piano in London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Richard Maunder
Richard Maunder*
Affiliation:
Christ's College, Cambridge
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Extract

A study of Johann Christian Bach's keyboard music prompts the obvious and important question: which of his sonatas and concertos were composed for harpsichord, and which for the piano? (Indeed, did he think of them as two distinct instruments at all?) And what sort of pianos did he have available on the occasions when he played them in public? Did he really play his ‘Solo on the Piano Forte’ at the Thatched House on 2 June 1768 (in a concert that consisted mainly of orchestral music) on a little Zumpe square, or was he already using a prototype English grand? When were these various models of piano first made in London, and what musical use did other composers and performers, as well as J. C. Bach, make of them?

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 116 , Issue 2 , 1991 , pp. 201 - 210
Copyright
Copyright © 1991 Royal Musical Association

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References

1 There is a photograph of this square piano in Early Music, 7 (1979), 525Google Scholar

2 Maunder, Richard, ‘The Earliest English Square Piano?’, Galpin Society Journal, 42 (1989), 77–84Google Scholar

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4 Shudi seems to have invented the machine pedal in 1765, one of his first examples was fitted to a harpsichord made for the king of Prussia, which was demonstrated in London by the nine-year-old Mozart in that year (Otto Erich Deutsch, Mozart Die Dokumente seines Lebens, Kassel, 1961, 47)Google Scholar

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