The heading “Knowledge bank” implies that this page collects a number of files with varying content, but with the common thread of telling more about piano instruments in general and our own in particular.
Here you will find documents with a historical focus, e.g. a little piano history and a piano lexicon, which explains tricky terms such as crimping tongs and tone-hook. The lists of Swedish factories/workshops are the result of decades of work, and many more years are needed to complete them. If you are interested in a particular builder or a particular factory, you can click on the name and get to a document with several choices such as biography/history, production, models, signatures, drawings, patents, pictures, etc. About certain more important foreign makes, which were important for our own production, production overviews are given based on what is preserved in Sweden.
These overviews are very much the result of inventories of the holdings in other institutions, mainly in museums and homesteads. As with the instruments in our own collections, the basic facts about them are presented in list form. For this work a documentation plan is needed which involves
- technical descriptions of the instruments in dimensions and image
illumination of the manufacturing process, life in the factories, brand traditions, the rise of the tuning profession, etc. - study of musical aspects such as stylistic history and interpretation traditions
elucidating the instruments’ social settings and functions
ethical guidelines for care of the collections and restoration of selected instruments
Here we also provide information about ongoing research, whether it concerns the instruments themselves, the music played on them or in what contexts the piano sounds.
Instrument -> construction/manufacturing -> music -> playing technique/playing characteristics -> society forms a golden circle which, in interaction and interplay, casts light on the piano from many aspects and enriches our knowledge and understanding of them.