Ghekorg7 (Ret)
Rear Admiral Appassionata (Ret)
Br. Panos,
When I view the case of the harmonium in question I am gravitating towards an instrument that has been made by a German builder. Before the Bolshevik Revolution lots of things were being imported to Moscow and St. Petersburg especially from Germany. These days the Russians are very secretive so it can take awhile to dig up intel. If I may, is there a specific interest in just that harmonium? In the 19th Century, harmonium builders were cranking out instruments like Detroit cranks out cars. Harmonium case work has ranged from the absolutely elegant to the most ugly contraption ever seen.
Cheers,
CD :tiphat::tiphat::tiphat:
Hi br.CD !
It seems like German allright and the link between Germany and Russia is certified also by the fact that lennin and the other Bolsheviks took support money from Germany just before the revolution.
Is also certified that the majority of harmoniums built are junks, ugly and awfull sounding. It's a real price if you find a good one.
The whole story started years before with Mechanical Organs when the company asked Mozart to write some music for these so customers buying them to have something to play on.
Mozart wrote some real exellent pieces - fantasia in F minor K608, Adagio & allegro in F minor K594 and andante in F major K616 (all in F...? I suspect the Mechanical Organ must sounded best in this key...), witch can be played also on pipe organ to great effect.
There isn't a specific interest of mine in this Moscow Harmonium, I just wanted to share here a different and curious subject and to expand it, as we lately do , to other related topics and add interesting information ,some rare and/or untold stories, some jokes and in the end to have fun from our (all people) contact here in this very special forum.
This is the thing that I like most !
au revoir mon ami
Panos
pS : There is a very interesting site from N.Zealand Pipe Organ.com on the History of the Harmonium, comparing Eur/Amer builds, in a very humble relation...
Give it a try
http://www.nzorgan.com/vandr/humble-relations2.htm
on French ones and in humble relations 1 is the Mason-Hamlin we were talkin' about earlier in this thread.
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