Da Herz revealed

Richard Brekne Richard.Brekne@grieg.uib.no
Tue, 08 Feb 2005 21:33:20 +0100


Hi Terry

Dont know what kind of variations Henri made on the theme, its always a 
bit of a job to hunt down this kind of information.  As far as I 
understood the only upsidedown pianos Herz made were also reversed, this 
so that one could get the maximum bass string length in a small piano I 
have to assume. I dont read french, so anyone who would like to 
translate the piece I posted, which is a graphic from Harding on page 
176 btw, would be appreciated.

I'll post some low res pics this evening and send along a post with links.

Alexander... actually, the instrument played very well indeed, dispite 
its very poor condition. I used 2 days to clean it up, fix what was just 
plain broken, and regulate the thing so it was playable and as close to 
how it should be as I could make it.  We did a TV show on the thing on 
National TV, as it turned out that this piano sat in the house where the 
text to Norways National Anthem was written.  The piano then was a 
contemporary of Grieg and Bull and a few others of that crowd.  It know 
doubt had felt the męstros touch from time to time, and was equally most 
certainly an early friend of the music written to the National Anthem.  
Made a great story. 

As far as I know the instrument still sits there, not used, fully 
unapreciated for what it really is, tinkered with by folks who are 
essentially not interested in it at all, at least not as a 
musical/historical instrument.

Later

RicB


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