Accordion: history, video, interesting facts, listen

Musical Instrument: Accordion

Traveling around the world of musical instruments, do not cease to be surprised by its diversity. But among this wealth there is one representative who attracts the attention with a beautiful and euphonic name - the accordion. When you listen to its sound, you immediately associatively represent Paris, Montmartre, Champs Elysees - France and the accordion are inseparable. The accordion won love all over the world, some cities even recognized it as an official tool. But not everything is so smooth in the history of the accordion - it was forbidden in other countries, recognizing it as an accomplice of a hostile culture, but he returned victoriously again and gave the audience real pleasure and creative inspiration. The accordion, possessing beauty, democracy, mobility and relevance, is capable of conveying the whole range of human emotions: both deep sadness and unbridled joy.

The instrument is one of the most advanced harmonic varieties having a chromatic scale.

Read the history of the accordion and many interesting facts about this musical instrument on our page.

Sound

The accordion, which has a variety of artistic musical expressive means, has a distinctive, silvery and pleasantly vibrating sound. His colorful, melodious and stately voice can sound like an organ or even an entire orchestra. The presence of registers that change the timbre gives the accordion the opportunity to imitate the sound of various instruments.

The sound on the accordion arises from the free oscillation of metal tongues under the influence of the air jet, which is formed when the fur chamber moves.

The presence of fur is the most valuable quality of an accordion, with its help you can control and influence the color of the tone, make the sound soft, transparent or, on the contrary, hard and coarse. The instrument has extraordinary dynamic flexibility - from the gentlest piano to shrill forte.

A photo:

Interesting Facts:

• Accordion guardianship is a popular instrument in many countries of the world: Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, USA, Canada, France, Holland, England, Scotland, Germany, Sweden, Japan, Finland and others.
• In American cities: St. Paul, Skokie, Detroit and San Francisco accordion declared official tool. There are approximately 75,000 people in the United States who can play this instrument.
• In the USA, the first performer who made a significant contribution to the popularization of the instrument was Count Piedro Deiro, who was called the "father of the accordion".
• Jean von Halberg, Abe Goldman and Joe Biviano are the accordionists who first performed in 1939 at the famous Carnegie Hall in New York.
• Accordions today are made in different countries of the world, but the best concert instruments are made in Italy, Russia and Germany. These are German brands: Horch, Hohner, Weltmeister, Barcarole, Firotti; Italian brands: Scandalli, Pigini, Victoria, Bugari, ZeroSette, Borsini; in Russia, these are the instruments of the firms: "Jupiter", "Tula Harmony" and "AKKO".

• The cost of a professional concert accordion is quite high and ranges from 5 to 15 thousand euros.
• The accordion has different names in different countries of the world: "Sun-Fin-Chin" in China, "bayan" in Russia, "trekspill" in Norway and "Fisarmonica" in Italy.
• The peak of the instrument’s popularity from the 1900s to the 1960s is considered the “Golden Age of Accordion”.
• A copy of the "Shen" - an ancient Chinese instrument, the progenitor of the accordion, is stored in the United States at the Castelfidardo Museum.
• Very famous artists such as Billy Joel, Neil Diamond, Jimmy Webb, Bob Dylan, as well as the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Beach Boys music groups very often used the accordion in their musical compositions.
• The first electronic accordions were designed in the "States" in the forties of the last century.
• In the US city of Catati, California, there is a monument to the accordion and accordionist J. Boggio.
• Some people think that pianists, because of the similarity of keyboards, can easily master the accordion, but in reality it turns out quite the opposite, accordionists learn to play the piano faster.
• In the United States, the accordion was first called the "spaghetti piano".

• In the cities of Castelfidardo (Italy), Klingenthal (Germany), Super Ior-Delousy (USA) and Moscow (Russia) there are museums of harmonics, which are represented by an accordion.
• In the Soviet Union, the accordion, being a very popular instrument in the 30s of the last century and very popular in jazz bands of A. Tsfasman, L. Utesov, V. Knushevitsky, in the 50s was repressed along with the word jazz and saxophone.
• The world-famous German company "Weltmeister" is located in Klingenthal, where a third of residents are engaged in the production of musical instruments. Many of the workers know how to play the accordion and are in the orchestra, which successfully tours in Europe.

Design

The accordion is a keyboard wind musical instrument with a complex structure that has more than one hundred details. It consists of two sections - left and right, interconnected by fur.

1.Right part The instrument includes a box and fingerboard with a keyboard like a piano. The box contains the right deck, resonators, valves and registers.

• The right deck has sound holes that completely coincide with the holes of the resonators.
• The resonators are installed voice strips.
• Valves open sound holes.
• Registers change the tone of the sound.

On the right box are attached large belts that hold the tool on the shoulders of the performer, as well as the grille. The number of keys on the fingerboard varies depending on the size of the tool, the largest - 41.

2. Left side The instrument consists of a box in which the left deck, resonators, all the mechanics and keyboard for the left hand, which has 120 buttons, are mounted. The left keyboard contains five and sometimes six rows: two rows of bass, and the rest - ready-made chords (major, minor, seventh chords and diminished seventh chords). On the left case are the registers, as well as a small belt, with which the left hand sets in motion the fur chamber.

3. fur The accordion is made of special cardboard, taped with fabric and is reinforced with leather and steel linings.

The weight of a concert ready-elective accordion reaches 15 kg.

Varieties

Accordions are of two types: with keyboards and push-button keyboards.

• Keyboard keyboard - has the shape of a piano keyboard.
• The keypad has three, four or five rows of buttons arranged in a chromatic order.

In addition, accordions of any type can have different accompaniment systems in the left hand: ready and ready - elective.

• The finished accompaniment system consists of bass and finished chords.
• Done - Elective has two systems ready and elective, which are changed using a special register.

Accordions, which is very important, come in various sizes: from the smallest student ones to large concert ones.

• The smallest -1/2 accordion is a range of just over two octaves, mainly used for training purposes.
• A medium-sized accordion - 3/4 - a range of two and a half octaves, used for educational purposes and amateur music playing.
• The accordion is slightly more than average - 7/8 - a range of three octaves, used for amateur music.
• Full accordion - a range of three and a half octaves, used as a concert instrument.

Application and Repertoire

Initially, the use of the accordion was limited only by the leisure area. It was used everywhere, where people wanted to have fun and have fun - first of all, folk festivals, as well as variety shows, dancing, cabarets, street restaurants, music halls, picnics. Later, the accordion became an indispensable instrument in dance pop music, jazz and zadeco, and then went on stage as a solo instrument. The accordion sounds very impressive with a symphony orchestra.

Extraordinarily spectacular works for accordion in full harmonic splendor were best accomplished by performing composers, including R. Galliano, J. Thiersen, P. Frossini, A. Piazzolla, C. Manyante, A. Vossen, P. Deiro, C. Nunzio other. However, in connection with the constant improvement of the design, on the instrument now without transpositions, you can perform works for piano, celesta, harpsichord, harmonium and organ. The musical masterpieces of the greatest classics sound great on the accordion: I.S. Baha, V.A. Mozart, N. Paganini, L.V. Beethoven, I. Brahms, F. Liszt, C. Debussy, D. Verdi, J. Bizet, D. Gershwin, G. Mahler, M. Musorgsky, M. Ravel, N. Rimsky-Korsakov, A. Scriabin, D. Shostakovich, P. Tchaikovsky.

Works:

A. Piazzolla "Libertango" - listen

Z. Abrau "Tico-Tico" - listen

Outstanding performers

The rich history of accordion performance has highlighted a number of talented musicians who, with their creativity, have made a great contribution to the development of the instrument. Particularly noteworthy are accordionists: J. Thirsen, R. Würtner, S. Hussong, G. Deiro, D. Vossen, T. Ancelotti, K. Harada, K. Tvida, V. Kovtun, Y. Drang, P. Drang, R. Bazhilin, Ya. Tabachnik, S. Shchurakov.

The jazz accordion also has bright performing stars: M. Matthews, T. Gumino L. Sash, E. Felice, A. di Pippo and D. Emble.

From the entire galaxy of talented performers, I would like to highlight P. Deiro, P. Frossini, Art Van Damme and A. Piazzolla.

• Pietro deiro - American accordion virtuoso of Italian origin, who made a significant contribution to the popularization of the instrument. In New York, he created the headquarters of the accordion art, and then founded the Association of Accordionists, the purpose of which was to actively promote the instrument.
• Pietro Frosini with his creativity, spectacular and graceful compositions, greatly enriched the repertoire of pop accordion. He first recorded the performance on an accordion on a recording device. The works of P. Froscini for accordion are very popular today and are often included in the programs of musicians around the world.
• Art Van Dammerecognized as the best jazz accordionist, was a true master of his craft. During his creative life, Art Van Damme made almost forty world touring tours.
• Astor Piazzolla - the famous Argentine musician and composer. His compositions, which absorbed the components of jazz and classics, presented the tango audience in a completely different way. He gave the Argentine folk dance the form of a concert piece and brought it to the stage. More than a thousand pieces of music were left by A. Piazzolla as his creative legacy, and, being a magnificent musician, he himself performed his compositions with different groups.

Story

The history of the instrument begins with the invention of the harmonica, the progenitor of which is the Chinese sacred instrument sheng. In it, to create a sound, freely vibrating tongues were used, inserted into bamboo tubes, which were attached to the resonator body. Sheng got to Europe through the trade routes and there, at the end of the 18th century, began its cardinal transformation.

Initially, organ master F. Kirshnik in 1777 as a result of the experiment invented reed strips, which later found use in hand harmonics.

In the twenties of the 19th century, the Berlin musical master F. Bushman, to facilitate the adjustment of musical instruments, reed tuning forks were designed. Each of the tuning forks was tuned to a specific tone, they began to sound under the influence of air flow. Combining the tuning forks in an oblong box, the master eventually received a new musical instrument - the mouth organ, its improved descendants later became widespread.

However, the master did not stop there and continued to develop his tuning fork, attaching fur to it. But in order to get the sound of one particular sound, the master closed the tongues with valves that opened above the respective voices. So gradually F. Bushman turned out to be an unprecedented form of a musical instrument, called an Aeolina. She had two caps and a fur that opened like a fan. On one cover were the keys, on the other - a device for unclenching fur. It was already a manual harmonica, though more like a child's toy.

F. Bushman's toy invention attracted the attention of musical masters, one of them was K. Domian. He was very actively engaged in the transformation of manual harmonics, giving it a different look. On two buildings connected by a fur camera, there are 5 keys for the right and 5 keys for the left hand. Each key of the right hand on the squeeze and unclaspling made different sounds, each key in the left hand on the squeeze and unclench - two different full chords - this was an innovation that K. Domian subsequently hurried to patent in 1929. This is how a completely new instrument with chord accompaniment, called accordion, appeared.

The master, who had the exclusive right to manufacture new tools, together with his sons, establishes their production and sale not only in Austria, but also in other countries of Western and Eastern Europe. The accordion is quickly becoming famous.

Next, the story of the accordion takes us to Italy, in a small place near Castelfidardo. The wandering monk stopped to rest in the house of the villager Antonio Soprani, took out a strange musical instrument and began to play music on it. The son of a villager Paulo became very interested in an unprecedented wonder and purchased it from a pilgrim - the instrument was the accordion of Domian. Intuition told the young man that this tool is worth doing. He assembled several craftsmen and in 1864 opened a workshop for the production of accordions, which were then sold in nearby cities. Then P. Soprani moved to Castelfidardo and opened a factory there, where they were engaged not only in the production of tools, but also in their modernization. So in 1897 he patented his invention - the extraction of ready major, minor triads and dominant septa chords on the keyboard of his left hand.

The accordion of the Italians, where everyone loved to sing and dance, quickly won the people's love. The popularity of the instrument was growing rapidly not only in Italy, but also in other European countries, accordion factories were rapidly opening there. Subsequently, the tool, along with the emigrants having swum across the Atlantic Ocean, firmly settled on the American continent.

Today, the accordion is a relatively young instrument that continues its development and is actively fighting for national recognition. His beautiful, powerful and diverse sounding voice gives the audience great pleasure. Quite often on television screens we can see wonderful performers who, with their creativity, prove that this instrument is unique.