Showing posts with label apprenticeship. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apprenticeship. Show all posts

Monday 22 September 2014

Memoirs of an Apprentice Piano Tuner

At the start of my apprenticeship - back in 1973, pianos were still being made in the UK. In those early days I was bewildered by the sheer number of piano names. When the older apprentices talked about these obscure and odd-sounding names, it was almost like listening to a foreign language. Strange how quickly one makes sense of these things. Very soon I was spouting the same in-house piano-speak and relishing the idea of confusing any unfortunate outsider in ear shot.

There was an unofficial rating system of the pianos in the shop - rated by the accumulated experience of young apprentices! From memory, the order from the preferred to the unfavoured was something like: Welmar,  Knight, Kemble, Monnington & Weston, Eavestaffe, Barrett & Robinson, Zender, Bentley. (This order might be disputed by others.)  

I do not remember seeing new European pianos in the shop other than the occasional Zimmerman - but down in the workshop among the apprentices, these were not liked at all. 

The nearest piano factory to where I lived was Bentley's at Stroud. We occasionally passed it while en route to Cheltenham on the A46 but because the Bentley pianos of the 70s were never well thought of, their factory at Woodchester did not particularly capture my interest.

Our workshop was beneath the grand Georgian streets of Bath. We sometimes referred to it as the crypt. The workshop itself had plenty of daylight - about half the area of roof/ceiling was of glass which was likely to leak when the weather was bad. On summer afternoons, while still working, we would gently cook in the sun's heat which was magnified through the glass.

The warehouse/store next to the workshop had no natural light at all and was poorly lit, dusty and full of old pianos in for storage or repair. The air was thick with the smell of bone glue, piano felt and dust - a unique blend of aromas which belongs only in piano workshops.

On my very first day, I was given a job cleaning action parts. The foreman was an older local guy who talked with the broadest Somerset accent I'd ever heard. He asked me a question which even in my extreme effort to be polite I could not decipher, so I had to say "Pardon?" Clearly annoyed, he looked at me suspiciously and said very slowly and deliberately, "So you think you've got good ears then?" I gave the only answer a young boy who wanted to be a piano tuner could give: "Yes!"  


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pianology

Sunday 11 August 2013

Bosendorfer Pianos - The Early Years

 There were many piano builders in Vienna in 1828 when Ignaz Bosendorfer began building his pianos.  At 19, Ignaz Bosendofer began an apprenticeship with the organ & piano builder Joseph Brodman.

When he was 34 years old he took over the Brodman workshops and set about improving their pianos. The Viennese pianos were traditionally mellow in sound with a light and easy touch of the action. Improving the construction allowed for heavier strings and a stronger action, thus making the tone much more like that of the modern piano. 

In the piano world, high quality speaks for itself - the rugged reliability of Bösendorfer pianos won the admiration of virtuososFranz Liszt, known for his formidable technique found it difficult to find a piano that could withstand his vigourous playing - until friends suggested he try a Bosendorfer Piano for his recitals.
Using a Bosendorfer, he was impressed to find at the end of the recital, the piano was undamaged! This sensational moment established the Bosendorfer Piano's reputation and their long association with Franz Liszt who wrote, “The perfection of a Bösendorfer exceeds my most ideal expectations...”
Bösendorfer Pianos were soon exported to the rest of Europe and overseas so that Bosendorfer became the best-known of all Austrian pianos.
About 1860, Ludwig Bösendorfer succeeded his father in carrying on the business and moving to a new factory in New Vienna. Bösendorfer had to move again ten years later to cope with the growing demand for Bosendorfer Pianos.
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© Steve Burden