Most Famous Piano
It was P.T. Barnum who persuaded Jenny Lind - the Swedish Nightingale - to make a concert tour of the United States. After her agreement, Barnum commissioned the Chickering company to manufacture a custom grand piano for her nationwide tour, ultimately involving 93 performances. The piano was completed by August 1850; Lind arrived in September and the concert series began in Boston. Her pianist was Otto Goldschmidt, whom she married at the end of her tour.
Coincidentally, as the tour began, Henry E. Steinway (Steinweg) and his large family arrived in New York as immigrants from Germany. Henry attended the opening night of the NYC concert series but showed little interest in the diva. His profound interest was in the Chickering piano, to which he dashed for such careful examination that he nearly had to be hauled away so the concert could begin.
On December 1, 1852, a massive fire destroyed Chickering's piano factory located at 336 Washington Street in Boston. One policeman was killed. The walls of the building collapsed, and set adjoining structures on fire. A new factory was built in 1853-54 at 791 Tremont Street in Boston. From 1860-1868 space in the building was the location of the Spencer Repeating Rifle Company, who made over 100,000 rifles and carbines for the U.S. Army and sportsmen from 1862-1868. This structure still stands today. It was renovated into artist studios in 1972.
Jonas Chickering made several major contributions to the development of piano technology, most notably by introducing a one-piece, cast-iron plate to support the greater string tension of larger grand pianos.
Chickering was the largest piano manufacturer in the United States in the middle of the nineteenth century, but was surpassed in the 1860s by Steinway. In 1867, Jonas's son Frank Chickering had the Imperial Cross of the Legion of Honour, then one of the world's most prestigious non-military awards, bestowed upon him by Emperor Napoleon III for services to the art of music, one of more than 200 awards the piano manufacturer garnered over the years.
The company became in 1908 part of the American Piano Company (Ampico).
The Chickering name continues to be applied to new pianos today, as a brand name of the Baldwin Piano Company.
Read more about this topic: Chickering And Sons
Famous quotes containing the words famous and/or piano:
“Madame Sosostris, famous clairvoyante,
Had a bad cold, nevertheless
Is known to be the wisest woman in Europe,
With a wicked pack of cards.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“I will tell you what Jeanne was like. She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)