Life
He learned his trade in part at the Silberman workshop in Strasbourg (1748–9), working for Johann Andreas Silbermann, nephew and pupil of the great instrument maker Gottfried Silbermann. He settled in Augsburg, where he also served as an organist.
He built not just pianos, but other keyboard instruments, some of them of novel invention. One extraordinary instrument, called the "Poli-Toni-Clavichordium" (1796), combined a large harpsichord having four choirs of strings (registration 8', 8', 8', 16') with a piano. He also built (1772) the "Melodika," a small organ in which the player's touch could alter volume; thus it stood to regular organs much as pianos do to the harpsichord. He also built "vis-à-vis" instruments, with a piano and a harpsichord facing one another in a single case.
Toward the end of his life, Stein's business was largely taken over by his daughter Nannette (see below). Pianos with his name after 1790 are held to be Nannette's work, as Stein was himself too ill to build instruments by this date.
Read more about this topic: Johann Andreas Stein
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“Well, on the official record you’re my son. But on this post you’re just another trooper. You heard me tell the recruits what I need from them. Twice that I will expect from you.... You’ve chosen my way of life. I hope you have the guts enough to endure it. But put outa your mind any romantic ideas that it’s a way to glory. It’s a life of suffering and of hardship and uncompromising devotion to your oath and your duty.”
—James Kevin McGuinness, and John Ford. Lt. Col. Kirby Yorke (John Wayne)
“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. Government programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth!”
—Ronald Reagan (b. 1911)
“It is conceivable at least that a late generation, such as we presumably are, has particular need of the sketch, in order not to be strangled to death by inherited conceptions which preclude new births.... The sketch has direction, but no ending; the sketch as reflection of a view of life that is no longer conclusive, or is not yet conclusive.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)