Notes

1 My essay grows out of the lecture-recitals that I have given with pianist David Cannata and, more recently, with the New York Victorian Consort (with Julia Grella O’Connell, mezzo-soprano, and Francesco Izzo, pianist). I wish to express my thanks to a number of people for their help in connection with this essay: Mr Wim Wakker, Director of Concertina Connection (Helmond, NL) and himself an extraordinary concertinist, for having read an early draft and for the many years of stimulating discussion about the instrument and its music. Thanks also to Messrs Robert Gaskins (San Francisco) and Wes Williams (North Cadbury, Somerset), both of whom checked sources for me and shared information from their own research; in addition, Mr Gaskins also read an early draft of the essay. Finally, Messrs Alexander C. N. Mackenzie of Ord and Kenneth Mobbs (both of Bristol) were kind enough to read the section on tuning and temperaments (§2). [ Back to text ]

2 The dates for the instruments – whether of manufacture or first sale – are derived from two series of Wheatstone & Co. ledgers now housed at the Horniman Museum, London; the nineteenth-century ledgers form part of the Wayne Archive (hereafter HMWA), those from the twentieth century, part of the Dickinson Archive (HMDA). Both the latter series of five volumes (SD 01–05) and the twelve volumes in the Wayne Archive (C1046–1056 and C104a) are available online at the Horniman website: www.horniman.info. For a brief description of the nineteenth-century ledgers, see Stephen Chambers, ‘Some Notes on Lachenal Concertina Production and Serial Numbers’, Papers of the International Concertina Association, 1 (2004): 15–16, n. 4 (also online at www.concertina.org/pica.php and www.concertina.com/chambers); I provide a fuller description in my ‘Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers: The Gendered Concertina in Victorian England, 1835–1870’, Royal Musical Association Research Chronicle, 39 (2006), 1–234 (also online at www.concertina.com/atlas). [ Back to text ]

3 One can gain some idea of the size and nature of the repertory around the middle of the century from the Ewer & Co.’s Universal Circulating Music Library (London: Ewer & Co. 1860): 232–7, which lists 447 titles under ‘Music for the Concertina’ (Nos. 31395–842), though this includes multiple items within a single collection; see Allan W. Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina in Victorian England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); on the Ewer Catalogue, see Nicholas Temperley, ‘Ballroom and Drawing-Room Music’, in The Romantic Age, 1800–1914, ed. Nicholas Temperley. The Athlone History of Music in Britain (London: The Athlone Press, 1981): 113. [ Back to text ]

4 Briefly, free-reed instruments have metal reeds that vibrate freely through an aperture in the frames in which they are mounted (see Fig. 3a, on p. 42); in addition to the various types of concertinas (see n. 6), such instruments include the harmonica (Christian F.L. Buschmann, 1821), accordion (Cyrillus Demian, 1829), harmonium (Alexander François Debain, 1842), and bandoneón (of tango fame – Heinrich Band, 1844), to name just a few that have continued to flourish up the present day, while Asian ancestors include the Chinese sheng, Japanese shô, and Lao-Thai khaen; see James Howarth, ‘Free-Reed Instruments’, in Musical Instruments through the Ages, ed. Anthony Baines (New York: Penguin Press, 1961); there is a comprehensive collection of essays about a wide range of free-reed instruments in Monika Lustig, ed., Harmonium und Handharmonika: 20. Musikinstrumentenbau-Symposium, Michaelstein, 19. bis 21. November 1999. Michaelsteiner Konferenzenberichte, 62 (Michaelstein: Stiftung Kloster Michaelstein, 2002); see also the four volumes of The Free-Reed Journal (1999–2002), published by Pendragon Press for The Center for the Study of Free-Reed Instruments at The Graduate Center of The City University of New York. [ Back to text ]

5 The most comprehensive biography of Wheatstone, who played a major role in the development of telegraphy (and after whom the so-called ‘Wheatstone Bridge’ – an electrical circuit that measures resistances – is named, though he did not invent it), is Brian Bowers, Sir Charles Wheatstone, FRS 1802–1875, rev. ed. Institution of Electrical Engineers History of Technology Series, 29 (London: Institution of Electrical Engineers, 2001); see also Sigalia Dostrovsky, ‘Wheatstone, Charles’, in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Coulston Gillispie (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1976), xiv: 288–91; both of these deal with Wheatstone primarily as a physicist. [ Back to text ]

6 On the instrument’s Victorian repertory and critical reception, see Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, 48–75; on its popularity in fashionable circles in particular, see Allan W. Atlas, ‘Who Bought Concertinas in the Winter of 1851? A Glimpse at the Sales Accounts of Wheatstone & Co.’, in Nineteenth-Century British Music Studies, 1, ed. Bennett Zon (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 55–87, and ‘Ladies in the Wheatstone Ledgers’. The Victorians knew two other types of concertinas, both of which, like the English, continue to flourish today: (1) the ‘Anglo’ (more accurately, ‘Anglo-German’ or ‘Anglo Continental’), derived from the diatonic German Konzertina (once adopted in England it acquired chromatic capabilities), on which each button produces two pitches depending on the direction of the bellows; though initially identified mainly with street musicians, the ‘Anglo’ eventually became the concertina of choice among players of traditional music (it is, for example, the only concertina used in the Irish tradition); (2) the ‘Duet’, like the English, produces one pitch per button, but assigns its distinct treble and bass registers to separate hands in such a way as to promote the playing of a melody with a piano-like accompaniment; this concertina became particularly popular both in the music halls and with the street-corner Salvation Army bands. For surveys of the various types of concertinas, see Atlas, ‘Concertina’, in Grove Music Online, ed. Laura Macy (www.grovemusic.com accessed 14 July 2004, hereafter GMOL, with same date of accession); Maria Dunkel, ‘Harmonikainstrumente’, in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, rev. ed., ed. Ludwig Finscher (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1996), Sachteil, iv, cols 168–210; three important studies on the concertina’s role in traditional music are Gearóid Ó hAllmhuráin, ‘The Concertina in the Traditional Music of Clare’, PhD dissertation, Queen’s University of Belfast (1995), Stuart Eydmann, ‘The Concertina as an Emblem of the Folk Music Revival in the British Isles’, British Journal of Ethnomusicology, 4 (1995): 41–50 (also online at www.concertina.com/eydmann), and Dan Worrall, The Anglo Concertina Music of William Kimber (London: English Folk Dance and Song Society, 2005); on the music hall, see Percy Honri, Working the Halls: The Honris in One Hundred Years of British Music Hall (Farnborough: D.C. Heath, 1973); the German Konzertina receives thorough treatment in Maria Dunkel, Bandonion und Konzertina: Ein Beitrag zur Darstellung des Instrumententyps. Berliner musikwissenschaftliche Arbeiten, 30 (Munich and Salzburg: Katzbichler, 1987). [ Back to text ]

7 See Atlas, The Wheatstone English Concertina, vii; ‘George Gissing’s Concertina’, The Journal of Musicology, 17 (1999): 304–18 (the latter also online at www.concertina.com/atlas). A note on this fine website: developed by Robert Gaskins, it aims, among other things, to make available original documents pertaining to the history of the concertina (all types), ‘reprint’ recent articles (though there is even a dissertation) about the instrument that had appeared in scholarly journals that generally escape the attention of most concertinists (always with permission and always with a full citation of the original publication), post previously unpublished essays (carefully vetted), and highlight the life and career of John Hill MacCann, a noted player of the Duet concertina in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (about whom Mr Gaskins is writing a biography). [ Back to text ]

8 Though I cannot even begin to estimate their number, I can note that, as of March 2004, the lively website www.concertina.net had 3,416 registered users (information from Mr Paul Schwartz, who developed the website). And since few concertinists will be reading this journal, the essay will – with the kind permission of Ashgate Publishing – eventually be posted online at www.concertina.com/atlas). [ Back to text ]