Louis-Constantin Boisselot (11 March 1809 – 5 June 1850 in

Marseille Marseille ( , , ; also spelled in English as Marseilles; oc, Marselha ) is the prefecture of the French department of Bouches-du-Rhône and capital of the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region. Situated in the camargue region of southern Franc ...

) was a French piano manufacturer and the great artisan of the creation of the house of Boisselot in Marseille. Boisselot was born in

Montpellier Montpellier (, , ; oc, Montpelhièr ) is a city in southern France near the Mediterranean Sea. One of the largest urban centres in the region of Occitania (administrative region), Occitania, Montpellier is the prefecture of the Departments of ...

. He married Fortunée Funaro (1816–?), the daughter of a merchant at Marseille, on 25 November 1835. They had a son, Marie-Louis-François Boisselot (1845–1902), known simply as Franz, because he had as godfather

Franz Liszt Franz Liszt, in modern usage ''Liszt Ferenc'' . Liszt's Hungarian passport spelled his given name as "Ferencz". An orthographic reform of the Hungarian language in 1922 (which was 36 years after Liszt's death) changed the letter "cz" to simpl ...

(1811–1886), a long-time friend of the family. In 1843, he patented a piano equipped with sympathetic strings sounding an octave above, an idea that would eventually lead to

Blüthner Julius Blüthner Pianofortefabrik GmbH, is a piano-manufacturing company in Leipzig, Germany.

's 1873 aliquot scaling patent for grand pianos and at the Paris Exposition the following year, where he presented another piano with a "pedal tone" which preceded the "sostenuto mechanism" that

Steinway Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway (), is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in Manhattan by German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth led to the opening of a ...

re-introduced in 1874. He succeeded his father

Jean-Louis Boisselot Jean-Baptiste-Louis Boisselot (18 August 1782 – 21 May 1847) was the founder of the piano company Boisselot & Fils. Coming from a family of violin makers based in Montpellier around 1770, he started his business by selling scores and musical ins ...

in the manufacture of pianos in 1847, a business continued by successive generations of his family until the late nineteenth century. The collections of the

Klassik Stiftung Weimar The Klassik Stiftung Weimar (''Classical Foundation Weimar'') is one of the largest and most significant cultural institutions in Germany. It owns more than 20 museums, palaces, historic houses and parks, as well as literary and art collections, ...

include around fifty historical musical instruments. A highlight is the grand piano from the Boisselot & Fils workshop (Marseille 1846), which was given to

as a gift and on which the compositions of the Weimar years were created. Liszt expressed his devotion to this instrument in his letter to

Xavier Boisselot Dominique-François-Xavier Boisselot (3 December 1811 – 8 April 1893) was a French composer and musical-instrument manufacturer. He is the author of the opéra-comique in three acts ''Ne touchez pas à la reine'' to a libretto by Eugène Scribe ...

in 1862: ''“Although the keys are nearly worn through by the battles fought upon them by the music of the past, present and future, I will never agree to change it, and have resolved to keep it until the end of my days, as a favoured work associate”''.

Paul McNulty Paul Joseph McNulty (born January 31, 1958) is an American attorney and university administrator who is currently the ninth president of Grove City College. He served as the Deputy Attorney General of the United States from March 17, 2006, to Jul ...

was chosen by

to make a copy of Liszt’s personal Boisselot 1846 piano. The piano was made by 200 Liszt’s celebration as a project of the South German government. Both original and copy are property of Stiftung Weimar.

External links

Boisselot op. 2800, 1846 Liszt's Boisselot piano in Weimar
* ttps://www.klassik-stiftung.de/forschung/sammlungen-bestaende/sammlung/musikinstrumente/ Musikinstrumente(German)
Schätze in Gefahr: Liszts Hammerklavier
(German)

References

1809 births 1850 deaths 19th-century French businesspeople 19th-century male musicians 19th-century musicians Businesspeople from Montpellier Piano makers {{France-business-bio-stub

External links

See also

References