Jean-Henri Pape, born as Johann Heinrich Pape and also known as Henry Pape (1 July 1789 – 2 February 1875), was a distinguished French maker of pianos and harps in the early 19th century.
Pape was born in
Sarstedt, Germany, in 1789. He arrived in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Si ...
in 1811 and secured employment with
Pleyel
Ignace Joseph Pleyel (; ; 18 June 1757 – 14 November 1831) was an Austrian-born French composer, music publisher and piano builder of the Classical period.
Life Early years
He was born in in Lower Austria, the son of a schoolmaster named Ma ...
, whose piano workshops he directed for several years. In 1815, he established his own manufacture of pianos, and almost annually for nearly forty years improved them with new inventions. His first
grand piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
s followed the
English
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system of
Broadwood and Tomkinson, though endowed with mechanical genius it was not long before he modified, then completely changed their principles of construction. Pape concentrated on defects in square and grand pianos caused by the structural gap between the sounding board and wrest plank allowing the hammers to strike the strings; the solution of placing actions above the strings had been imagined by Marius, then Hildebrand and finally Streicher in
Vienna
en, Viennese
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, timezone_DST ...
, but instead of levers and counterweights Pape's arrangement used a coil spring to raise the hammers quickly and with almost no effect on touch. This system was very successful in squares but lacked some lightness and delicacy in grand pianos. The variations he introduced in the forms and actions of upright pianos gave his instruments remarkable power.
The work of this skilled maker was rewarded by favourable reports of his instruments from the
Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale
Lactalis is a French multinational dairy products corporation, owned by the Besnier family and based in Laval, Mayenne, France. The company's former name was Besnier SA.
Lactalis is the largest dairy products group in the world, and is the s ...
on 19 September 1832 and from
l'Académie des beaux-arts de l'institut de France in 1833, and he earned a gold medal at the
French Industrial Exposition of 1834
The French Industrial Exposition of 1834 (french: Exposition des produits de l'industrie française en 1834), was the eighth in a series of eleven French national industrial expositions held to encourage improvements in progressive agriculture and ...
, as well as a medal of the
Legion of Honor
The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon ...
in 1839. Skilled in every aspect of mechanics, Pape invented a machine used to saw wood or ivory in spirals, and exhibited its results in 1827. One of his pianos was veneered with sheets of ivory nine feet long and two feet wide. A small pamphlet commemorated his contributions to the instrument (''Notice sur les inventions et perfectionnements apportes par H. Pape dans la fabrication des pianos'', Paris: Loquin: 11 pages with three lithographic plates).
Pape could not cope with the increasing industrialisation in the production of pianos. When he died in 1875 in the Paris suburb of
Asnières-sur-Seine
Asnières-sur-Seine () is a commune in the Hauts-de-Seine department and Île-de-France region of north-central France. It lies on the left bank of the river Seine, some eight kilometres from the centre of Paris in the north-western suburbs of ...
, where he had continued research into the construction of the instrument, he was impoverished.
[Catherine Michaud-Pradeilles: "Pape, Johann Heinrich", in: ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'' (MGG), biographical part, vol. 13 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2005), cc. 91–92.] For some time his son and nephew managed the factory he founded.
References
*F.J. Fétis: ''Biographie universelle des musiciens'' (Paris: Didot frères, 1867; rev. ed. 1880)
External links
Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale* Cité de la musique
maker's entry
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pape, Jean-Henri
1789 births
1875 deaths
19th-century French inventors
French musical instrument makers
Harp makers
People from Sarstedt
Piano makers