Julius Ferdinand Blüthner (11 March 1824 - 13 April 1910) was a German
piano
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...
maker and founder of the
Blüthner
Julius Blüthner Pianofortefabrik GmbH is a piano-manufacturing company in Leipzig, Germany. piano factory.
Biography
Blüthner was born in Falkenhain (now
Meuselwitz
Meuselwitz () is a town in the Altenburger Land district, in Thuringia, Germany. It is situated 12 km northwest of Altenburg and 11 km east of Zeitz.
History
During World War II, a subcamp of the Buchenwald concentration camp operated ...
),
Thuringia
Thuringia (; officially the Free State of Thuringia, ) is one of Germany, Germany's 16 States of Germany, states. With 2.1 million people, it is 12th-largest by population, and with 16,171 square kilometers, it is 11th-largest in area.
Er ...
. In 1853 he founded a
piano
A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...
-manufacturing company in
Leipzig
Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
Germany. Blüthner pianos had an early success at exhibitions, conservatories and the concert stage. Further inventions and innovations lead Blüthner to patent a ''repetition action'', and, in 1873, the aliquot scaling patent for grand pianos. This added a fourth,
sympathetic (''aliquot'') string to each trichord group in the treble to enrich the piano's weakest register by enhancing the
overtone
An overtone is any resonant frequency above the fundamental frequency of a sound. (An overtone may or may not be a harmonic) In other words, overtones are all pitches higher than the lowest pitch within an individual sound; the fundamental i ...
spectrum of the instrument. He died, aged 86, in
Leipzig
Leipzig (, ; ; Upper Saxon: ; ) is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Saxony. The city has a population of 628,718 inhabitants as of 2023. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, eighth-largest city in Ge ...
.
External links
Company homepage of BlüthnerGerman Piano ImportsBluthner Pianos London
1824 births
1910 deaths
People from Meuselwitz
Piano makers
{{Germany-business-bio-stub