Frederick Hintz (1809-90), who came to the Kingdom of Poland from Prussia, was one of the leading representatives of the musical industry in Kalisz before the arrival in that town of the Fibiger family, whose pianos and pianofortes, produced from 1878, quickly came to dominate the local market. He was the second piano builder from Kalisz after Georg Lindemann (c. 1792-1849) whose instuments have survived to our day, and can be seen in places such as Industrial History Museum in Opatówek near Kalisz. Some of these instruments, including those in private possession, have been registered at the National Centre for Research and Documentation of Historical Heritage in Warsaw. The article presents the story of this worthy piano masterbuilder and supplements his biography with new detail, as well as discussing the construction features and external ornamentation of instruments manufactured by Hintz. The story of Hintz provides an example of a manufacturer of musical instruments working in a provincial town who has earned a permanent place not only in the pages of local history, but has also made a signficant contribution to ensuring for Kalisz a high-ranking position on the map of Polish centres of musical industry.
Polish historiography of Silesia devotes relatively little space to the German contribution to the development of this region. This concerns also the manufacture of musical instruments, including pianofortes and pianos. The main centre of such manufacture was Wroclaw, although from mid-nineteenth century it was overtaken by Legnica. Polish musicians, as well as German ones, gave concerts using instruments (particularly grand pianofortes) built by Wroclaw firms. Instruments from Wroclaw and Silesia also found their way to buyers not only from the native German areas, but also from Polish lands, such as the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Poznan. Information for this article was obtained mainly from printed sources of that period. For example, the Poznan press from the first half of the nineteenth century contained information about a number of Wroclaw piano makers who used Polish-language periodicals to reach Polish customers with their advertising. Paul de Wit's address books provided data about companies from the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. Two Silesian music lexicons from the first half of the nineteenth century, containing short biographies of makers of musical instruments, proved to be a very valuable source of information. The article introduces biographies of only a few most significant piano manufacturers in Wroclaw. As research continues, particular biographical entries are bound to be extended by additional facts still to be discovered. Among the Wroclaw firms referred to, pianofortes and pianos from eight manufacturers are more familiar to us, because examples of them have been preserved in Poland. Their record cards are to be found in Krajowy Osrodek Badan i Dokumentacji Zabytkow (National Centre for Research and Documentation of Heritage) in Warsaw. These are instruments manufactured by the following companies: Berndt, Bessalié, Kuhlboers, Leicht, Raymond, Vieweg, Welck, Welzel.
Literature devoted to Szymanowski gives little space to the relationship between the composer and his publishers. This article, based on published correspondence and papers held at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, presents minor episodes relating to the contacts between Szymanowski and Röder's printing firm in Leipzig and Stahl's music store in Berlin. These firms played a significant part during the early days of the composer's career, and his presence in the market of music publishing was due mainly to them. The very fact that young Szymanowski initially turned to the German musical community, and that a number of his early works were printed in Leipzig by Carl Gottlieb Röder's company, justifies investigating the subject both of Szymanowski's German memorabilia, and his contacts with Röder and with the Berlin music store of Albert Stahl, who was the distributor of Röder's publications in Germany. One of the aims of the article is also to explain certain aspects of the publication and printing of Szymanowski's early works. There are many inaccuracies, contradictions and errors in the literature regarding this subject, and an attempt is made here to correct them.
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