More about the accordion

Accordion is an instrument that belongs to the free reed aerophone family; generally it consists of two parts: the buttons or the keyboard from each side and the bellows connecting them in the middle. The sound is produced by the reeds inside the instrument that vibrate by compression and expansion of the bellows, the keyboard regulates the air flow in reeds, producing tones.

There are many types of accordions nowadays, starting from the ancient Chinese instrument called “Cheng”, which was the first known instrument to use the free vibrating reed principle, and going to the hand harmonicas, concertinas, diatonic, piano and well-known chromatic accordions, using the Stradella bass system, that are preferred to play by many classical music performers. The development of this instrument is now finished with the new modern versions of accordion that include almost all attributes of the synthesizer.

However, the instrument called accordion was first patented in 1829 by Cyrill Demian in Vienna. But there were many (sometimes very original but though successful) tries of improving it in some way, like the one of the German instrument maker Christian Friedrich Buschmann (1775-1832) who expanded bellows into a small portable keyboard with the vibrating reeds inside it, and left Berlin in 1829 traveling with his invention throughout the world and spreading the fame of accordion. The other very important invention in both technical and cultural meanings was made by Pietro Deiro, who played on his custom built piano accordion at the New York concert at the Washington Square Theatre in 1909, which brought him the fame of the father of the American accordion playing.

Constantly growing popularity of this instrument was requiring its mass production and the urgent need in textbooks. The manufacturing of accordion began in 1860’s; Hohner, Soprani and Dallape were the leaders of this industry at that time. But the hand-made accordions are still considered the best ones because of a totally different tonal quality of their precisely made and placed reeds. The first instruction manuals are dated by 1832; they included original music and arrangements of familiar pieces, and were written and published by A.Reisner in Paris. Later that year was published Pichenot's Methode pour l'accordeon, and the following year in Vienna, in 1834 – the manual by Adolph Muller. Since that time by nowadays countless accordion guides for beginners were published, explaining the main techniques of playing nearly every type of accordion.

Nowadays, accordion music is presented by the large number of music styles and there are not only classical ones among them, but also new variety of genres that entirely change our perception of this charming and never dying instrument.