Silbermann

Biography

Silbermann is identified by Dolge as an organ builder who also built early pianos. When Johann Sebastian Bach criticized his first pianos in harsh terms, the criticism wounded the 'proud and sensitive artisan,' and Dolge suggests it is questionable whether Silbermann would have worked to improve his pianos at all had Bach not provoked him. Determined to win Bach's approval, Silbermann reworked his design, and he succeeded: Bach later played and praised the improved Silbermann pianos at the New Palace in Potsdam in the presence of Frederick the Great, an event Dolge frames as the first testimonial ever given by a musician to a piano maker. No dates, nationality, or further career details are given for Silbermann in this excerpt beyond his role in this episode with Bach. Silbermann is named by Dolge, alongside Christofori, as one of the early piano makers whose hammers were made of a small wooden block covered with soft leather. Dolge cites this simple hammer construction as the starting point from which later makers developed larger, wedge-shaped hammers with layered coverings of sole leather, elkskin, and buckskin or felt to meet the demands of increased tone volume. Silbermann is named, alongside Christofori and Stein, among the makers whose early pianofortes possessed the wing (grand) form, a shape that had first been used, per Dolge, by Geronimo in 1521. No further biographical detail about Silbermann is given in this section.

Highlights

• Named, along with Christofori and Stein, among the makers whose early pianofortes possessed the wing (grand) form.
• Used a hammer consisting of a small wooden block covered with soft leather, per Dolge's account of the earliest piano hammers
• His early pianos were condemned by Johann Sebastian Bach, prompting him to improve them
• Eventually built pianos that won Bach's approval and were played before Frederick the Great at Potsdam

Source

Alfred Dolge, Pianos and Their Makers, Vol. I (1911), p. 97.

Public domain.