John Broadwood & Sons

John Broadwood & Sons is an English piano manufacturer, founded in 1728 by Burkat Shudi and continued after his death in 1773 by John Broadwood.

John Broadwood, a Scottish joiner and cabinetmaker, came to London in 1761 and began to work for the Swiss harpsichord manufacturer Burkat Shudi. He married Shudi's daughter eight years later and became a partner in the firm in 1770. As the popularity of the harpsichord declined, the firm concentrated increasingly on the manufacture of pianos, abandoning the harpsichord altogether in 1793.

Broadwood's son, James Shudi Broadwood, had worked for the firm since 1785, and, in 1795, the firm began to trade as John Broadwood & Son. When Broadwood's third son, Thomas Broadwood, became a partner in 1808, the firm assumed the name of John Broadwood & Sons Ltd, which it retains to this day. The firm's busiest time period was during the 1850s, when approximately 2,500 instruments were produced annually.

Broadwood produced his first square piano in 1771, after the model of Johannes Zumpe, and worked assiduously to develop and refine the instrument, moving the wrest plank of the earlier pianoforte, which had sat to the side of the case as in the clavichord, to the back of the case in 1781, straightening the keys, and replacing the hand stops with pedals. In 1785 Thomas Jefferson, later to be third President of the United States, visited Broadwood in Great Pulteney Street, Soho, to discuss musical instruments. In 1789, at Jan Ladislav Dussek's suggestion, he extended the range of his grand piano beyond five octaves to CC in the treble, and again to six full octaves in 1794. The improved instruments became popular with musicians such as Joseph Haydn, who used them on his first visit to London in 1791.

Ludwig van Beethoven received a six octave Broadwood in 1818, a gift from Thomas Broadwood, which he kept for the rest of his life. Although his impaired hearing may well have prevented him appreciating its tone, he seems to have preferred it to his Erard which had a similar range. Above the company label on the front edge of the pin block the following text can be read: ″Hoc Instrumentum est Thomae Broadwood (Londrini) donum propter ingenium illustrissime Beethoven.″ [This instrument is a gift from Thomas Broadwood of London in recognition of the most illustrious genius of Beethoven.]

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