Scan 364
The American history and encyclopedia of music …, 1908
6 lines. Read by computer on 10 September 2026. Printed page 316. See the scan on archive.org.
1maine made a harpsichord of "a most agreeable and melodious volume and character," and also that a company of London actors made use of it at a benefit performance in the old John Street Theatre in New York.
3It is generally believed that the first bona fide piano made in this country was one constructed the year of the beginning of the Revolution by John Behrent (sometimes called Belmont) in Philadelphia, which at that time was the principal seat of trade as well as the social and artistic center of the colonies. He announced it as "an extraordinary instrument of the name of pianoforte of mahogany in the manner of a harpsichord, with hammers and several changes." There were other claimants to fame about that time. In 1785 James Juliann of the same city appears to have produced "the great American piano of his own invention," and in the same year in New York, George Ulshoefer, a German, exhibited a piano of his own make in the coffee room of the City tavern, which he styled "George Ulshoefer's patent high-strung pianoforte." In the Quaker City Charles Albrecht made instruments before 1789, and the fame of their beautiful inlaid cases is not yet dead.
5The New York Independent Gazette for May 23, 1786, announces the arrival of Charles Taws, an Englishman, "who builds and repairs finger and barrel organs. He also repairs and tunes pianofortes, harpsichords and guitars." Two years later Taws moved to Philadelphia and engaged in the trade in which two of his sons succeeded him. In 1729 John Isaac Hawkins, another Britisher, came to Philadelphia, where he invented the cottage piano which he called a "portable grand." This versatile fellow, according to one contemporary, was a civil engineer, poet, preacher, phrenologist and inventor of ever pointed pencils. In the year 1800 Thomas Jefferson, writing to his daughter from Philadelphia, remarks, "A very ingenious, modest and poor young man in Philadelphia has invented one of the prettiest improvements in the pianoforte that I have ever seen and it has tempted me to engage one for Monticello. His strings are
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