red Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 The folded bellows of a concertina are so well known that anything, from office files to navy bell bottoms, are described using the word "concertina". Where did Charles Wheatstone get the idea from? On browsing through Diderot's Encyclopaedia (French mid 18c) I came across this illustration of the bellows of a courtly bagpipe, the "Musette du Couer". Although at it's peak a hundred years before Wheatstone's time, they must surely have been known to him, I wonder was this the source of his idea for the Concertina's Bellows? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Timson Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Bellows on free reed instruments were around before CW got to work. The flutina certainly predates the concertina. I got this quote of Button Box's web site:- Flutinas seem to have been the very earliest accordions made. Cyrill Demian has been credited as inventing a free-reeded bellowsed instrument in the late 1820's and patented his first one on May 6th 1829. It had 5 paddle-like buttons that each played a 5-note chord (actually 10 chords: one each for the pushes and one for the pulls). He called this an "accordion" (note the spelling!). Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red Posted February 28, 2005 Author Share Posted February 28, 2005 Sorry, but the illustration of the bellows I attached hasn't appeared! My point was that these particular bellows are folded. And is still pertinent to the earlier Flutina, which was after all, like the Musette, French. musette_bellows.bmp Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Timson Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Sorry, all I get when I try and open the file is a white square. But bellows have been around in many forms for many years, not least for use in powering organs since medieval times. Trying to find their first use in a musical instrument would, I suspect, be like trying to trace the first use of a free reed in China. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Henk van Aalten Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 (edited) After giving some technical feed-back in the paralel topic I would like to react on the bellows item. As Chris said, they are used for ages in organs. I think they might be used at least also for ages to blow air into fires (like a blacksmith uses). Edited February 28, 2005 by Henk van Aalten Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Timson Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Thanks, Henk, I've seen the picture now. So what we have is a bellows blown bagpipe. A little Googling gives me:- Within about the last 300 years, there are many surviving examples of bagpipes. In much of Northern Europe, folk instruments became fashionable with the wealthy classes during the renaissance and romantic eras. Around this time, bellows blown instruments became common in France. Whether the bellows migrated from France to England and Ireland, or whether similar fashions and developments happened simultaneously in the British Isles is uncertain, but from 17th century onwards, bellows-blown instruments start to emerge in England. This is from the story of bagpipes in England. As I say, bellows have been around for a long time. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richard Morse Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Bellows on free reed instruments were around before CW got to work. The flutina certainly predates the concertina. I got this quote of Button Box's web site: "Flutinas seem to have been the very earliest accordions made. Cyrill Demian has been credited as inventing a free-reeded bellowsed instrument in the late 1820's and patented his first one on May 6th 1829. It had 5 paddle-like buttons that each played a 5-note chord (actually 10 chords: one each for the pushes and one for the pulls). He called this an "accordion" (note the spelling!)." Hmmm.... It appears that I wasn't writing as clearly as I should have.... Flutinas are AMONGST the earliest accordions known. CD's accordion was not a flutina - yet flutinas are accordions (even if they don't have chords). Flutinas came about in France in the early 1830's, only few years after CD's and CW's inventions. I've updated our Flutina page accordingly.... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Chambers Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 Bellows on free reed instruments were around before CW got to work. The flutina certainly predates the concertina. I got this quote of Button Box's web site:-Flutinas seem to have been the very earliest accordions made. Cyrill Demian has been credited as inventing a free-reeded bellowsed instrument in the late 1820's and patented his first one on May 6th 1829. It had 5 paddle-like buttons that each played a 5-note chord (actually 10 chords: one each for the pushes and one for the pulls). He called this an "accordion" (note the spelling!). <{POST_SNAPBACK}> It is certain that both the concertina and the French accordion (a later variant of which was the "flutina") developed out of Demian's 1829 Patent accordion in the early 1830's. But bellows have been around in many forms for many years, not least for use in powering organs since medieval times.<{POST_SNAPBACK}> And Cyrill Demian was by trade an organ builder. Mystery solved ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Timson Posted February 28, 2005 Share Posted February 28, 2005 (edited) Thanks, Rich. I don't think it changes my basic point that putting bellows on the successor to the symphonium was not a big leap of the imagination for Wheatstone (nice though it would be to believe it was) but the sort of thing many people were doing at the time. Bellows driven free reed was, as it were, in the air. The clever intellectual thing that CW did was the symphonium keyboard. The details of construction beyond that (I believe but I have no evidence, Stephen?) I imagine would have been a group development between Wheatstone and the craftsmen who made them. Chris Edited to add PS: Stephen was posting chapter and verse at the same time as I was hypothesing. Smaller mystery solved! Edited March 7, 2005 by Chris Timson Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
red Posted February 28, 2005 Author Share Posted February 28, 2005 I am sorry for raising a topic and adding the illustration in such a wooly-minded way, and thank you all for ideas and indeed help. But the point I was making was not about the use of bellows, which have been around, at the least, since man started to smelt copper thousands of years, but the use of multiple folded bellows as on the musette I attempted to show. If such bellows are used in organs(and what's a bagpipe but a simple organ) then I rest my case. I take comfort that something useful has come out of this. Thanks again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
allan atlas Posted March 7, 2005 Share Posted March 7, 2005 FOLKS: there are bellows-driven organs that go way back to the middle ages. . . . ..on small instruments, these were pumped by the player him/herself. . . .held the instrument in such a way that it could be played with one hand and pumped with another. . . . .larger instruments needed two people. . . . .there's a good illustration (a woodcut) by Israel van Meckenem, AN ORGANIST AND HIS WIFE, c. 1490................Allan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
otsaku Posted March 7, 2005 Share Posted March 7, 2005 This is straying a bit from the topic but... are there concertinas with rubber bellows? I was looking at a bicycle today and theres was a concertina'd rubber cover on it and it got me thinking. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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