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International Accordion Awareness Month.
Who knew?
Accordion Trivia
* Players of the accordion include polka stars Lawrence Welk,
Myron Floren, Frankie Yankovic and "Weird Al" Yankovic, rock musicians
Bruce Hornsby, David Hidalgo of Los Lobos, Garth Hudson of The Band
and Danny Federici of the E Street Band. * The piano accordion has
been lampooned in American culture, from The Far Side to Garfield.
For your edification (this is interesting, really), taken from the
brilliant educational site Wikipedia:
An accordion is a musical instrument of the handheld bellows-driven
free reed aerophone family. It is sometimes referred to as a squeezebox.
The accordion is played by compression and expansion of a bellows,
which generates air flow across reeds; a keyboard controls which reeds
receive air flow and therefore the tones produced.
History
The accordion is one of several European inventions of the early 19th
century that used free reeds driven by a bellows. An instrument called
accordion was first patented in 1829 by Cyrill Demian in Vienna
(Interestingly, the original patent shows the name "eoline" crossed
out and replaced with "accordion" in different handwriting). Demian's
instrument bore little resemblance to modern instruments: It only had
a left hand keyboard; the right hand simply operated the bellows. One
key feature for which Damian sought the patent was the sounding of an
entire chord by depressing one key. His instrument also could sound
two different chords with the same key: one for each bellows direction
(press, draw); this is called a bisonoric action.
At that time in Vienna, mouth harmonicas with "Kanzellen" (chambers)
had already been available for many years, along with bigger
instruments driven by hand bellows. The diatonic key arrangement was
also already in use on mouth-blown instruments. Demian's patent thus
covered an accompanying instrument: an accordion played with the left
hand, opposite to the way that comtemporary chromatic hand harmonicas
were played, small and light enough to for travellers to take with
them and use to accompany singing. The patent also described
instruments with both bass and treble sections, although Demian
preferred the bass-only instrument owing to its cost and weight
advantages.
The musician Adolph M�ller described a great variety of instruments
in his 1833 "Schule f�r Accordion". At the time, Vienna and London
had a close musical relationship, with musicians often performing in
both cities in the same year, so it is possible that Wheatstone was
aware of this type of instrument and may have used them to put his key-
arrangement ideas into practice.
Jeune's flutina resembles Wheatstone's concertina in internal
construction and tone color, but it appears to complement Demian's
accordion functionally. The flutina is a one-sided bisonoric melody-
only instrument whose keys are operated with the right hand while the
bellows is operated with the left. When the two instruments are
combined, the result is quite similar to diatonic button accordions
still manufactured today.
Further innovations followed and continue to the present: Various
keyboard systems have been developed; voicings (the combination of
multiple tones at different octaves) have been developed, with
mechanisms to switch between different voices during performance;
different methods of internal construction to improve tone, stability
and durability, and so on.
The instrument was popularized in the United States by Count Guido
Deiro who was the first piano accordionist to perform in Vaudeville.
Accordion is the main instrument in the musette style of ballroom
music in France (a style now largely out of fashion) and in the 1950s
chanson singing, which has a revival in the form of neo-realism.
Today, the accordion is largely used in the Southern Brazil (state of
Rio Grande do Sul) by the traditional music groups. They play Polkas,
Chamam�s, Milongas, Tangos, Chacareras and other 3/4 compasses. The
main kind of accordion used in this region, is the 120 basses. But
they also use the 4, 8 basses and the bandoneon. Main accordion
players from Rio Grande do Sul: Luciano Maia, Arthur De Faria, Leonel
Gomez, Edilberto B�rgamo, Renato Borgetti, and others.
Not interested? Yeah, this is a fashion blog, but still, we
fashionistas have many interests. Speaking of fashionistas and
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