Piano, un quart de queue - Pleyel

Ignace Pleyel (1757–1831), who as a pupil of Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) once appeared at the court of the Esterházy princes even, was a celebrated musician of his age, although he achieved his greatest successes as an entrepreneur. The piano factory he established in Paris contributed numerous innovations to the development of the instrument, and in the next five generations became a true world-brand. The range of the neo-rococo piano, which was made in the Louis XVI style in the spirit of historicism in the late 19th century, is seven octaves. It has a cross-strung, Erard–Herz double escapement and repetition mechanism and its steel strings are stretched over a wood and cast-iron frame strengthened with castings. The gilded outer covering of its body, and the inner side of its cover, is decorated with rococo genre scenes painted in the manner of Francois Boucher (1703–1770). As the inscription written in pencil on the lower wooden frame of the right-hand pull-out candleholder attests, the person who ordered it, and its first owner, was Count Jan Zamoyski, from the old Polish aristocratic family, whose forebears once belonged among the enthusiastic 185 supporters of Chopin (1810–1849). According to the business records of the Pleyel firm, the piano left the Paris workshop on 27 June 1898, when Count Zamoyski purchased it. It was he who, in 1912, auctioned it off in Vienna, along with all the furnishings of his castle at Vottau (today Bitov, Czech Republic). The instrument was in private ownership in Budapest from the early 1920s. Only a few examples of the model were made another known example can at present be found on the ground floor of the Salle Pleyel in Paris. The artefact preserved in the Museum of Applied Arts is, then, a real rarity, the special value of which is increased by its documented provenance, aside from its qualities as a musical instrument.