Hohner concertinas. The word concertina refers to a family of hand-held bellows-driven free reed instruments constructed according to various systems. A concertina is a free-reed musical instrument, like the various accordions and the harmonica. It has a bellows and buttons typically on both ends of it. When pressed, the buttons travel in the same direction as the bellows, unlike accordion buttons which travel perpendicularly to it. Also, each button produces one note, while accordions typically can produce chords with a single button.
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| Hohner Concertinas |
Hohner concertina was developed in England and Germany, most likely independently. The English version was invented in 1829 by Sir Charles Wheatstone and a patent for an improved version was filed by him in 1844. The German version was announced in 1834 by Carl Friedrich Uhlig. Because the hohner concertina was developed nearly contemporaneously in England and Germany, systems can be broadly divided into English, German, and Anglo-German types. To a player proficient in one of these systems, hohner concertinas constructed according to a different system may be quite unfamiliar.
English Type
English style hohner concertinas traditionally share several features:
* Unisonoric (push and draw on each button yield the same note);
* Fully chromatic;
* Reeds individually mounted on a frame, laid flat on a chambered reedpan with a pair of reeds in each chamber;
* Each button has a pivot;
* Hexagon shaped ends (though octagons and other shapes were produced as well, see above)).
German Type
German style hohner concertinas traditionally share several features:
* Bisonoric (each button produces a different note on the push and the draw of the bellows);
* Diatonic or semi-chromatic;
* Reeds are mounted on a long plate, with separate chambers for each set of reeds;
* The buttons in each row pivot on a shared pivot arm;
* Square shaped ends.
Frequently, German hohner concertinas also use more than one reed for each note to produce a fuller sound. Depending on the manufacturer, each note may have up to five reeds spread across three octaves. Sometimes these reeds may be slightly out of tune with each other in order to produce a vibrato effect; this is called wet, musette, or Chicago tuning. With dry or Minnesota tuning the reeds are in tune with each other and do not produce this effect. There is also the traditional tuning of an octave spread as establish by Herr Lange in the nineteenth century.
One of types of Hohner concertinas is Chemnitzer concertina. A Hohner Chemnitzer concertina is a musical instrument of the hand-held bellows-driven free-reed category, sometimes called squeezeboxes. Hohner Chemnitzer concertina is most closely related to the Bandoneón (German spelling: Bandonion), more distantly to the other concertinas, and accordions. There are various German hohner concertina systems which share common construction features and core button layout. In the United States, particularly in the Midwest, the term "concertina" often refers to the Chemnitzer concertina. Chemnitzer Concertinas are bisonoric (see above) and are closely related to the bandoneón, but with a somewhat different keyboard layout and decorative style, with some mechanical innovations pioneered by German-American instrument builder and inventor Otto Schlicht.
Hohner Chemnitzer concertina has been predominantly used in folk music, especially Polka music played in Central and Eastern Europeans and by nineteen- and twentieth century immigrants to the United States from those regions. However hohner concertinas with Chemnitzer, especially in its 52-button and larger versions, is capable of performing in other musical contexts.
