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Wheatstone, his Sighing Reed… and the Great Regondi

November 28th, 2007 by Steve Bowbrick

You want half-hour features about obscure musical instruments and their eccentric inventors? We’ve got half-hour features about obscure musical instruments and their eccentric inventors. Yes we have. This one’s about the Concertina - about the whole category of ‘free reed’ instruments, in fact. About the whole period in history that produced the ‘free reed’ instruments (the second quarter of the 19th Century) and about Victorian physicist Sir Charles Wheatstone, its inventor. Really good stuff (MP3).

Producer: Paul Evans
Production Company: BBC Wales
Listen: [MP3] [Real]

This entry was posted by by Steve Bowbrick on Wednesday, November 28th, 2007 at 1:44 am . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Wheatstone, his Sighing Reed… and the Great Regondi”

  1. wooster Says:
    November 29th, 2007 at 6:24 am

    It seems like the 19th century, with intensification in the second half, was a boom time for many instrument groups, not just free reeds. Apart from modifications to older wind instruments (piston valves on trumpets, rotary and/or piston valves on horns, better key systems for older woodwinds), there was a profusion of new instruments. Saxhorns, saxophone, euphonium, tuba, Wagner tubas, etc.

    I’m sure there was a lot of instrument design, improvement, and modification after the “settling in” of the standard instrument collection (violin family, piano, organ, and some others), but there certainly was a profusion of instrument madness in the 19th century. There’s some instruments and modifications that are commonplace now, and a lot of wacky instruments that we can only marvel at.

    Thanks for the concertina program, I can’t wait ot hear it now.

  2. steve Says:
    December 11th, 2007 at 3:55 pm

    Thanks for your comment. Good stuff. I’ve got one or two other musical instrument shows in the archive here at Speechification Central. One about the Mellotron, for instance (although I know that’s not strictly a ‘free reed instrument’!).

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