A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Steinway and Sons

by Alfred James Hipkins

STEINWAY AND SONS, an eminent firm of pianoforte makers in New York, distinguished by the merit of their instruments and by their commercial enterprise, which, in comparatively few years, have placed their firm in equal rank with those famous older makers in Europe whose achievements in the improvement and development of the instrument have become historical.

Henry Engelhard Steinway (originally Steinweg) was born February 15, 1797, at Wolfshagen, in the Duchy of Brunswick. The youngest of a family of twelve, at the early age of 15 he was the sole survivor of his family. From the age of 17 to 21 he served in the army, and during that time his natural taste for music led him to learn the zither. On his discharge, which was honourably obtained, from the army, he thought of becoming a cabinet-maker, but was too old to serve the five years apprenticeship and five years as journeyman which the guild required prior to his becoming a master. He therefore went for a year to an irregular master, and then turned to organ-building, which was free from the narrow limits of a guild. Circumstances however, allowed him in 1825 to marry and settle as a cabinet-maker at Seesen, near the Hartz mountains, where he had been already working; and in that year (Nov. 25) his eldest son Theodore was born. Steinway in a few years turned his attention to piano-making, and in 1839 exhibited a grand and two square pianos at the State Fair of Brunswick. Seesen being in Hanoverian territory, the foundation of the Prussian 'Zollverein' in 1845 brought Steinway's hitherto flourishing business to a standstill, and the revolution of 1848 destroyed it entirely. The course of events now induced Steinway to leave Germany, and in April 1849 he emigrated to New York, whither his family, with the exception of Theodore, the eldest son, followed him the next year. For three years the father and the three sons, Charles, Henry, and William, worked in different New York piano factories. In March 1853 they agreed to unite and start in business on their own account, and the firm of 'Steinway & Sons' was established. In 1855 they exhibited a square piano in which the American iron frame principle of a single casting was combined with a cross or overstrung scale, forming the foundation of the so-called 'Steinway system,' which, as applied to grand pianos, attracted great attention in the London International Exhibition of 1862. Both Charles and Henry Steinway dying in 1865, Theodore, the eldest son, disposed of his business in Brunswick and became a partner of the New York firm. Their spacious concert-room there was built and opened in 1866. About this time the Steinways began to make upright pianos, and their instruments of all kinds shown at Paris in the Universal Exhibition of 1867, not only gained them success, but became models for Germany, to the great improvement of the German make and trade. Henry Steinway, the father, died in 1871. We may quote from the New York Encyclopædia of Contemporary Biography the summary of his life: 'By virtue of his abilities and his inborn strength of character, he, an orphan boy, became one of the greatest manufacturers in his special industry, not only of his own country, but of the world.' Theodore and William Steinway are now (1882) the senior partners of the firm. In 1875 they opened a branch of their business in London, to which a concert-room is attached, and in 1880 another branch establishment at Hamburg. [App. p.820 "Add date of death of Theodore Steinway, March 25, 1889."]

[ A. J. H. ]