The Accordion in the 19th Century - Gorka Hermosa

II.1.2- Comments on the invention of the accordion
There are some clues that there were accordions before Demian’s and evidence
that in the years following Demian’s patent there were accordions which were given
different names, before middle 19 th c. when the term accordion (accordéon, acordeón,
Akkordeon, fisarmonica, bayan, sanfona... in accordance to the language) started to
catch on to denominate the whole family of instruments. We will put forward several
observations below that will question the assumption that Demian was the inventor of
the accordion: [210]
• We cannot state that Demian invented the accordion to the same extent that
we say that Sax invented the saxophone or that Wheatstone invented the
concertina. Demian patented a toy, an incomplete instrument that required
extensive organologic developments to make it suitable to make music. The
term accordion refers a family of instruments enormously varied and made
up of multitude of models or prototypes that have experienced varying
spread. The fact is that each model of accordion has a corresponding
inventor or a person who accomplished an organologic development over the
previous model.
• The first free reed keyboard instrument whose bellows was operated with the
left arm of the player was Kirsnik-Kratzenstein’s organ in 1780, which
resembles the current accordion more than the accordion by Demian in 1829.
[197, 262]
• The concertina and the harmonium are much closer to the current accordion
than Demian’s, regarding the conception of melody and polyphony, and
underwent a noteworthy evolution along with the 19 th c. music. [3, 200, 202, 240,
276, 306, 355, 363]
• Several sources [10] regard the handaeoline as the first
accordion. It was patented in 1822 78 by Christian Friedrich
Ludwig Buschmann (1805-1864). It was an instrument
similar to the harmonica, but the air was blown into by
means of a bellows.
22
Fig. 41: Handaeoline 79 .
• In 1827 Marie Candide Buffet (1797-1859) invented a model of harmonica
made of metal which he denominated accordion, an item of information that
has misled umpteen authors about the invention of the accordion. [39, 66]
78 According to Mensing [190], in 1821.
79 Fig. taken from: Mirek [197] page 6.