The Accordion in the 19th Century - Gorka Hermosa

As a summary of the situation of the diatonic accordion in the popular music of
the 19 th c., we display this map, in which the names of the most important accordionists
are written in capital letters and others, not so important, in lower case letters:
III.2.4- Earliest recordings
Fig. 114: Map of outstanding accordionists of the 19 th century.
To close this section concerning the diatonic accordion in the 19 th c. popular
music we will briefly analyze the recording industry, which was born at the end of the
century and soon reflected one of the most in vogue cultural manifestations at the time:
the accordion. The first known recording by an accordionist was the one by Peter
Nevsky in 1901 in Saint Petersburg (Russia), singing and playing the accordion
accompanied by a piano the popular song Stripe-like Field for the record company
Gramophone Concert. That same year, he recorded the comic song New Waves. He
recorded a total of twenty titles in Saint Petersburg and Berlin. [345, 346, 395]
The following recordings were performed by: Wyper Brothers in Great Britain in
1903 [55], an unknown accordionist performed a March by Metallo 211 in 1903 [202], John
Kimmel recorded in 1904 in the USA [366], Edvard Mathisen recorded in Norway in
1904 for Gramophon and in 1905 in Pathé [40], V. Greenberg recorded in Ukraine in
1904 [395] and E. Charlier recorded the waltz Orfelia in France in 1906 [202].
211 Probably the Italian Navy March (entitled Three Trees) by Gerardo Metallo (1871-1946)
48