Johann Andreas Stein
Johann (Georg) Andreas Stein (16 May 1728 – 29 February 1792) was an outstanding German maker of keyboard instruments, a central figure in the history of the piano.
From August 1748 to January 1749, he worked as a journeyman at two workshops, those of Johann Andreas Silbermann in Strasbourg and of Franz Jakob Späth in Regensburg.
According to a letter he wrote, he gave up organ building in the 1760s in order to devote himself to stringed keyboard instruments.
He also built some more extraordinary keyboard instruments, including the "Poli-Toni-Clavichordium" (described in the Augsburg Intelligenzblatt in 1769) that combined a large harpsichord having four choirs of strings (registration 8', 8', 8', 16') with a piano.
The 1769 description of the expressive possibilities of the Poli-Tono-Clavichordium nonetheless shows Stein's confidence in stringed keyboard instruments that in the end led him to the invention of his so-called German hammer action shortly before 1780.
He also made trips to other cities in Germany and Switzerland to deliver instruments as evidenced in his notebook.
Two clavichords by Stein survive, one of them, now in the Budapest National Museum, was bought by Leopold Mozart for practising while travelling.
One instrument combining a piano and a single rank of organ pipes survives in Gothenburg’s Historical Museum.
About fifteen Hammerflügel (wing-shaped pianos) bearing Stein's label survive, ranging in date from 1780 to 1794 (sic).
Apart from the music desk, typical of Dulcken's work, the instrument has the appearance of a piano by Stein.
The escapement hopper pulled down on the beak as it rose, in turn causing the hammer (the other end of the lever) to fly upward and strike the string.
The escapement hopper was hinged and sprung; this permitted the beak to push past it as the key sank back to rest position.
Stein's later pianos, starting with the one described by Mozart in 1777, had a knee lever for disengaging all the dampers at once, permitting the equivalent of modern piano pedaling[1] Mozart visited and befriended Stein in Augsburg in 1777, during the (unsuccessful) job-hunting tour that took him also to Mannheim and Paris.
It is true that he does not sell a pianoforte of this kind for less than three hundred gulden, but the trouble and the labour which Stein puts into the making of it cannot be paid for.
When he has finished making one for a clavier, he places it in the open air, exposing it to rain, snow, the heat of the sun and all the devils in order that it may crack.
In 1794, Nannette, together with her husband Andreas Streicher (1761–1833), who she married in the same year, and her brother Matthäus Stein (1776–1842), moved her family’s piano-making firm from Augsburg, where it was founded by her father, to Vienna, and continued the family business under her husband's name, Streicher.
Some more improvements were made by 1811, but after that date her design was maintained largely unchanged until Johann Baptist Streicher (1796–1871), her son, became joint owner of the firm with his mother in 1823.
In 1796 André married Maria Theresia Dischler (1769–1855), an event marked by a letter from Beethoven including his congratulations.
Despite Andreas Streicher’s adverse comments (mostly of a personal nature to do with André Stein’s reputedly difficult character), André Stein made fine instruments and developed an individual style thought by some to exceed that of his sister Nannette.
Carl Andreas continued in his father’s footsteps as a piano maker but also made a name as a composer and as a pianist.
