G'day again Foolestroupe,

I'm not sure of what you speak with: "…preceded or postdated the addition of the real piano keyboard by Pietro Deiro (allegedly in 1920) …"

The first application of a full 'piano keyboard' to the free-reed accordion was by the French in the mid 1850s … following sharply on the development of tabletop free-reed 'organs' such as the 1850 "Harmoniette", which had left-hand bellows, but no chords. Busson's 1855 "Harmoniflute" (… the first to have a piano-style keyboard …) had 3½ octaves of 'piano' keys but either no chords - or just a very simple drone. The systematic (and, in its way, ingenious) 'Stradella' bass seems to have eluded the French and fell to the more harmonious Italians.

Dated examples of both the above instruments appear in Le Fisarmoniche (rather inaccurately given the English title: Piano-Accordions by its publishers Itinerari d'immagini) – a small illustrated catalogue of the accordion (/melodion/flautina/concertina/bandoneon) collection of the MUSEO miscellaneo GALBIATI, Brugherio, where we also find a circa 1880 piano accordion with a nearly 3 octave (34-key) piano keyboard … and a 64-key 'Stradella' bass made by Tesio Giovanni – of Stradella, Italia.

The first example, in this booklet, of a C(h)romatica (Continental Chromatic Button accordion) is 2 pages on - a circa 1885 Mariano Dallape, Stradella-built, box having 60 treble keys in a 4-row C(h)romatica layout and 112 basses (in an unusual arrangement of 16 wide by 7 deep … What chord is in the 7th row?).

Anyway, this shows that, after a 50 year start by the diatonic button accordion, these two chromatic accordion systems have coexisted for at least 120 years … and the C(h)romatica scheme has developed an astonishing range of variants from Italy to the northern reaches of Russia. The web site linked by Guest Jon (05 Jun 04 - 07:34 AM) seems to be dedicated to the particular (and peculiar!) Scandinavian schemes, which seem to prove something about the dangers of long Arctic nights!

Oh ... BTW: I also take exception to your: "... a McCann (a variant of the English Concertina) relative to playing a standard English Concertina ...". (My first concertina was a Maccann) Let me assure you that Professor Maccann's little baby is a variant of nothing! It is (like all the Duet concertina systems) entirely sui generis ... a class of its own! The concertinas are the supreme results of English eccentricity ... and virtually none of the English systems has any relationship to any other concertina ... or any other instrument on this earth! (I have deserted the Maccann for the Anglo, which is only an English-quality version of the original conzertina: the German one, produced 4 years before Wheatstone's.

Regards,

Bob Bolton