Johannes Zumpe                   MICHAEL COLE  www.squarepianos.com

      Square Pianos (short hiostory)

     Other makers:   John Broadwood    Longman & Broderip     Clementi       Adam Beyer            Contact us 

MAKER'S  BIOGRAPHY    

JOHN ZUMPE        

including Gabriel BUNTEBART, SIEVERS, the SCHOENE brothers, and Meinke MEYER

The oldest known authentically dated square pianos were made in 1766 by John Zumpe. He was born in June 1726 and baptised Johann Christoph Zumpe, at St Michael's church, Fürth, a small market town  near Nuremberg. His father Christoph Zumpe was a master furrier but the boy did not follow his father's trade: instead he was apprenticed as a cabinetmaker. Having completed his training, about 1750 he left Fürth and made his way to London, where he obtained work with Burkat Shudi, the harpsichord maker, in Great Pulteney Street. [Note: about a hundred years after Zumpe's death in a very carelessly researched book, the piano maker Edgar Brinsmead wrote that Zumpe had been previously employed by Gottfried Silbermann. This ill-founded statement is repeated in many reference books, though there is no evidence whatsoever to support it.]

After working for some years with Shudi in London, Zumpe married Elizabeth Beeston in December 1760 and, probably with financial help from her family, he set up his own workshop at a house on the north side of Princes Street, Hanover Square, in London. The Mozart family visited him there during their lengthy visit to London in 1764/5, when Leopold Mozart recorded in his travel notebooks that Zumpe's sign, which would have been hanging in front of the house, was the 'Golden Guittar'. This corresponds exactly with his surviving work from the pre-1765 period. For example, in Glasgow there is a cittern, or 'English Guitar', an instrument with a pear-shaped body and furnished with metal strings. In 1760 these were very fashionable with aristocratic ladies. Such clients would be the key to his future prosperity. In the picture below is Zumpe's house in Princes Street, as it appears today — it is the white-painted house, disfigured by a twentieth-century smoked glass window at street level. Such 'vandalism' is a pity because this is indeed a historic house: the first building in the world devoted wholly to piano manufacture (from 1766 on). The red brick house next door probably gives a better idea of its appearance in the 1760s.

In 1763 or soon afterwards Zumpe made a firm friendship with Johann Christian Bach, music master to Queen Charlotte (even more popular at that time than Princess Diana was to become in recent years). Another invaluable associate was his future business partner Gabriel Gottlieb Buntebart  who arrived from Strelitz at the same time as Queen Charlotte. The young queen was a good keyboard player, and often sang to her own accompaniment. For this purpose contemporary accounts record that she brought a harpsichord with her when she travelled to England in 1761, and even sang and played in her cabin on board the ship that carried her to her new country. Circumstantial evidence suggests that Gabriel Buntebart was even then her harpsichord maker, responsible for the care of  this instrument. (Three decades later, in his will, he described himself as 'Grand Pianoforte Maker to her Majesty'.) 

It is not sure when Zumpe made his first piano (probably 1765 or 1766), but with friends such as Bach and Buntebart, with their connections to the queen's music at Buckingham House (now Buckingham Palace) he would have had a discerning audience who could give plenty of useful advice. The instrument that he created was sure to appeal to the right sort of people. In fact there is much documentary evidence to show that London's two most popular music teachers, J.C.Bach and Charles Burney, thought so highly of Zumpe's little pianos that they willingly acted as agents, recommending them to friends and acquaintances everywhere.

Zumpe's earliest pianos set the pattern for future developments throughout Europe and America. Although very compact (the first ones were just four feet long) they nevertheless have a keyboard of almost five octaves, so they could be used for virtually any serious music. Their clear articulation and charmingly novel tone made them ideal for the kind of galant sonatas, composed in the Italian style, as provided by J.C.Bach and his brothers, Boccherini, Galuppi and dozens of lesser composers. The soundboard is very small, but the success of their distinctive tone originated chiefly in very robust string tensions (greater than on any piano made before) and the voicing of their tiny hammers by covering them with soft bookbinders' leather.  

There is no way of deciding with absolute certainty which of the four surviving pianos dated 1766 is the earliest among them. The chances are that it is the one owned by William Garlick (formerly of New York) shown here. It has the least number of notes [AA to f3; 57 notes] and the most primitive type of damper. The natural keys are black, but Zumpe changed to ivory key plates before the end of 1766. The lock board falls forwards, as on many German clavichords. This feature also changed by 1767: thereafter the lock board is hinged from the lid. From the beginning there was a hand stop to disengage the dampers, so that it could sound like a dulcimer: a tone quality which has some connection with that of the metal-strung guitars or citterns which ladies often used to accompany their vocal performances. In later examples there are two hand stops for this, raising either the bass or treble dampers, and often a third hand stop to operate a buff stop. The soundboard was made a little wider and the keyboard was extended down to GG [the apparent GG# being a dummy key], and later to FF. Through the recommendations of their friends the partners Zumpe & Buntebart sold large numbers of these pianos in France and Germany, and probably elsewhere too. An example has been reported surviving in St Petersburg, dated 1774, at the Palace of Pavlovsk, formerly the property of Empress Catherine's son, Paul. Its elaborate decoration corresponds quite closely with a surviving design made by Robert Adam, expressly for the Empress. Pianos corresponding exactly to Zumpe & Buntebart's design are known from documents in north America as early as 1770. Instrument makers in Switzerland, Spain, Scandinavia and north Germany saw them, admired them, and soon set about copying them. 

In all there may be as many as forty or fifty specimens still surviving, dating from 1766 to 1782, signed either by Zumpe alone, or jointly with his partner. From 1768 the instruments are inscribed Johannes Zumpe et Buntebart Londini fecerunt until 1778 when at Michaelmas [25 September] the partners split up. Zumpe established a new workshop two hundred metres away in a newly built house in Princes Street, near Cavendish Square. From 1782 he relinquished this address and the business to the brothers Frederick and Christian Schoene (born 1749 and 1747 respectively). They came from his home town Fürth: like him they had previously served an apprenticeship there. They presumably paid him royalties because the inscription of their pianos reads Schoene & Company / Successors to Johannes Zumpe etc. The name Zumpe is purposely written much bolder than Schoene, sometimes leading to mistaken identifications.  Buntebart meanwhile stayed at the old address in Princes Street and took a new partner, Christoph Julius Ludwig Sievers, from Hanover, who presumably brought new capital into the business. Their instruments are inscribed Gabriel Buntebart et Sievers Londini fecerunt usually followed by the year of manufacture. Most of them, like many pianos from Schoene's establishment, are equipped with three pedals, rather than handstops. These operate the dampers [press the pedal to obtain the dulcimer effect]; the buff stop [press the pedal to make it sound like a lute or harp]; and a 'swell' pedal raising part of the lid [to obtain contrasts of muffled or open tone]. For over a decade Buntebart's foreman was John Henry Schrader, and it was he who took over the Princes Street workshop with the remaining stock in 1795. Meanwhile the Schoene business continued with great success, at least until 1789 when the troubles in France put an end to Schoene's best market. A few years later Frederick took a new partner named Vinsen (first name not known), so there are some excellent late eighteenth century pianos in existence bearing the inscription Schoene & Vinsen. The last known instrument from Schoene is dated 1805 and now belongs to Easton Historical Society in Pennsylvania. It is inscribed not by Frederick Schoene but by his son, George Frederick Schoene. The inscription reads: Georgius Fredericus Schoene / No. 45 Paddington Street, Marylebone / London 1805. However, he turned his back on piano making and became a successful artist and engraver.

An interesting feature of some surviving pianos by Buntebart is the presence of J.C.Bach's endorsement which appears as a faint but legible signature at the far edge of the soundboard. There can be no doubt that his many published keyboard sonatas 'for Piano-forte or Harpsichord' were chiefly played by his pupils and admirers on pianos supplied by Zumpe & Buntebart. At some time in the 1780s Buntebart also tried his hand at grand piano making, but none is known to survive.

John Zumpé, as he wished to be known (pronouncing his name to rhyme with 'grumpy'), may have been in declining health in the 1780s. He died at home, in London, in 1790. At that time he owned long leases on six houses on the northern edge of the city, near the Oxford Road, and further wealth in bonds and chattels. His wife was well provided for, and in addition his will included bequests to the St Marylebone Charity for Needy Children, and to the Orphan & Charity School in Fürth. This latter provided the purchase money for a plot of land near Furth, giving the school's sufficient income from rent to buy shoes or boots for destitute pupils for the next hundred years. 'John Christopher Zumpe' as he is recorded in the church registers, was buried at St Marylebone church on December 5, 1790. His grave was near to Rev. Charles Wesley, the hymn writer, and Stephen Storace, the composer and friend of Mozart. The burial ground has been lost, due to a major church rebuilding at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but a small garden with a memorial tablet mentions some of the people interred there — but not Zumpe who was presumably an unknown name to those who erected the monument long after his pianos had been superseded. Gabriel Buntebart, then residing at nearby Lisson Grove, died in 1794 and was buried next to his wife several miles away in Hendon churchyard. Neither man had any surviving child. Mrs Elizabeth Zumpe continued to reside at the former marital home in Edgeware Road until 1806. On her death the remaining property was split between a large number of nephews, nieces and family friends so it is likely that any portrait of the 'inventor of the small pianoforte' was eventually disposed of by someone long after his fame was forgotten. It is to be hoped that it still exists and may be some day identified.

A note about 'Zumpe & Meyer'.

There has been some mystery surrounding Zumpe's apparent association with Meinke Meyer, and this matter is still not satisfactorily resolved. Meyer stated in the Amsterdam Courant of 10 June 1779 that he had recently arrived from London where he had been a partner of Zumpe  [geweezene Compagnon van Johannes Zumpi]. For more than a hundred years there have been reports of square pianos bearing the joint names Zumpe and Meyer. However, the only instrument available for scrutiny was that in Castello Sforzesco, Milan, which (as noticed on previous versions of this webpage) does not have a credible inscription. Although it is now inscribed as by Johannes Zumpe et Meyer, the 'et Meyer' is very obviously a later inscription in a cruder style, written on a scratched out surface where something, probably 'Buntebart' has been effaced. So that instrument is clearly inadmissible. However, the story can now move on since in April 2006 another instrument surfaced in Bonham's auction rooms in New Bond Street. This rather sorry specimen is evidently the remnant of a square piano by  Zumpe, or an associate, though it has a later soundboard and bridge, a lid that doesn't belong, and a replacement nameboard. On this replacement nameboard an inscription cartouche has been glued, taken from an earlier nameboard. Even though this inscription may have originally belonged to another instrument, the text appears to establish that Zumpe & Meyer really was a genuine partnership. The script style looks absolutely right. However, damage at the right hand end has necessitated the reinstatement of part of the last digit of the date, but it must be correct as no other numeral would fit.

The inscription is shown above. Though the lettering looks absolutely right for the period, what at first appears to be nothing more sinister than water damage at Cavendish Square on the lower line seems to show another anomaly. The word 'Cavendish' is certainly over-written and it can be seen that its initial letter C is placed very close the preceding word. The awkward fact is that whereas Cavendish is too long for this space, 'Hanover' would fit to perfection. What has been going on here? And why was the inscription over-written? If this instrument is to be cited to establish a partnership between these two men these questions and doubts really need to be resolved.

Another recently discovered piano in private ownership, which has been examined by Michael Cole, seems to tell a different story. It is inscribed Johannes Zumpe Londini fecit 1778. There was certainly no other name combined with this, so this specimen undoubtedly dates after the break with Buntebart, i.e. the last three months of 1778. Can it be that at the end of 1778 there was a period where Zumpe was in partnership with Meyer and also a period not in partnership with Meyer?

Another piano, in Basle, is inscribed also with Zumpe's name alone, and dates from 1782 — therefore just before the Schoene brothers took over. 

The case for a very short-lived partnership between Zumpe and Meyer is still not firmly established.