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ACCORDION (Fr. accordeon; Ger. Handharmonica, Ziehharmonica) , a small portable See also: reed See also: wind instrument with keyboard, the smallest representative of the See also: organ See also: family, invented in 1829 by Damian, in Vienna
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The accordion consists of a bellows of many folds, to which is attached a keyboard with from 5 to 50 keys
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The keys on being depressed, while the bellows are being worked, open valves admitting the wind to See also: free reeds, consisting of narrow tongues of See also: metal riveted some to the upper, some to the See also: lower See also: board of the bellows, having their free ends bent, some inwards, some outwards
.
Each See also: key produces two notes, one from the inwardly bent reed when the bellows are compressed, the other from the outwardly bent reed by suction (as in the
See also: American organ; see HARMONIUM) when the bellows are See also: expanded
.
The See also: pitch of the note is determined by the length and thickness of the reeds, reduction of the length tending to sharpen the note, while reduction of the thickness Iowers it
.
The right See also: hand plays the melody on the keyboard, while the See also: left See also: works the bellows and manipulates the two or three See also: bass harmony keys, which See also: sound the See also: simple chords of the tonic and dominant
.
The archetype of the accordion is the See also: cheng (q.v.), or See also: Chinese organ, between which and the harmonium it forms a connecting See also: link structurally, although not invented for some See also: thirty years after the harmonium
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The timbre of the accordion is coarse and devoid of beauty, but in the hands of a skilful performer the best See also: instruments are not entirely without See also: artistic merit
.
Improvements in the construction of the accordion produced the concertina (q.v.), melodion and melophone
.
See Adolf Mueller, Accordion-Schule See also: oder vollstandige Anleitung, das Accordion in kurzer Zeit richtig spielen zu erlernen (Wien, 1834)
.
See also FREE REED VIBRATOR
.
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