Articles

The Professor Who Unknowingly Started
the Free Reed Revolution

Abstract: Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein (1723– 1795) was a German professor, physician and polymath who spent most of his academic life in Copenhagen. His competence spanned widely, and one of his achievements was a small organ that could play the five vowels a, e, i, o and u, for which, in 1780, he won the gold medal at a prize competition proposed by The Academy of Sciences in St Petersburg. He erroneously thought that the human sound generator was a vibrating epiglottis and discovered a new type of pipe with freely vibrating reeds. Nicolai Kirsnik (1741–1802), an organ maker in St Petersburg and runner-up in the same competition, was the first to use free reeds in musical instruments, and when Georg Joseph (Abbé) Vogler (1749–1814) visited Kirsnik in St Petersburg in 1788 he was so impressed that he engaged Kirsnik’s assistant, Georg Christoffer Rackwitz (1760–1844), to accompany him on his many Europe-wide concert tours to install free reed stops in existing organs, thus disseminating the new knowledge. Within the next three decades free reed instruments of all sizes and shapes popped up everywhere. Now there is probably no inhabited place in the world where you cannot find a mouth harmonica or an accordion.

Article published in the Galpin Society Journal 78, 2025
(Illustrated PDF)


Andrias Garborg – Norges Paolo Soprani:
Timebuen som bygde det første trekkspillet i landet

Den selvlærte Andrias Garborg (1847-1881) fra Time var sannsynligvis den første trekkspillmakeren i Norge. Allerede i 1870 fikk han pris for et instrument han hadde laget. Men han døde tidlig, og trekkspillproduksjonen ble ikke noe lokalt industrieventyr, slik som for hans samtidige, Paolo Soprani i Italia.

Av Olaf Gjerløw Aasland og Jon Faukstad

Publisert i Årbok for Time historielag for 2021. 


Andrias Garborg – The Norwegian Paolo Soprani:
The man from Time who built the first accordion in the country

PDF available in Norwegian only. 

The self-learned Andrias Garborg (1847-1881) from Time was probably the first accordion maker in Norway. Already in 1870, he won a prize for a self-made instrument. But he died young, and the local accordion production did not become an industrial adventure like for his contemporary Paolo Soprani in Italy.

Av Olaf Gjerløw Aasland and Jon Faukstad
Published in Yearbook for Time historielag 2021.

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Interview with Jørgen Sagevik, b. 1938, on 28. February 2024.  (Norwegian)

Jørgen Sagevik is a Norwegian accordionist, mouth harmonica player and teacher, who for many years ran musical instrument stores in combination with basic musical education and training in Stavanger and Sandnes. In 1957 he was, as a self-learned accordionist, accepted at the prestigious Hohner academy in Trossingen, West-Germany, where he graduated in 1960. He then had a long national and international career as an eminent accordionist and mouth harmonica player. His leading principle was always to promote these two instruments as natural members of the classical musical instrument family. He also founded and ran musical instrument stores combined with education and supervision of skilled performers.

As an active pensioner he has specialized in presenting the works of Jakob Sande (1906-1967), a Norwegian poet and author from the same village as Sagevik, in words and music.

In 2025 Sagevik received The Norwegian King’s Medal of Merit. 


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Professoren som uvitende startet fritungerevolusjonen (pdf)

Dette er en lett revidert artikkel som først ble publisert i The Galpin Society Journal, med norsk oversettelse.  Fotnoter og bildetekster er ikke oversatt. 


The professor who unknowingly started the free reed revolution (pdf)

This is a slightly revised article originally published in The Galpin Society Journal, with Norwegian translation (except footnotes and captions).

   

The Galpin Society Journal, Volume 78, March 2025, p. 56-71.


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