58 Fun Facts About Accordion

The accordion takes its name from a German word meaning what?

Musical chord is the meaning of the German Akkord: the Viennese maker who patented the name in 1829 was proudest that a single key could sound a complete chord.

The accordion belongs to which family of instruments?

Free reed aerophones sound when air sets a thin tongue swinging through a slot, but only from one side, so an accordion carries two reeds for every note: one for the push and one for the pull.

Which author, later famous for 'Brokeback Mountain', wrote the 1996 novel Accordion Crimes?

Annie Proulx followed The Shipping News with the story of a single accordion: built by a Sicilian maker who sails for America, it passes from one immigrant owner to the next for a century.

Many credit a German teenager's 1822 'Handäoline' as the first accordion; in which city was it reputedly made?

Berlin is the usual answer, though not one document of the time backs the claim for young Friedrich Buschmann, which is why others date the accordion from the 1829 patent that gave it its name.

Who patented an instrument called the accordion in Vienna in 1829?

Cyrill Demian's first model had only five keys on one side: his patent argued that doubling it up for both hands would simply make the instrument heavier and more expensive.

What was the trade of the Viennese inventor who patented the accordion in 1829?

Organ and piano maker was the family trade: he filed the patent with his sons Karl and Guido, pitching the little box at travellers as easy to carry and playable by an amateur.

Which rock band had a 1970s hit with 'Squeeze Box', a song named after a nickname for the accordion?

The Who's Pete Townshend wrote it after buying an accordion and learning to play it in a single afternoon; he meant it as a dirty joke and was amazed when it became a hit.

Which English inventor, a pioneer of the electric telegraph, patented the concertina in 1829?

Charles Wheatstone is best remembered for the Wheatstone bridge, a circuit he made famous but did not devise: it was the work of the mathematician Samuel Christie. The concertina was all his own.

Which Russian city, long famed for samovars and gunsmiths, made Russia's earliest known accordions around 1830?

Tula's craftsmen copied an accordion that had arrived from Germany, and the new trade took off so fast that the instrument became one of the town's signature products.

Which part of an accordion is the player's main means of expression, shaping every swell and fade?

The bellows do what touch does on a piano: an accordion's keys sound no louder however hard they are struck, so every change of volume comes from the push and pull.

Accordion reeds are typically made from strips of which materials?

Brass or steel tongues come in pairs, and beside each sits a small leather or plastic flap: it seals the idle reed so that no air leaks past it while its partner sounds.

On a 'bisonoric' accordion, what does each button do?

Changes note between push and pull, as a harmonica does between blow and draw: because every button does double duty, ten of them are enough for a range of more than two octaves.

What is the standard full-size accordion called, after its number of left-hand buttons?

120-bass means six rows of twenty buttons, none of which the player can see while playing, which is why a few of them are dimpled or studded for the fingers to steer by.

The standard Stradella bass system arranges its columns of buttons according to what?

The circle of fifths puts the three chords a tune leans on most, those built on the first, fourth and fifth notes of its key, in neighbouring columns, so the left hand barely has to move.

The accordion's Stradella bass system is named after what?

A town in Lombardy: Mariano Dallapè began making accordions in Stradella in the 1870s, and other craftsmen followed his example until the town was a major centre of the trade.

Which Italian town, home of the pioneer Paolo Soprani, is known as the world capital of accordion making?

Castelfidardo's trade began, legend has it, when a pilgrim bound for the shrine at Loreto showed young Paolo Soprani an accordion: he studied how it worked and went into production with his brothers.

Bal-musette, the accordion music of French dance halls, takes its name from which instrument?

A small bagpipe, the musette, led the dancing in the Paris cafés of migrants from Auvergne until Italian accordionists moved in around 1880; the two camps came to blows, and the accordion won.

Which German company, founded in 1857 in Trossingen, became a giant of harmonica and accordion making?

Hohner was founded by a clockmaker rather than a musician: Matthias Hohner began making harmonicas by hand in his own house in 1857, and the home workshop grew into a world name.

What is the bandoneon, the signature instrument of tango?

A type of concertina, and a German one: the dealer Heinrich Band gave it his name, and it is thought that emigrants and sailors carried it to the River Plate, where tango adopted it.

Which Nirvana member played accordion on one song of the band's MTV Unplugged set?

Krist Novoselic, the bassist, played it on 'Jesus Doesn't Want Me for a Sunbeam' and never put it away: in 2011 Dave Grohl brought him in for bass and accordion on a Foo Fighters album.

Which Russian chromatic button accordion is named after an 11th-century bard?

Bayan honours Boyan, the bard hailed in the medieval Tale of Igor's Campaign; the name caught on in the early 1900s, when a star player toured with a St Petersburg craftsman's new chromatic model.

In Britain and Australia, a diatonic button accordion is commonly called what?

A melodeon means any button box in Britain, but in Ireland the word is kept for the one-row instrument, and in America it once meant something else entirely: a small reed organ.

Which Alpine button accordion is particular to Slovenia, Austria, Bavaria and South Tyrol?

Steirische Harmonika players get their booming bass from oversized reeds that sound like a helicon tuba, which is why its bass notes are called helicon basses.

Which dance music of Brazil's northeast is traditionally played by a trio of accordion, triangle and zabumba drum?

Forró was carried from the dry northeast to the rest of Brazil by the accordionist Luiz Gonzaga, whose 1947 hit 'Asa Branca' sings of a drought that drives a man from his land.

Which Colombian musical tradition, built around the accordion, did UNESCO list in 2015 as in need of urgent safeguarding?

Vallenato grew out of the songs of cattle herders in Colombia's north; UNESCO judged the traditional style at risk from armed conflict and from a slick new wave of the music that pushes it aside.

Zydeco pairs the accordion with which percussion instrument?

The rubboard, or frottoir, began as a real washboard: in 1946 a metalworker at a Texas refinery made the first one built purely as an instrument, a ribbed metal vest hung from the shoulders.

Which Louisiana musician was the original 'King of Zydeco'?

Clifton Chenier, a sharecropper's son, was the unofficial but all but undisputed king; only after his death in 1987 was another accordionist, Boozoo Chavis, formally crowned.

Which San Antonio-born accordionist played conjunto and Tejano music with the Texas Tornados?

Flaco Jiménez inherited his nickname, 'Skinny', from his accordionist father and carried the conjunto sound worldwide, recording with Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder and the Rolling Stones.

Which accordion-playing bandleader hosted a TV show from 1951 to 1982 known for its 'champagne music'?

Lawrence Welk grew up in a German-speaking hamlet in North Dakota and did not learn English until he was 21, which left him with the accent that became part of his homespun appeal.

Which TV 'champagne music' accordionist of three decades was known as 'the Happy Norwegian'?

Myron Floren was a guest at a St. Louis ballroom in 1950 when the bandleader called him up to play; the crowd's response was so strong that he was offered a job with the band.

Who talked 'Weird Al' Yankovic's parents into accordion lessons just before his seventh birthday?

A door-to-door salesman offered guitar or accordion lessons, and Al jokes that his parents chose the accordion because the world needed one more accordion-playing Yankovic, after polka king Frankie, no relation.

Which Austrian composer wrote an accordion into the tavern band of his opera Wozzeck?

Alban Berg used the accordion only once in the opera, in the tavern band that plays on stage with fiddles, guitar and clarinet; before writing the part he visited an accordion maker to learn what the instrument could do.

Which country is said to have more accordionists than every other country in the world?

China took to the accordion because it travels: touring bands carried it where no piano could go, and it accompanied choirs singing revolutionary songs.

In which country was the accordion called 'the people's instrument', one that every schoolteacher once had to play?

North Korea prized it, Barbara Demick reports in her book Nothing to Envy, because it was portable enough to carry along on a day of 'voluntary' hard labour in the fields.

Sevdalinka, a tradition of love songs now led by the accordion, comes from which Balkan country?

Bosnia and Herzegovina is its home: the old songs belonged to the voice and the saz, a long-necked lute, and the accordion took the lead only in modern arrangements.

Which Dominican dance music is led by a button accordion in its traditional 'típico' form?

Merengue was first played on guitars: the accordion took over in the late nineteenth century, when German traders who came for Dominican tobacco brought the instrument to the island.

By which name is the accordion popularly known in Brazil?

Sanfona once meant the hurdy-gurdy; in Brazil the word passed to the squeezebox, spread nationwide with the music of the northeast, and now even a folding door is called 'sanfonada'.

Which bandoneon virtuoso created 'nuevo tango', blending tango with jazz and classical music for the concert hall?

Astor Piazzolla went to Paris to become a classical composer, but his teacher Nadia Boulanger urged him to stay true to the tango; he remade it instead, despite much criticism from traditionalists.

Which ancient mouth organ of bamboo pipes is the free-reed forerunner of the accordion family?

The sheng is said to have reached Europe in the eighteenth century, brought home by a traveller and a Jesuit missionary, and its free reeds inspired the experiments that led to the harmonica and the accordion.

Paul Simon made which album after falling for a bootleg tape of South African accordion music?

Graceland puts the instrument up front: its first track, 'The Boy in the Bubble', was written with Forere Motloheloa, an accordionist from Lesotho, who plays on it and shares the credit.

What gives many accordions their shimmering, wavering 'wet' sound?

Two reeds tuned slightly apart sound every note together, and the tiny clash between them makes the tone beat: the wider the gap, the 'wetter' the sound, which is the hallmark of French musette playing.

Which French singer made 'L'Accordéoniste' one of her signature songs in 1940?

Édith Piaf was handed the song by a soldier: Michel Emer, about to leave for the front, talked his way into her flat and played her his tale of a street girl in love with a dance-hall accordionist.

Which Scottish accordionist and bandleader took 'The Bluebell Polka' into the UK top 20 in 1955?

Sir Jimmy Shand went down a Fife coal mine at 14 and left it for good after the 1926 general strike; a Dundee music shop then took him on to sell accordions, and the dance-band records followed.

Which digital standard, built into many modern accordions, lets them play the sounds of a synthesizer?

MIDI carries no sound at all, only instructions: contacts under the keys report which notes are pressed, so the same squeezebox can speak with the voice of a piano or an organ.

Which artist painted 'The Accordionist', a 1911 Cubist portrait now in New York's Guggenheim Museum?

Pablo Picasso broke the seated player into so many planes that a former owner took the picture for a landscape, misled by the place name Céret written on the back of the canvas.

Which two punk-influenced bands make prominent use of the accordion?

Gogol Bordello and Flogging Molly come at punk from opposite ends of Europe: one draws on Romani and Ukrainian music, the other on Irish folk, and the accordion is at home in both.

Which Mexican genre uses the button accordion, alongside Conjunto and Tejano across the border?

Norteño pairs the accordion with the bajo sexto, a twelve-string bass guitar, and its beat still shows where the squeezebox came from: the polkas and waltzes of Central European immigrants.

Which 2001 French film is carried by Yann Tiersen's waltzes for accordion and piano?

Amélie's director heard Yann Tiersen's music by chance, bought everything he had recorded and built much of the score from pieces already released on Tiersen's earlier albums.

Which Louisiana music, sung in French, is carried by accordion and fiddle with a triangle keeping time?

Cajun music goes back to the ballads of French-speaking Acadians from Canada; when war cut off the German-made accordions its players relied on, Louisiana craftsmen began building their own.

Which alternative rock duo pairs John Flansburgh's guitar with John Linnell's accordion?

They Might Be Giants began in New York clubs with only the two Johns on stage: guitar and accordion over a drum machine or a cassette of backing tracks in place of a band.

Why did vaudeville star Pietro Frosini paste a dummy piano keyboard over his accordion's buttons?

Audience taste: Guido Deiro had made the piano accordion the hit of vaudeville, so Frosini, who never gave up his buttons, let the crowd think it was watching the newer instrument.

On a 'converter' accordion, what can the player switch the left-hand buttons between?

Preset chords and single notes: a switch trades the Stradella chord buttons for a free-bass keyboard, so the left hand can play real melodies and counterpoint, as Bach or jazz demand.

Which future Hollywood star toured vaudeville in the 1910s with her sweetheart, accordion headliner Guido Deiro?

Mae West and Deiro were a couple by 1914, and by his family's account they married in secret: a 1920 divorce paper survives in his archive, though she never admitted to it publicly.

Which rock band grew out of a neighbourhood trio in which singer Dennis DeYoung played the accordion?

Styx began in early-1960s Chicago as The Tradewinds, with the teenage DeYoung on accordion beside his neighbours, twin brothers Chuck and John Panozzo; he brought the instrument back years later for 'Boat on the River'.

Which French accordionist, at home in jazz, tango and Bach, launched the style he called 'New Musette'?

Richard Galliano took the idea from the creator of nuevo tango, who urged him to renew the accordion music of the French dance halls as he himself had renewed the tango.

Which Russian-born composer wrote solos, concertos and chamber works for the accordion?

Sofia Gubaidulina said she prized the instrument because it 'breathes', which gives it an earthy quality no other orchestral instrument has. The Boston Symphony premiered her Triple Concerto for it in 2017.

Two accordions playing a shuffle beat drive 'Wouldn't It Be Nice', the opening track of which Beach Boys album?

Pet Sounds opens with two session players squeezing out the same part at once. Brian Wilson recalled the sound ringing through the room while everyone in the booth asked, 'What is that sound?'

Chamamé, a popular accordion genre, comes from which country?

Argentina's chamamé grew up in Corrientes province, where couples dance it chest to chest in a close embrace with no set steps. UNESCO added it to its intangible heritage list in 2020.