Jean-Henri Pape

Who was Jean-Henri Pape?

Jean-Henri Pape, also known as Johann Heinrich Pape and Henry Pape, was a distinguished French piano maker in the early 19th century.

Pape was born in Sarstedt in 1787. He arrived in Paris in 1811 and secured employment with Pleyel, whose piano workshops he directed for several years. In 1815, he established his own manufacture of pianos, and almost annually for nearly forty years improved them with new inventions. His first grand pianos followed the English system of Broadwood and Tomkinson, though endowed with mechanical genius it was not long before he modified, then completely changed their principles of construction. Pape concentrated on defects in square and grand pianos caused by the structural gap between the sounding board and wrest plank allowing the hammers to strike the strings; the solution of placing actions above the strings had been imagined by Marius, then Hildebrand and finally Streicher in Vienna, but instead of levers and counterweights Pape's arrangement used a coil spring to raise the hammers quickly and with almost no effect on touch. This system was very successful in squares but lacked some lightness and delicacy in grand pianos.