THE WORLD PIANO BIBLE

The world's most complete and comprehensive encyclopedia about Keyboard Instruments  dating back to 1788.  Includes extensive historical data, an exhaustive index, full cross-references, and more than 8,000 valuable illustrations of rare Keyboard Instruments made by master builders of the golden ages through today.  A monumental and superbly well-organized reference that will truly delight and enlighten any piano aficionado, historian, researcher,  professor, student, technician, merchant and more ...... Order Today!

Jens-Uwe Witter, PhD of Musicology

 

Growing up in East Germany, Jens Witter first learned to love piano music because his father played for the Central German Broadcasting station. While working in a piano factory in Leipzig, East Germany, Witter started cataloging pianos, inadvertently beginning what would eventually become his doctoral dissertation.

 

“I started talking to the older people about the factories and started to write down the pianos that were manufactured – the manufacturer, the years pianos were made, if the factory moved. I wrote thousands of cards on pianos.”

 

Initially, Witter thought he was doing if for himself to save information for future generations and to honor the memory of the European piano makers.

 

The catalog grew into 35 years of work with over 39,000 entries of pianos from all over the world dating back to 1788. The first complete catalog served as his dissertation “Das Klavier-Lexikon” (The Piano Encyclopedia); he completed a second edition in 2000, and now his latest edition will be available in English, German, and French versions.

 

Dr. Witter estimates that he has worked on more than 40,000 pianos in his career, so far.  He and his wife, Trudy, run their company Antique Piano from their newly constructed workshop in Vail, AZ (USA) where they specialize in antique piano restoration and repair.

 

One of Dr. Witter’s most recent projects was a restoration of a 1909 grand “Mason & Hamlin, Boston” piano once owned by US President Calvin Coolidge.  He put 2,036 hours of work into the restoration, which took almost six months.