Accordions

New Belgian stamps

The Belgian postal service issued a series of postage stamps on the theme accordion. The stamps were designed by MVTM. The designers included a Renoir painting in the design of the sheetlet.
A new accordion fanfare in Brussels, a highly successful accordion festival in Bruges and a spectacular revival of the accordion in the music academies show that the accordion is certainly enjoying a lot of interest right now.

Piano of the poor

The accordion has never been out of fashion on the folk music circuit, but guitars and synthesizers have driven it out of the popular scene since the sixties. Fortunately a new generation of musicians are rediscovering the festive and melancholic tones of the piano of the poor. The accordion itself is not so old. The principle of generating sounds by reeds set in motion by a flow of air was developed in China many centuries before the Common Era, but it was only backing the nineteenth century that the German Buschmann fashioned the accordion on the same principle. The instrument became a big hit and was adapted for folk dancing and songs across Europe and beyond. Tango, klezmer and Cajun are just some of the styles that would be radically different without one or the other version of the instrument, such as the bandoneon.

Shapes, sizes and shades

There are indeed harmonicas in a lot of different shapes, sizes and shades. The sheet is an ode to this diversity: chromatic accordions from northern Ossetia, Italy and Germany, a diatonic accordion from Brussels and a concertina from England, all from the world-famous Museum of Musical Instruments. The accordion is depicted in the painting Bal au Moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir.