Italian People Culture

Castelfidardo and the Accordion

We asked Licia, a long time friend of ours and devoted accordion student, to tell us about this typical Italian musical instrument, la fisarmonica.

Castelfidardo is well known as “capital city of the accordion”, the typical instrument of traditional Italian folk music.

The accordion manufacture of Paolo Soprani in Castelfidardo started the industrial production of this musical instrument in Italy.

According to the legend, one evening in 1863 an Austrian pilgrim seeking shelter, rapped at the door of a farm close to Castelfidardo, the Soprani home.

During the evening the pilgrim delighted the hosting family with a musical instrument never seen before in the area, a kind of concertina.

At night, young Paolo, fascinated by the instrument, disassembled it and studied it carefully: in this singular way the accordion manufacture was born.

On the omnipresent working table that was at the center of all the family activities and the many crafts of the farmers of our region, Paolo Soprani started building his first instruments, confident of its potential.

Paolo’s intuition was correct and Castelfidardo became one of the world most renowned production centers of accordions.

At the moment there are about thirty factories around Castelfidardo, yet the production process is mainly done by hand: this makes the instruments of Castelfidardo famous in the world for their superb quality.

It might take eight month and an infinite patience to make some top-of-the-line accordions.

The production has suffered the competition of the cheaper instruments from China and the fact that the accordion went out of style during the 1960’s, replaced by guitars and organs.

The few factories that survived the crisis, instead of cutting corners to make their accordions cheaper, concentrated on high quality standards for the production of professional-quality instruments that are regarded as art masterpieces by the connoisseurs.

Castelfidardo celebrates the accordion with the Festival Internazionale della Fisarmonica at the beginning of October, an event not to be missed by any music and accordion fan.

The festival gathers many international artists. Despite its folk origins the accordion is very versatile and it is the favorite instrument of many jazz and modern musician as you can appreciate in the video below.

WHERE TO STAY IN CASTELFIDARDO

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