Pianos first, then harpsichords.

J.C. Neupert was founded in 1868 by Johann Christoph Neupert in Münchberg, in Upper Franconia, and moved to Bamberg in 1874, according to the German and English Wikipedia; a Nuremberg sales office followed in 1900. It began with pianos, which it made for decades before turning to harpsichords. It built harpsichords, spinets, clavichords and fortepianos from the 1900s — Wikipedia gives 1906, the firm “since 1905” — and the German Wikipedia calls it the largest firm of its kind in Germany.

It has been a family business through four generations, from the founder to his great-grandson. In 1918 the founder’s three sons took over — Fritz on the technical side, Reinhold on the commercial, Julius on the artistic — and their sons followed; in the fourth generation Wolf Dieter Neupert, born in 1937, took sole charge. He has written a chronicle of the firm’s 150 years, from 1868 to 2018. The German Wikipedia associates the firm with pianists including Max Reger, Elly Ney, Walter Gieseking, Wilhelm Kempff, Edwin Fischer and Wilhelm Backhaus.

The firm’s historical instrument collection, built up over decades, went to a museum. The Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg says it acquired it in 1969, with help from the Volkswagen Foundation; the firm and Wikipedia give 1968. It was acquired, not donated.

Hallstadt, and a new managing director.

Today the company is J. C. Neupert GmbH & Co. KG, “Manufaktur für historische Tasteninstrumente” — a workshop for historical keyboard instruments — at Biegenhofstraße in Hallstadt, just outside Bamberg. The German company register shows that on 20 August 2024 Wolf Dieter Neupert stepped down as managing director of its general-partner company, and Raphaela Jato became managing director. We did not verify the current shareholders.

Its instruments are made in Hallstadt. Its current name describes its focus: historical keyboard instruments. The firm has claimed to be the only workshop of its kind in the world through the whole century; that is not true — Ammer and Wittmayer were working too — so we do not repeat it.

One of its apprentices became a maker himself: Martin Sassmann trained at Neupert from 1948 before founding his own workshop in 1955.

A collection in Nuremberg.

A museum now holds one of the trade’s great collections. Nuremberg’s Germanisches Nationalmuseum says that in 1969, with help from the Volkswagen Foundation, it acquired “Die Klavierhistorische Sammlung des Bamberger Klavierherstellers J.C. Neupert,” which “enthält über 300 Objekte, die meisten davon Tasteninstrumente” — more than 300 objects, most of them keyboard instruments. The museum had acquired another great collection, the Rück collection of about 1,500 pieces, in 1962.

The modern harpsichord was reinvented twice. First in Paris: the Cité de la musique says Wanda Landowska’s name “reste indissolublement lié au clavecin Pleyel (16 pieds), modèle conçu à partir de ses suggestions, inauguré en 1912” — remains inseparably linked to the Pleyel 16-foot harpsichord, built to her suggestions and launched in 1912, to which she stayed faithful throughout her career. Instruments in that style are now called “revival” harpsichords.

Then in Boston. Harvard Magazine records that Frank Hubbard and William Dowd “independently pursued apprenticeships with disciples of Dolmetsch, then founded a harpsichord company in 1949,” and that their serial number one was “modeled on a design by the Flemish Ruckers family.” Wikipedia sums up the difference: they built “on historical principles, rather than the 20th-century modern (now known as ‘revival’) style practised by virtually all professional makers.”

The Cité de la musique traces Landowska’s influence forward “aux temps des débuts américains dans la facture de clavecin selon des principes historiques” — to the beginnings of American harpsichord making on historical principles.

In Germany the scale was different. Kurt Wittmayer’s firm in Bavaria made about 440 instruments a year in the 1960s, according to the German Wikipedia, and some 8,430 modern instruments in all before closing in 1995. Across the inner German border, the Ammer workshops in Eisenberg, founded in 1927, built harpsichords with the Leipzig instrument museum from the 1930s, were nationalised in 1972, and continued in family hands, later in the West, until 2017.

Wolfgang Zuckermann explained his kit in his 1969 book The Modern Harpsichord: “Realizing that most people approach a harpsichord with caution, the way they do a vicious dog, I decided that the only way they might lose their fear of harpsichord maintenance was to go through the process of building the instrument for themselves.”

Frank Hubbard set out the historical approach at book length in Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making, published by Harvard University Press in 1965; the harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick wrote that Hubbard “unquestionably knows more about the history and construction of harpsichords than anyone alive today.”

Hubbard’s former partner William Dowd, who closed his Massachusetts workshop in 1988, built, according to the Boston Globe, “more than 800 instruments that are now played in 26 countries.” The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History holds the records of both Boston pioneers — the Hubbard Harpsichord Records and the Dowd Harpsichord Collection — so the American revival is documented in a national archive.

Across the inner German border, the Ammer workshops in Eisenberg, founded in 1927, built harpsichords with the Leipzig instrument museum from the 1930s, were nationalised in 1972, and continued in family hands, later in the West, until 2017. Neupert, in the West, stayed private throughout.

A founder’s initials since 1868.

Neupert’s brand is the founder’s initials and surname — J.C. Neupert — kept unchanged for more than 150 years, and a date that predates the harpsichord revival itself. Its collection in a national museum gives the name a scholarly weight few makers have.

For a design guide, Neupert shows a family firm surviving every change in fashion — pianos, revival harpsichords, historical copies — by keeping its name and changing its product. Compare Sassmann, founded by a Neupert apprentice, and Zuckermann in America.

Its address has moved only a few kilometres in more than 150 years of trading, from Bamberg to neighbouring Hallstadt.

For this guide we use a green and a pale sage with a serif, an unofficial interpretation. No instrument or mark is reproduced.

Keep J.C. Neupert’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.