Dear friends and colleagues, I am delighted to announce the publication of my new book, Erard: Empire of the Harp. This is the second of my two monographs on the history of the Erard firm; a companion volume to my book on the Erard piano released last year. This new book on the harp is different from its predecessor in that it is a bilingual (French-English) edition, containing 132 colour images. The book presents for the first time many rare instruments and archival documents discovered during the course of my research, including the earliest extant Erard double-action harp with forked discs (1811) and the prototype for the gothic harp (1829). The book can be purchased from the website of the publisher, Camac Harps: https://shop.camac-harps.com/en/product/adelson-robert-erard-the-empire-of-the-harp/ For those of you who may be in Paris this fall, I will be giving a lecture to celebrate the release of the book on Saturday 22 October at 10am, at the Camac Harp Festival (Espace Camac, 92, rue Petit). Thank you to everyone who supported my work during the years it took me to write this book. Kind regards, Robert Robert Adelson Professor of Organology and Music History Conservatoire de Nice/Université Côte d'Azur

Dear colleagues, I am pleased to announce the publication of my new book, Erard: A Passion for the Piano (Oxford University Press, 2021). This is the first of my two monographs on the history of the Erard firm; a second on the Erard harp is in preparation. Here is a brief description of the book from the publisher’s website: Sébastien Erard's (1752-1831) inventions have had an enormous impact on instruments and musical life and are still at the foundation of piano building today. Drawing on an unusually rich set of archives from both the Erard firm and the Erard family, author Robert Adelson shows how the Erard piano played an important and often leading role in the history of the instrument, beginning in the late eighteenth century and continuing into the final decades of the nineteenth. The Erards were the first piano builders in France to prioritise the more sonorous grand piano, sending gifts of their new model to both Haydn and Beethoven. Erard's famous double-escapement action, which improved the instrument's response while at the same time producing a more powerful tone, revolutionised both piano construction and repertoire. Thanks to these inventions, the Erard firm developed close relationships with the greatest pianist composers of the nineteenth century, including Hummel, Liszt, Moscheles and Mendelssohn. The book also presents new evidence concerning Pierre Erard's homosexuality, which helps us to understand his reluctance to found a family to carry on the Erard tradition, a reluctance that would spell the end of the golden era of the firm and lead to its eventual demise. The book closes with the story of Pierre's widow Camille, who directed the firm from 1855 until 1889. Her influential position in the male-dominated world of instrument building was unique for a woman of her time. A short essay on the demise of the Erard firm can be found on the Oxford University Press blog: https://blog.oup.com/2021/03/family-secrets-and-the-demise-of-erard-pianos-and-harps/ Thank you to everyone who supported my work during the years it took me to write this book. Kind regards, Robert Adelson Professor of Organology and Music History Conservatoire de Nice-Université Côte d'Azur