Długosz Józef, *circa 1779 or 1782, †27 September 1853 Warsaw, Polish grand piano maker. From around 1820, he ran a carpentry workshop and grand piano manufacture in Warsaw. In the years 1824–1827 he was treasurer, and from 1827 to 1833 Grandmaster craftsman of the guild in Warsaw. In 1824 he obtained a 5-year patent for the eolipantaleon (a combination of the piano and F. Brunner’s eolimelodicon). The instrument received praise at the Industrial Exhibition of 1825 in Warsaw. According to contemporaries, it sounded better than the competing melodicordion by Brunner. It was played, among others, by Chopin at the conservatory in Warsaw in 1825, who probably composed two (lost) works especially for this instrument. The few eolipantaleons that made their way into salons had already been supplanted by physharmonicas by the early 1830s. Around 1835, Długosz asked Chopin, through his father, to promote the eolipantaleon in Paris. In the collection of the Museum of Musical Instruments in Poznań is a grand piano made by Długosz’s from the 1820s.
Literature: B. Vogel Instrumenty muzyczne w kulturze Królestwa Polskiego, Krakow 1980; B. Vogel Fortepian polski, «Historia Muzyki Polskiej» X, Warsaw 1995.
