History of the harpsichord - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The harpsichord was an important keyboard instrument in Europe from the 15th through the 18th centuries, and as revived in the 20th, is widely played today. This article gives a history of the harpsichord; for information on the construction of this instrument, its variant forms, and the music composed for it, see harpsichord

Harpsichord

A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

Origins

The New Grove summarizes the earliest historical traces of the harpsichord: "The earliest known reference to a harpsichord dates from 1397, when a jurist in Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

wrote that a certain Hermann Poll claimed to have invented an instrument called the 'clavicembalum'; and the earliest known representation of a harpsichord is a sculpture (see below) in an altarpiece of 1425 from Minden

Minden

Minden is a town of about 83,000 inhabitants in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The town extends along both sides of the river Weser. It is the capital of the Kreis of Minden-Lübbecke, which is part of the region of Detmold. Minden is the historic political centre of the...

in north-west Germany.".

Whoever invented the harpsichord did not have to proceed from scratch. The idea of controlling a musical instrument with a keyboard was already well worked out for the organ

Organ (music)

The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

, an instrument that is far older than the harpsichord. Moreover, the psaltery

Psaltery

A psaltery is a stringed musical instrument of the harp or the zither family. The psaltery of Ancient Greece dates from at least 2800 BC, when it was a harp-like instrument...

was a widely used instrument of the Middle Ages. Like the later harpsichord, it had metal strings which were held at controlled tension with tuning pins and transmitted their vibrations through a bridge to a soundboard, rendering them audible. The insight needed to create the harpsichord was thus to find a way to pluck strings mechanically, in a way controlled by a keyboard. The 14th century was a time in which advances in clockwork

Clockwork

A clockwork is the inner workings of either a mechanical clock or a device that operates in a similar fashion. Specifically, the term refers to a mechanical device utilizing a complex series of gears....

and other machinery were being made; hence the time may have been ripe for the invention of the harpsichord.
It is possible that the standard harpsichord mechanism, with jacks holding plectra mounted on retractable tongues, may only gradually have won out over alternatives. A Latin

Latin

Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...

manuscript

Manuscript

A manuscript or handwrite is written information that has been manually created by someone or some people, such as a hand-written letter, as opposed to being printed or reproduced some other way...

work on musical instruments by Henri Arnault de Zwolle from about 1440 includes detailed diagrams of three types of jack action, as well as a mechanism describable as a crude (and premature) predecessor of the piano

Piano

The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

action.

Another chain of development in the early harpsichord was a gradually increasing size. The psaltery was a hand-held instrument, far smaller than the fully evolved harpsichord. Early harpsichords were evidently small in both pitch range and string length. This can be seen, for instance, in the work of Sebastian Virdung

Sebastian Virdung

Sebastian Virdung was a German composer and theorist on musical instruments. He is grouped among the composers known as the Colorists. He studied in Heidelberg as a scholar of Johannes von Soest at the chapel of the ducal court. After being ordained, he became chaplain at the court in Heidelberg....

, his Musica getutscht (Basel 1511). Virdung describes three instruments he calls the Virginal, the Clavicimbalum, and the upright Claviciterium. These had pitch ranges of 38, 40, and 38 keys, respectively, far smaller than later instruments. Frank Hubbard believes that all three must have been ottavini, meaning instruments that sound an octave above normal pitch. Since pitch range is linked to string length, an ottavino is one way of building a small instrument. Ottavini were also common later on in the early history of the harpsichord.

Italy

The earliest complete harpsichords still preserved come from Italy

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

, the oldest specimen being dated to 1521. (The Royal College of Music

Royal College of Music

The Royal College of Music is a conservatoire founded by Royal Charter in 1882, located in South Kensington, London, England.-Background:The first director was Sir George Grove and he was followed by Sir Hubert Parry...

in London, has a clavicytherium, lacking its action, which may be older.) Even the earliest extant Italian instruments represent an already well-refined form of the instrument, showing no traces of their more primitive origin.

The Italian harpsichord makers made single-manual instruments with a very light construction and relatively little string tension. The Italian instruments are considered pleasing but unspectacular in their tone

Pitch (music)

Pitch is an auditory perceptual property that allows the ordering of sounds on a frequency-related scale.Pitches are compared as "higher" and "lower" in the sense associated with musical melodies,...

and serve well for accompanying

Accompaniment

In music, accompaniment is the art of playing along with an instrumental or vocal soloist or ensemble, often known as the lead, in a supporting manner...

singers or other instruments. Towards the end of the historical period larger and more elaborate Italian instruments were built, notably by Bartolomeo Cristofori

Bartolomeo Cristofori

Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.-Life:...

(who later invented the piano).

Flanders

A major innovation in harpsichord construction took place in Flanders some time around 1580 with the work of Hans Ruckers and his descendants, including Ioannes Couchet. The Ruckers harpsichord was more solidly constructed than the Italian. Because the Ruckers workshop used iron strings for the treble, as a result the scaling (the length of the vibrating part of the string for a given pitch) was longer, (always with the basic two sets of strings; one 8-foot

Eight foot pitch

Eight-foot pitch is a term common to the organ and the harpsichord. An organ pipe, or a harpsichord string, designated as eight-foot pitch is sounded at standard, ordinary pitch...

and a 4-foot

Eight foot pitch

Eight-foot pitch is a term common to the organ and the harpsichord. An organ pipe, or a harpsichord string, designated as eight-foot pitch is sounded at standard, ordinary pitch...

), with greater string tension, and a heavier case, as well as a very slender and responsive spruce soundboard, the tone was more sustaining than the Italian harpsichords' (also because the plucking point was further away from the nut), and was widely emulated by harpsichord builders in most other nations.

The Flemish makers of ca. 1600 were apparently the first to build two-manual harpsichords. They built them merely to permit easy transposition

Transposition (music)

In music transposition refers to the process, or operation, of moving a collection of notes up or down in pitch by a constant interval.For example, one might transpose an entire piece of music into another key...

: the keyboards sounded the same strings, but one fourth apart. Thus, the player could effortlessly transpose at this interval (e.g., to accommodate a singer) by playing on the second manual.

The Flemish harpsichords were often elaborately painted and decorated, and bore Latin mottoes.

Fine instruments continued to be made by Flemish builders in the 18th century, generally along French lines, notably by the Dulcken

Dulcken

The Dulcken family were Flemish harpsichord makers of German origin.Joannes Daniel Dulcken was born in Wingeshausen, the son of Georg Ludwig Dulcken . In 1736 he was in Maastricht, but by 1738 he had moved with his wife Susanna Maria Knopffell and their son to Antwerp where they became members of...

family.

France

French builders were responsible for important further development of the Ruckers-type instrument. The first step, taken in the mid-17th century, was to change the purpose of the second manual in two-manual instruments: whereas in the Flemish school this had been for allowing the player to transpose, the French makers used the second keyboard to permit rapid changes (i.e., while playing) between different choirs of strings; in other words, they were "expressive doubles".

The French harpsichord reached its apogee in the 18th century, notably with the work of the Blanchet

Blanchet

-Persons:*Abbé François Blanchet , French littérateur*Augustin-Magloire Blanchet , first Bishop of Walla Walla and Nesqually ; brother of François Norbert*Claude Blanchet , Canadian financial tycoon...

family and their successor Pascal Taskin

Pascal Taskin

----Pascal Joseph Taskin was a French harpsichord and piano maker. Born in Theux, near Liège, he lived most of his life in Paris.- Biography :...

. These French instruments were founded on the Flemish design, but extended in range, from the roughly four octaves of the Ruckers instruments to about five octaves. The 18th century French harpsichord is greatly admired and has been widely adopted as a model for the construction of modern instruments.

A striking aspect of the 18th-century French tradition was its near-obsession with the Ruckers harpsichords. In a process called grand ravalement, many of the surviving Ruckers instruments were disassembled and reassembled, with new soundboard material and case construction adding extra notes to their range. A number of builders, Taskin included, constructed (often very fine) new instruments and passed them off as Ruckers restorations. A more basic process was the so-called petit ravalement, in which the keyboards and string sets, but not the case, were modified.

England

The harpsichord was important in England during the Renaissance for the large group of major composers who wrote for it, but apparently many of the instruments of the time were Italian imports. Harpsichord building in England only achieved great distinction in the 18th century with the work of two immigrant makers, Jacob Kirckman (from Alsace

Alsace

Alsace is the fifth-smallest of the 27 regions of France in land area , and the smallest in metropolitan France. It is also the seventh-most densely populated region in France and third most densely populated region in metropolitan France, with ca. 220 inhabitants per km²...

) and Burkat Shudi

Burkat Shudi

Burkat Shudi was an English harpsichord maker of Swiss origin.-Biography:...

(from Switzerland

Switzerland

Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....

). The harpsichords by these builders have been described by the famous builder-scholar Frank Hubbard

Frank Hubbard

Frank Twombly Hubbard was an American harpsichord maker, a pioneer in the revival of historical methods of harpsichord building.-Student days:...

as "possibly the culmination of the harpsichord maker's art".

Visually, the instruments are considered very impressive, boasting a great deal of veneer

Wood veneer

In woodworking, veneer refers to thin slices of wood, usually thinner than 3 mm , that are typically glued onto core panels to produce flat panels such as doors, tops and panels for cabinets, parquet floors and parts of furniture. They are also used in marquetry...

ing and marquetry

Marquetry

Marquetry is the art and craft of applying pieces of veneer to a structure to form decorative patterns, designs or pictures. The technique may be applied to case furniture or even seat furniture, to decorative small objects with smooth, veneerable surfaces or to freestanding pictorial panels...

. Sheridan Germann writes of them, "English harpsichords must be acknowledged as great furniture, sumptuous in textures of wood and brass and fine joinery

Joinery

Joinery may refer to:* Woodworking joints or other types of mechanical joints * The work of the joiner, the fabrication and installation of fittings in buildings with materials such as wood and aluminum * In Australia and New Zealand, a joinery is also the generic term for a business which...

, and built to last forever."

The sound of the Kirkman and Shudi instruments is described by the authors of Grove Dictionary

Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, it is the largest single reference work on Western music. The dictionary has gone through several editions since the 19th century...

as "enormously rich and powerful"; "whereas that of a French harpsichord may be compared to the sound of a woodwind ensemble, the tone of these developed English instruments, with their brilliant trebles and imposing basses, may be compared to that of a brass band. The sound thus lacks the subtlety of a French instrument but more than compensates by its volume and sensual impact. ... The sound of these instruments sometimes tends to call attention to itself rather than merely serving as a vehicle for projecting the music, a quality that may in abstract terms be viewed as a defect despite its splendour." A similar opinion was held by Frank Hubbard, who wrote: "For sheer magnificence of tone no other instrument ever matched them ... The only reproach that might be leveled against these instruments is that they are too good. The tone is so luxurious and characteristic that it almost interferes with the music."

Few modern replicas of the Kirkman/Shudi style instrument have ever been built; possibly because of the tonal issue just raised. Germann also notes that the solid construction of the original instruments means that quite of few of them are still in use today, lessing the demand for new ones.

The Shudi firm was passed on to Shudi's son-in-law John Broadwood

John Broadwood

John Broadwood was the Scottish founder of the piano manufacturer Broadwood and Sons.-Life:Broadwood was born 6 October 1732 and christened 15 Oct 1732 at St Helens, Cockburnspath in Berwickshire, and grew up in Oldhamstocks, East Lothian...

, who adapted it to the manufacture of pianos and became a leading creative force in the development of that instrument.

Germany

German harpsichord makers roughly followed the French model, but with a special interest in achieving a variety of sonorities, perhaps because some of the most eminent German builders were also builders of pipe organs

Organ (music)

. Some German harpsichords included a choir of 2-foot strings (that is, strings pitched two octaves above the primary set). A few even included a 16-foot stop

Organ stop

An organ stop is a component of a pipe organ that admits pressurized air to a set of organ pipes. Its name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist; some can be "on" , while others can be "off" .The term can also refer...

, pitched an octave below the main 8-foot choirs. One still-preserved German harpsichord even has three manuals to control the many combinations of strings that were available. This represents the northern school of German harpsichord building as featured by builders such as Hieronymus Hass and Christian Zell

Christian Zell

Christian Zell was a German harpsichord maker.He was probably a pupil of harpsichord maker Michael Mietke. The first mention of him is in 1722 in the register of citizens of Hamburg, the city where he was to spend the rest of his life...

. The southern school features instruments inspired by Italian harpsichord building: simple large double manual instruments, often undecorated, using brass strings and an Italian construction of the soundboard. These instruments were built by Michael Mietke

Michael Mietke

Michael Mietke I was a German harpsichord and harp maker, whose sons also became instrument makers.He apparently lived his entire life in Berlin and is known to have been an instrument maker there from, at the latest, 1695. He succeeded Christoph Werner in 1707 as official maker to the court...

, Heinrich Gräbner and the Silbermann

Silbermann

Silbermann is a German surname meaning "silver man" and may refer to:* Gottfried Silbermann , German manufacturer of pipe organs** Andreas Silbermann , German manufacturer of pipe organs, older brother of Gottfried...

family. Many modern builders have copied the Mietke instruments and they have proven to be an alternative to the French type harpsichord.

Obsolescence

At the peak of its development, the harpsichord lost favor to the piano

Piano

. The piano quickly evolved away from its harpsichord-like origins, and the accumulated traditional knowledge of harpsichord builders gradually dissipated. The old harpsichords were not valued, often destroyed (for example, they were used in the Paris Conservatory for firewood), and the instrument was something of a ghost for the duration of the 19th century. One exception is the continued use for recitative music in opera well into the 19th century, the fact that it did not completely disappear from the public eye played a role in revival efforts that began in the mid-19th century. However, by the late 19th century, despite revival efforts, its use even in the recitative style began to disappear.

The harpsichord revival I: early stages

Interest reawakened around the dawn of the 20th century, and the harpsichord was gradually revived.

A recurring theme in this revival has been the tension between the goal of authentic reconstruction of earlier instruments through rediscovery of old technology, and the use of modern technology—anachronistic, but often thought helpful in improving the quality of the instrument.

An early authenticist was Arnold Dolmetsch

Arnold Dolmetsch

Arnold Dolmetsch , was a French-born musician and instrument maker who spent much of his working life in England and established an instrument-making workshop in Haslemere, Surrey...

, working early in the century in Surrey

Surrey

Surrey is a county in the South East of England and is one of the Home Counties. The county borders Greater London, Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and Berkshire. The historic county town is Guildford. Surrey County Council sits at Kingston upon Thames, although this has been part of...

in England. Dolmetsch's efforts proved premature, as the first half of the century came to be dominated by modernist efforts. Such instruments, made for instance by the Pleyel firm of Paris, were heavily influenced by the modern grand piano, notably in using heavy metal frames, far sturdier than would be needed to support the tension of harpsichord strings. These instruments typically included a 16-foot stop to bolster their sound, following a (relatively unusual) practice of 18th century German builders. Harpsichord scholar Edward Kottick has used the term "revival harpsichords" for this class of instrument, reserving the term "modern harpsichord" for the more historically authentic instruments that developed later.

A notable player of the Pleyel revival harpsichords was Wanda Landowska

Wanda Landowska

Wanda Landowska was a Polish harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century...

, whose playing and persona greatly increased the popularity of the harpsichord in her time. A number of important 20th century composers, such as Francis Poulenc

Francis Poulenc

Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc was a French composer and a member of the French group Les six. He composed solo piano music, chamber music, oratorio, choral music, opera, ballet music, and orchestral music...

, wrote works for revival harpsichords.

The end of the Second World War brought new demand for harpsichords, and firms manufacturing the revival harpsichord prospered, notably Neupert, Wittmayer, and Sperrhake. The revival harpsichord continued to evolve, even into the period at which it was being abandoned. Kottick and Luckenberg describe a 1970 Wittmeyer instrument, kept today in a Berlin museum, that incorporated amplification: "In an effort to give this huge but relatively quiet instrument some of the resonance the antiques had, it was equipped with an amplifier, and two speakers were built into the soundboard."

The harpsichord revival II: the authenticist movement

Starting around the middle of the century, the authenticist approach was given new impetus by the work of the builders Frank Hubbard

Frank Hubbard

Frank Twombly Hubbard was an American harpsichord maker, a pioneer in the revival of historical methods of harpsichord building.-Student days:...

and William Dowd

William Dowd

William Richmond Dowd was an American harpsichord maker and one of the most important pioneers of the historical harpsichord movement....

, working in Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, and Martin Skowroneck (1926- ), working in Bremen, Germany. These builders based their construction on painstaking research: they took apart and inspected many old instruments and consulted the available written material on harpsichords from the historical period. These mid-century authenticist instruments proved very popular, and many other builders soon followed the example of Hubbard and his colleagues.

As the authenticist movement developed, it grew ever more devoted to historical rather than revival-style technology. Plexiglas or metal upper and lower guides were abandoned for the historical wooden guides; heavy jack end pins were abandoned; piano-style keyboards were replaced by the lighter historical type;, and steel piano-wire strings were replaced by iron or brass. The authenticist instruments thoroughly vanquished the heavy instruments of the earlier 20th century, which are no longer constructed.
Since the late 1950s, harpsichords have often been constructed by amateurs from kits, a system pioneered by the American builder Wolfgang Zuckermann

Wolfgang Zuckermann

Wolfgang Joachim Zuckermann is a harpsichord maker, author and environmental and social activist. He was born in Berlin, became an American citizen in 1938 and has lived in France since 1995....

. The early Zuckermann kits were pragmatically rather than authentically designed, using plywood and straight "bentsides". They were an important force in increasing the popularity of the harpsichord. More recent kits have followed historical lines.

External links

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