Spinettone
Encyclopedia
The spinettone was a kind of 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...

 invented in the late 17th century 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 was later the inventor 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...

. Other names for this instrument were spinettone da teatro ("of the theater"), spinetta traversa ("transverse spinet").

Description

The spinettone was a kind of spinet
Spinet
A spinet is a smaller type of harpsichord or other keyboard instrument, such as a piano or organ.-Spinets as harpsichords:While the term spinet is used to designate a harpsichord, typically what is meant is the bentside spinet, described in this section...

, which means specifically that its strings were placed in pairs along a diagonal relative to the position of the keyboard (see spinet
Spinet
A spinet is a smaller type of harpsichord or other keyboard instrument, such as a piano or organ.-Spinets as harpsichords:While the term spinet is used to designate a harpsichord, typically what is meant is the bentside spinet, described in this section...

). The jacks that plucked the strings were placed in opposite-facing pairs within the larger gaps between strings. Most spinets are smaller than regular harpsichords. The spinettone was very long, but narrower than a regular harpsichord.

The novelty of Cristofori's spinettone was that unlike any other spinet, it deployed multiple choirs of strings. Its disposition
Disposition (harpsichord)
The disposition of a harpsichord is the set of choirs of strings it contains. This article describes various dispositions and gives the standard notation for describing them....

 was 1 x 8', 1 x 4', which means one set of strings in the normal octave and one set that sounded an octave higher. As with all multichoired harpsichords, this necessitated two sets of jacks, one for each choir. The player could choose which choir of strings would sound (8', 4', or both together) by sliding the keyboard forward and backward. The internal mechanism that accomplished this was the same as the one that Cristofori had earlier used for his oval spinet
Oval spinet
The oval spinet is a type of harpsichord invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the Italian instrument maker who later achieved fame for inventing the piano. The oval spinet was unusual for its shape, the arrangement of its strings, and for its mechanism for changing...

, q.v.

As Kottick (2003) points out, the design of the spinettone attested to the extraordinary ingenuity of its inventor, which has been remarked on by a number of modern scholars (see Bartolomeo Cristofori
Bartolomeo Cristofori
Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco was an Italian maker of musical instruments, generally regarded as the inventor of the piano.-Life:...

). It is not at all straightforward to fit two sets of paired spinet jacks into the ordinary string layout of a spinet, which is more crowded owing to the slant of the strings. Cristofori was able to do this by using iron in the upper strings instead of his customary brass. These strings could then be made tenser—therefore longer, to sustain the same pitch—and thereby create the space needed for the jacks.

History

The spinnettoni that Cristofori built were intended for the Medici
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

 family of Florence, more specifically for his patron Prince Ferdinando
Ferdinando III de' Medici
Ferdinando III de' Medici was the elder son of Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, and Marguerite Louise d'Orléans. Ferdinando was heir to the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, with the title Grand Prince, from his father's accession in 1670 until his death in 1713. He is remembered today...

, the son of Grand Duke Cosimo III
Cosimo III de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
Cosimo III de' Medici was the penultimate Medici Grand Duke of Tuscany. He reigned from 1670 to 1723, and was the elder son of Grand Duke Ferdinando II. Cosimo's 53-year long reign, the longest in Tuscan history, was marked by a series of ultra-reactionary laws which regulated prostitution and...

 and heir to the Tuscan
Grand Duchy of Tuscany
The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was a central Italian monarchy that existed, with interruptions, from 1569 to 1859, replacing the Duchy of Florence. The grand duchy's capital was Florence...

 throne.

Prince Ferdinando was a great enthusiast for opera, and he organized many operatic productions at the Medici villa at Pratolino. According to William Holmes (references below), the prince often participated as the continuo
Figured bass
Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones, in relation to a bass note...

 player, seated at a harpsichord among the orchestral musicians. The theatre the Prince had available at Pratolino was not very spacious, so there would be a strong incentive for the prince to have an instrument that was physically compact and able to fit easily in the orchestra, but endowed with multiple choirs of strings so as to be audible in performance. The spinettone was Cristofori's second effort to fulfill this requirement, the first one having been his (less successful) oval spinet
Oval spinet
The oval spinet is a type of harpsichord invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the Italian instrument maker who later achieved fame for inventing the piano. The oval spinet was unusual for its shape, the arrangement of its strings, and for its mechanism for changing...

.

Besides being smaller than a regular harpsichord, the spinettone had another advantage, pointed out by Kottick: owing to the diagonal geometry of the strings, the player could be seated more or less facing the performers on stage, while the sound was projected in the direction of the audience.

The great length of the spinettone was an advantage in the deep bass; as harpsichord scholar Grant O'Brien noted, "the bass strings are very long with very little bass string-scaling foreshortening"--in other words, their low pitch was achieved almost optimally, through length, rather than having to resort as in many instruments to lower tension or greater thickness. Kottick suggests that the instrument may have been designed to have a powerful bass because it was substituting for the theorbo
Theorbo
A theorbo is a plucked string instrument. As a name, theorbo signifies a number of long-necked lutes with second pegboxes, such as the liuto attiorbato, the French théorbe des pièces, the English theorbo, the archlute, the German baroque lute, the angélique or angelica. The etymology of the name...

, a plucked bass instrument, in performances.

The spinettone was a local success among the musicians of the Medici
Medici
The House of Medici or Famiglia de' Medici was a political dynasty, banking family and later royal house that first began to gather prominence under Cosimo de' Medici in the Republic of Florence during the late 14th century. The family originated in the Mugello region of the Tuscan countryside,...

 court. Montanari (2002) documents that Cristofori's spinettoni were constantly being loaned out from the Medici collection for use. He eventually built a total of four of them. Yet another was built later by his student Giovanni Ferrini.
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