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Guide sheet no. 1

The Flutes of European Art Music

Some connections between the instrument’s design and musical requirements

Since around the 13th century, a gradual separation of

folk and art instruments began to form. (Both terms are contestable, but common.) What this development actually looked like is not yet explored. It certainly did not occur linearly, and not in the same way everywhere. It apparently arose in connection with a requirement of the middle and upper classes to represent their own status in their art as well as to separate themselves from the lower classes in music. The flourishing of cities con-tributed to a stabilisation and differentiation of estatist membership of society. The music of the upper class-es was distinguished by a relatively soft, gentle sound. Hand in hand with such trends was the development of polyphony furthered by the church and the academic world, which – among others – led to an extensive with-draw of percussion instruments in art music. This is why a melodious instrument such as the flute, with its – at least potentially – gentle sound, was given the chance to be accepted into the family of art music instruments. The requirement for this was that it possessed the pitch-es, demanded by polyphony. Preserved instruments and fingering charts show us that this requirement was met at the latest in the 16th century. Characteristic is

a caption for the fingering charts in Martin Agricola’s Musica instrumentalis deudsch (Wittenberg 1529): »A different, beautiful and true foundation / like three or four Swiss pipes / still accompanied by song / used to-gether / And how the six holes / are to be fingered ac-cording to the notes.« The term »Swiss pipes« means traverse flutes. Polyphony as church music also was developed from chant, and it was unimaginable with-out notation. Agricola, cantor in Magdeburg, placed val-ue in flutes not being played according to »tablature«, which are fingering charts, but »by notes« like singing. Among the requirements of the polyphony of the time was the usage of altered tones, that is tones with pre-scribed # or b. This means that, when possible, at least the twelve pitches in the octave customary on keyed in-struments should be available on wind inin-struments as well. Yet the player only has ten fingers, to cover the fin-ger holes. The recorder required only eight, and a mere six on the traverse flute. However, nearly twelve pitches were played; using so-called cross-fingering, the notes created by the finger holes could be lowered by several degrees. This occurred by closing one or more of the holes below the open one. The resulting notes sound

Musikinstrumenten-Museum

Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung The Flute Player, Dirck van Baburen, 1621 (?), oil on canvas,

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softer than the »normal« ones. However, to achieve a scale that contained the desired pitches, that was not too difficult to produce and contained notes that did not audibly contrast with one another too heavily, the instrument makers (who occasionally were identical to players) developed sophisticated systems. These have only been somewhat researched, also very few flutes from the 16th century have been preserved. The poten-tial of such a system implies that certain finger holes were not exactly intonated for one of the required tones, but rather somewhat lower. For that two pitches could then be reached from this finger hole, the higher with a slight adjustment in blowing and the lower from a »single« cross-fingering. Single cross-fingering means that there is only one closed finger hole following an open finger hole downward; there were also double and triple cross-fingerings with two or three closed finger holes below the open one. Single cross-fingering was also technically simple, yet it did not suffice for the normal intonation of the finger hole for lowering the tone under some circumstances. The finger holes (and the mouthpiece on traverse flutes) were undercut for octave purity and stability, meaning they were extended inward.

The fingering chart in Epitome musical by Philibert Jambe de Fer (Lyon 1556) is intended for the traverse flute with the lowest note g. The following may be said about the fingering for the altered tones of the low-est octave: The G sharp, which could only be reached by the difficult, partial covering of a hole, is missing; the B that is reached with a single, the C sharp1 with a

double cross-fingering. This may be a misprint, for two neighbouring holes (those for C sharp1 and B) remain

open so that the double cross-fingering only creates a very slight lowering in tone. The E1 flat requires a

sin-gle cross-fingering. All finger holes are left open for F1 sharp; playing an altered tone with no

cross-finger-ing can be achieved with the highest fcross-finger-inger hole, i. e. not through cross-fingering an even higher hole. This means in turn that F, for which only the F1 sharp finger

hole is available, must be reached with cross-fingering; double according to Jambe de Fer.

The fact that a double cross-fingering is required for F1, yet only single for E flat1, suggests that neither the

finger holes for F1 nor for E1 were intonated for these

exact notes. Because of the long tube a double cross- fingering is otherwise used more for lower pitches than for higher ones. Not only the preserved flutes, but also at least the flute school of Hotteterre (1707), show that certain finger holes deliberately were intonated too low in the 18th century. This stipulates for the D1 flute that

the flute must be »turned out« for F sharp1 and C sharp2,

whereby the lower lip unblocks up a larger part of the mouthpiece, raising the pitch. This means, in turn, that the corresponding finger holes were intonated too low. This made it easier for the player to get by with a double cross-fingering for C2 and single cross-fingering for F1

(G sharp1 and B1 flat required triple cross-fingering).

The F1 can only be blown by the flutist with single cross

fingering, because there were no more finger holes be-low this key.

The way the disposition of the finger holes may have individually been conditioned, it facilitated the voluble creation of all notes, with the exception of half notes over the note of the lowest and second lowest finger hole. These half steps could not be reached with cross-finger-ing, as there were no, or not enough, holes available be-low the be-lowest finger holes; this meant that only the partial covering of the finger holes is to be considered, whereby reaching the desired pitch was difficult and the resulting sound was unsatisfactory. One such tone for the D1 cross flute was the E flat1, and F sharp1 and

G sharp1 for the F1 traverse flute. Blowing adjust ments

were not as possible on the recorder as they were on the traverse flute, as the air blows through a windway; only single cross-fingering could be achieved for G sharp1,

which did not sufficiently lower the pitch.

A woodcut by Hans Burgkmair, Die Geschicklichkeit in der Musik from Weißkunig (around 1516) depicts a traverse flute (presumably an instrument in D1) with a

seventh finger hole somewhat to the side below the row of the remaining six finger holes. It could be sealed with the pinky finger, and upon opening produced the E1. This is certainly an exception, for only after 1650 did the finger hole for E flat1 / D sharp1 appear, with a key.

This was sealed when idling and was opened by press-ing with the fpress-inger. Only now was the full chromaticism possible with no half-covering of finger holes.

However, the demands of the musician went beyond the twelve pitches of the octave. If one wanted to in-tonate pure thirds, E flat and A flat were higher than D sharp and G sharp, for instance. In 1654, Gerbrand von Blanckenburgh stipulated the technical differentiation of such »enharmonic« pitches, yet continued to utilise the half-covering of finger holes; furthermore, the fin-gerings only differ in certain details: For instance, a note suffixed with # means the finger hole is more than half covered, and a little less than half for the neigh-bouring (somewhat higher) flat-suffixed tone.

On the traverse flute it was possible to achieve these fine differences in pitch with various methods of blowing: The player could – unlike with the recorder, in which the air blows through a windway – modify the airflow with their lips and/or more or less cover the mouthpiece with the lower lip. And yet we are met with Hotteterre’s (1707) approaches to make the enharmonic differenc-es accdifferenc-essible in the trudifferenc-est sense of the word: He stipu-lates various fingerings each for F sharp1 and G flat1 /

F sharp2 and G flat2, as well as for C sharp2 and D flat2,

and he requests blowing adjustments for the remaining enharmonic pitches. There were likely such differentia-tions in fingering techniques before Hotteterre.

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lower end of the flute – he incorporated a second key onto the only one previously existing on the traverse flute: one for E flat, the other for D sharp.

In the 17th century the traverse flute was in D1, the most

important instrument in the family being turned into the »D major flute«: Should the player open up one finger hole after another, this produces (partially with slight blowing adjustments) the D major scale. This was not the rule up to that point, based on the fingering charts of Mersenne (Harmonie universelle, Traité des instruments, Paris 1636): The sequence of finger holes produces the notes with no chromatic inflection, i. e. the »natural« notes. The later D major flutes, generally spo-ken those from the second half of the 17th century up to

Theobald Boehm, thus simplified voluble playing in the major pitch that had the lowest note of the instrument as a tonic. This corresponded to both the development of virtuous, soloistic instrumental music as well as the major-minor system of church notes. From the begin-ning of the 18th century onward a specific type of

trav-erse flute music started to form. However, the highly precise intonation of the finger holes for the D major notes meant that other notes had to be reached with triple cross-fingering (G sharp1, B1) or drastic blowing

adjustments (F1); these notes sounded relatively dull

and uncomfortable to play. (Triple cross-fingering could also be dependent on other, downward changes in the construction of the cross flute.)

The next step in the development was drilling fin-ger holes for notes not included in D major. As there were not enough fingers to close them all, they were equipped with valves pressed onto the holes with springs. The D sharp hole was already regularly present since the 17th century. With the second half of the 18th

century, there came more closed keys, primarily with the work of Johann Georg Tromlitz (1791). Such keys were generally widespread during the early 19th

centu-ry. This eliminated the need to inwardly intonate the remaining finger holes in the cross-fingering. The fact that the flutes of this time cannot be played with the fingerings of the earlier age is yet another strong indi-cation that the cross-fingerings were previously made possible by a special drilling of the finger holes. The for-merly one-piece flutes were generally produced in mul-tiple parts from the second half of the 17th century

on-ward. Not only could the instruments be better packed up this way, but they were also easier to produce. In the 16th/17th century flutes were furnished with a tapered

(i. e. they narrowed on the inside to the lower end) bore instead of a cylindrical one. This tapered bore generat-ed pure octaves, during overblowing for instance, and the notes A and B of the first and second octaves could be played with the same fingerings – a great relief for the flautist. This can likewise be understood in terms of the development of virtuosic, soloistic instrumental mu-sic. Through (as of yet little researched) changes in the bore and mouthpiece, the sound of the flutes from the

16th to 18th centuries onward became generally brighter

or »more robust«.

from left to right:

traverse flute in C, J. Hotteterre le Romain, Paris, 3rd quarter 17th

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It must be noted here that today’s seemingly quite mod-ern, great shapes of the traverse flute, like the alto and bass instrument, already existed in the 16th and 18th

cen-turies. The piccolo was more common in the 18th

cen-tury. The recorders were produced in entire families at a much greater extent as of the 16th century (Praetorius

mentions nine different sizes in 1619).

In the first half of the 18th century recorders and cross

flutes balanced out each other in terms of importance. On the recorder, the cross-fingering sounded less strong in their »normal« notes than on the cross flute; the windway was cleverly double rounded, length- and crosswise. Among other things, this simplified refined articulation supported by dynamic nuances. However, such possibilities did not suffice to ensure that the re-corder could maintain its importance at a time when the encrease and decrease of tones as a natural expres-sion was becoming more significant. The recorder with-drew from art music in the 19th century. The windway

too heavily impaired the free creation and expansion of sound.

The traverse flute, on the other hand, was adjusted to the demands of high romantic music by Theobald Boehm (1794–1881). The development of the Boehm flute, which shall not be described here in detail, is con-sidered by experts to be more of a revolutionary than an evolutionary event in the history of the flute: that is how different it is from its predecessors. Large tone holes amplify the volume; a key system that also links multiple keys together ensures equality and easy reach-ability of all chromatic notes; the cylindrical tube and the modified, tapered (parabolic) narrowing of the tip of the upper end influence the intonation and articu-lation in the same way. The keys allow the tone holes to be placed in any desired location, regardless of the reach of the fingers; this is, among other things, impor-tant for broadening the ambitus upward, as the desired pitches must be achievable during overblowing as well. A broad, brilliant path to virtuosity had been laid; and yet many techniques on the nuancing and ornamenta-tion of tones, as Fürstenau still described them in his Kunst des Flötenspiels (Leipzig, around 1844) were lost. The innovative, timbral »consistency« of all notes, which actually ensured more freedom in the dynamic shaping of longer melodical lines, was initially conten-tious. The flute’s uniquely airy sound remained pre-served; Debussy probably was the first great composer to intensively utilise the fascinating, universal possibil-ities of this new instrument.

Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIM PK Guide Sheet No. 1, 2nd revised edition 2013

Author: Dieter Krickeberg

Translation by allround Fremdsprachen GmbH © 2013 Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

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Guide Sheet No. 2

On the history of the clavichord

The clavichord is without a doubt one of our oldest key-board instruments. It’s mentioned in various written and iconographic sources in Germany at the beginning of the 15th century and just one hundred years later,

seems to have been known in all cultural centres. We know little about the origin of the clavichord. Pre-sumably, the instrument makers of the Middle Ages were inspired to construct this new instrument by the monochord, the organ, and the hurdy-gurdy. The mono-chord, inherited in the Middle Ages from Greek anti-quity, was considered an ideal demonstration means for making vivid connections between pitch, interval size, and string length. It’s a resonance box, which is overstrung with a single string. Markings on the box in-dicate the points where the movable bridge divides the string in such a way that lets the intervals reveal them-selves »with sound«. Now, if this principle is mecha-nized using keys from the organ and the hurdy-gurdy, and the number of strings were to be increased, we’d get a clavichord on which you can also play polyphoni-cally. The name is derived from clavis (= here key) and chorda (= here string).

For over three and a half centuries, nothing about the basic and technically simple design changed: A general-ly rectangular wooden box with a lid contains an

attach-ment stick inside on the left, a sound post right under the belly, and pin and block over the belly, the actual tone-creating system. The keyboard is attached to the long side of the box with the strings running down hori-zontally underneath. When the key lever is depressed, the metal tangent located at its end (which forms the webat the same time) causes the string to vibrate; the tone is heard. Unlike the harpsichord and pianoforte, the whole string doesn’t vibrate at this tone, but rather only the portion of the string to the right of the strike point. Meanwhile, the rest of the string is dampened by punched strips of cloth or a board with felt.

Its simple design makes it easy to understand why the clavichord would soon become indispensable for musi-cians of both the late Middle Ages as well as the Renais-sance and Baroque period: It’s handy – therefore easy to transport when needed – and easy to maintain at a reasonable price.

Despite its undoubtedly high degree of utility, the clavi-chord played mainly a pedagogical role through the middle of the 18th century, along with the harpsichord,

as well as the organ and regal. Musicians and theore-ticians are particularly convinced of its educational benefits: »… because what you learn at the clavichord, you can then easily apply to playing on the organ, the

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Clauizymell, the Virginale, and on all the other keyed instruments« This opinion of Virdung (1511) comes up again in all expert instrumental reports from Praetorius (1619) to Adlung (1768). Coincidentally, is also noted by the authors that the clavichords, compared to the quill pianos, have the practical advantage of keeping the notes better; also the player doesn’t have to »strug-gle with the … feathers« (Adlung, Musica Mechanica Organoedi, Vol. 2, p. 144, Berlin 1768). At the beginning of the 18th century, the clavichord gradually began to

emerge from obscurity. The ever-changing musical ideas are both reflected at the same time as they ma-terialize in the history of an instrument. Of course the external appearance of the clavichord isn’t essential, but nevertheless a visible sign for its changing role in musical practice. Hieronymus Albrecht Hass (traceable to 1689–1752) was an instrument maker active in Ham-burg, who, in addition to the usually simple clavichord versions, also finished instruments with precious ma-terials and imaginatively decorated them by request. Thus the red-primed inside of the lid of the clavichord pictured here (cat. no. 344) from 1728, for example, is decorated with golden Régence banding, garlands of flowers, branches, and leaves. A scene from Greek my-thology in which the power of music is symbolized is depicted in the centre of the lid. He designed the keys with particular care. They are overlaid with ivory and tortoise shell in a herringbone pattern.

At the same time as these external changes, people then went about working to improve the musical possi-bilities. Since about 1700, composers increasingly allowed themselves ever bolder modulations and freer treatments of dissonance. But there were limits to the music of such piano pieces for the up to that point so-called »fretted« clavichord. The term »fretted« is rem-iniscent of a style of playing the lute: By pressing one and the same string at different frets different sounds can be successively produced. Something similar hap-pens with the fretted clavichord. The tone intervals are generated by always using the same choir of strings, but then striking it with the help of several key levers and tangents sitting on different, precisely calculated points. This process, charming even in terms of its tone explains why the number of keys of such fretted clavi-chords is always greater than that of the string pairs. The fretting of our museum’s clavichords was most consistently carried out with the Dutch instrument (cat. no. 2154). Only the bass strings from C to A as well as the strings d and d' are unfretted. Quadruple fretting is used twice – and only with f/fis/g/gis as well as dis1/

e1/f1/fis1. Only the closely juxtaposed sounds are

»fret-ted« or preferred in the sense of the older music. Only the fundamental tones of the most common keys on d and usually also a have a string to themselves, and that way suspended notes and flourishes can be played in the cadences. The unfretted layout of the bass strings has space-saving reasons and in particular the various stop points on a low choir are too far apart.

Another peculiarity of the early period of this type of instrument was preserved in the Dutch clavichord. Striking the lowest notes would, according to the key-board layout, result in the scale E Fis G Gis A B H c. In fact, the result is C F D G E A B H c. Without significant-ly widening the keyboard, the (C) key is placed under-neath and the other »claves« (D and E) in between. This is called »short octave.«

Due to the growing demands of the musical »connois-seurs and lovers« unfretted clavichords were more and more frequently being made during the 18th century,

which means that each key is given a separate choir of strings. The still dominant practice of »short octaves« from organ building was renounced and the bass re-gion was chromatically developed. The range was ex-tended to up to five octaves; in so doing the clavichord received ever greater dimensions and was then tied to a fixed location. It’s given legs or supports and becomes a graceful piece of furniture with a tasteful contempo-rary design. Adlung emphasizes the importance of a careful handling of the materials for the sound of the instrument, in addition to an appealing exterior (a. a. O., p. 158). In his opinion, all good clavichords call their price, otherwise they’re only »… good kindling if you want to cook fish …«

The clavichord ascribed to Johann Heinrich Silbermann fulfils all of these requirements for a good instrument in the most admirable of ways (cat. no. 598). Initialling wasn’t common on the older clavichords. Only in the 18th century did organ and instrument makers, who

were also making clavichords at the same time, start to hand letter the resonance soundboard, e. g. »H. A. Hass Fecit/Hamb: 1728«. Attributing an unsigned instru-ment to a particular instruinstru-ment maker is generally only possible by comparing significant features of known instruments. Due to the careful processing of the ma-terials and the paper rose window in the sound board, Curt Sachs thought it possible to ascribe the unfretted clavichord to the workshop of Johann Heinrich Silber-mann, and dated it to the period around 1775.

Johann Heinrich was born in Strasbourg in 1727 as the youngest son of the renowned organ builder Andreas Silbermann. He was apprenticed to his uncle Gottfried Silbermann and elevated it like this example to mas-tery. From the 1782 Musikalischen Almanach by Johann Nikolaus Forkel, we see how the 20 years younger mu-sical researcher viewed Silbermann: »His instruments are all too well known in the musical world, that it suf-fices to say something in praise of the same. Both his grand piano and pianoforte, as well as other partially self-invented manual and pedal keyboard instruments are distinguished by the cleanliness of their work and the beauty of their sound« (p. 200).

The fretted and unfretted clavichords were used simul-taneously in musical practice of the second half of the 18th century. Although Johann Heinrich Silbermann

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late as 1784 by the similarly famous German instru-ment maker Christian Gottlob Hubert. The scholar Johann Georg Meusel characterized Hubert in 1786 in a trave-logue Durch Gegenden des Fränkischen Kreises, as »the famous instrument maker« in Ansbach, whom »an attentive traveller« absolutely must consult, because he’s »famous not only for his good and reliable pianos [i. e. clavichords] and fortepianos possessing the most beautiful euphony … but also for other musical instru-ments.« We learn more about Hubert from Meusel: »He is a very small man of quiet and noble character, but also a bit quick-tempered and obstinate and extremely accurate and on time in his work. He was born in 1714 in Fraustadt in Poland, and in 1740 came to Bayreuth, and from there in 1769 with the music ensemble to

Anspach.« He died in 1793 as a »High Royal Anspach Court Instrument Builder.« Our museum owns one of those beautiful and »accurately« executed clavichords by Hubert. Unlike the pianos of the 19th and 20th

cen-turies the natural keys of nearly all our clavichords are made from ebony and the accidental keys overlaid with ivory. Without a doubt, this was a matter of the direc-tion fashion was taking at the end of the 17th century

until the start of the 19th in Germany and France. Curt Sachs, who managed our collection from 1919 until his emi gration in 1933, explained this temporary fashion by the fact that the white hands of the piano-playing ladies were supposed appealingly contrast with the black of the natural keys.

A 50-year heyday of the clavichord began as late as the onset of changing fashions in 1750. The »sensitive time« discovered the advantage of the instrument, its delicate and musically flexible »soulful« tone. For the first time in the history of the instrument, now general-ly referred to as a »keyboard,« famous composers such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Georg Benda, Christoph Willibald Gluck, and Daniel Gottlob Türk composed their own literature. They broke away most decisively from the musical norms of the baroque with free fan-tasias, rondos, and sonatas, which, among other things, were oriented to the harpsichord and its rushing, mag-nificent, but at the same time rigid sound. Playing that is sentimental and full of fervour was the demand of the time; it was now being masterfully realized on the clavi-chord. Thanks to the mechanics of the tangents with their direct contact with the string, the player could sen-sibly shape the sound, whereas sounds chosen once for the harpsichord couldn’t be changed again. According to contemporary reports, the touch could be increased from pianissimo to fortissimo, wherein the dynamic possibilities of the clavichord couldn’t be compared with those of the modern piano. The much-vaunted » bebung,« similar to the vibrato on a bowed instru-ment, was created by the repeated pressing of the keys after the touch and permitted soulful playing just as the »portamento,« a one-time increase of the pitch of a tone to the next higher. Thanks to the effortless mechanics,

Fretted clavichord, Netherlands, 1695/1705, cat. no. 2154 © MIM, photo: Jürgen Liepe

Signature of Johann Heinrich Silbermann

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all kinds of flourishes were able to be performed in the most delicate of ways.

The most famous master of the clavichord was Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. His Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Attempt to play the piano in the true way) relates entirely to the expressive possibili ties of this instrument. He mastered the art of the lecture completely. Charles Burney, a music scholar from Eng-land, visited him in 1772 in Hamburg and wrote about his playing: »If he is to express a long note in slow and impassioned movements, he is quite adept at artfully calling forth a moving tone of sorrow and lamentations from his instruments that is only possible on the clavi-chord, and perhaps it by itself,« (Charles Burney's Tage-buch seiner Musikalischen Reisen, Vol. III, 1773, p. 212). Devoted to the aesthetic qualities of the clavichord, the poet and musician Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart praised the instrument in his Ideen zu einer Ästhetik der Tonkunst written during his detention at Hohenasperg in the style of Sturm and Drang: »Clavi chord, this lone-ly, melancholone-ly, ineffably sweet instrument, when made by a master, has advantages over the grand piano and the fortepiano … Those who prefer not to rumble, race, and storm; those whose heart is prone to overflow with sweet sensations, they pass over the grand piano and the fortepiano, and choose a clavichord … Nowadays the clavichords have nearly reached their summit: the have between five and six octaves, are fretted and unfretted, with or without buff stops; and it seems as though it has attained a degree of unmatched perfection for the perceptive player« (p. 288 f).

Despite Schubart’s enthusiasm for the clavichord, start-ing in around 1780 the instrument was increasstart-ingly displaced by the pianoforte. The perfection of the ham-mer action, the greater strength of sound, which made a giving concerts in halls possible, did more and more to displace the individual clavichord. The term keyboard, which was primarily used in the second half of the 18th century to refer to the clavichord, went over to the

piano in the 19th century.

Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIM PK Guide Sheet No. 2, 2nd revised edition 2015

Author: Gesine Haase; Editor: Conny Restle Translation by Übersetzungsbüro Nastula © 2015 Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

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Guide Sheet No. 3

On the history of the fortepiano

The history of the pianoforte begins in the year 1700. These were the times when Florenz Bartolomeo Cristo-fori had successfully concluded developments to a ham-mer mechanism, with which he was able to produce a scale of dynamic sounds »pian e forte« (quiet and loud) on a string piano. He met the endeavours of others, who in musical practice had been trying since 1600 to con-vey the principle of bringing to life a single sound from singing onto a melodic instrument.

This awoke great interest among middle German in-strument builders. Here is Germany, the great hammer dulcimer virtuoso Pantaleon Hebenstreit (1667–1750), highly esteemed by Ludwig XIV., had paved the way to developing the mechanical principle of hitting strings with little hammers. Christoph Gottlieb Schröter from Dresden and Jean Marius from Paris, who were proba-bly inspired by his concerts, found possible solutions, which however were not as all-encompassing and elegant as the Christofori’s mechanics. So it is under-standable that the most renowned instrument builder

of Saxony, Johann Gottfried Silbermann (1683–1753) emulated the Christofori mechanism model and built it into his fortepianos. A short time later, during the beginning of the 30’s of the 18th century, Silbermann

began to have his first fortepianos endorsed by Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach found the weak high notes and the difficulty in the hammer pressure unsatisfactory. In the year 1747 on his visit to Frederick the Great, Bach was happy to play on Silbermann’s hammer piano, who in the meanwhile had done a lot of work to improve the mechanics. Bach was taken in by his instruments. Despite this recognition, until the middle of the century the hammer piano was not nearly as significant a musi-cal instrument as the harpsichord and clavichord. As one of the first, in his 1752 Versuch einer Anwei sung die Flöte traversière zu spielen (Attempt to obey an or-der to play the flute) Johann Joachim Quantz acknow-ledged the worth of the pianoforte at least in view of its use as a general bass instrument. The speed in which the fortepiano gained popularity and began to be val-ued as a solo instrument, is shown in Carl Philipp Ema-nuel Bach’s contemporary disclosure Versuch über die wahre Art das Clavier zu spielen (Attempt to play the piano in the true way), part II, which appeared in 1762. Just nine years before, his verdict on this newcomer was very conservative, as he had only acknowledged it as a recognised instrument alongside the clavichord (Chap. 41, § 5). Quantz and Bach, the musicians who were active at the court of Friederich the Great’s, prob-ably had the oppor tunity to practice on the new instru-ment every day.

The last four decades of the 18th century were

criss-crossed by severe debates about the pros and cons of weighing up the concurrent instruments harpsichord, clavichord and fortepiano against one another. Only in 1780 did public opinion shine a more favourable light based on better versions of the instrument builders’ handicrafts. Heinrich Christoph Koch confirms the fol-lowing in his Musikalisches Lexikon (p. 590): He pur-ported the fortepiano to be »the well-known favourite instrument of the latter day piano playing world.« A walk round our museum provides a good overview of the development of the fortepiano from 1770 onwards. Until 1760 Germany was the leading maker and user of fortepianos. There were two events which ended this provisional honeymoon period. In 1753 Gottfried Silbermann died; 1756 was the start of the Seven Year War, which nearly destroyed all of the known saxon piano trade. Many of the workers from the Silbermann’s workshop emigrated to England, which was enjoying a

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blossoming industry and these helped strengthen the trade of building instruments bringing their own ideas and giving it a considerable lift. This tendency received further strengthening when Johann Christian Bach, who had a penchant for this instrument, transferred himself to London in 1762. On the occasion of a concert in 1768 he was the first to perform with a fortepiano as a solo instrument. It had been built by the Silber-mann scholar Johann Zumpe. First Burkat Shudi em-ployed him, and later John Broadwood. The renowned English piano-making company Broadwood & Sons was created. In this way the Cristofori-Silbermann tra-dition could be continued in England. Under the term Englische Mechanik the Silbermann model made its way to France in a roundabout way. Here it was im-proved considerably and then returned to Germany. In the middle of the 19th century the basic structure,

still valid today as the foundation mechanism of our modern grand piano, was given full recognition. Gottfried Silbermann’s nephew, Johann Heinrich, be-longed to one of the few people who, at the turn of the 18th century, felt it was their duty to keep this tradition.

The signed fortepiano from the year 1776 (see image) is one of his. Apart from a few formal differences, the me-chanical interiors of Gottfried and Heinrich Silbermann are virtually identical. By looking at the drawing of the Silbermann mechanism of our grand piano it is easier to see the process of obtaining a sound, which is still the same today. These are known from the clavichord and harpsichord: the sound post (a), back string length (b), bridge (c), hitchpin (d), string (e) and key lever (f). The hammer head (i) is turnable in one of the pivoted strings running through the whole piano and its head hangs down onto the key. On the back end, there is a moveable jack (g), which recoils after the strike of the hammer and lets it fall back into the starting position. The hammer is ready to strike again without the key needing to be released. This process is called simple solution. A balance rail (h) lifts the swing of the ham-mer, the wedge damper (j) and the damper handle (k) are different than those of our new grand pianos and do not have pedals yet, they operate with the hand lever (stop lever) known from the harpsichord and the organ. Due to the aforementioned economic reasons, the jack mechanism with simple release was reduced to budg-eted simplified drive models. Piano builders often resorted to using the flat square box-shaped format which seemed more rational for accommodating the simple English action mechanism. Such instruments named square piano received the same treatment with a »smaller« version of the mechanism.

The by far most original pianos in our museum (cat. no. 8 and 336) are presumed to originate from Johann Matthäus Schmahl (1734–1793). He ran a workshop as relative of a known southern German organ and piano builder family in Ulm. His instruments enjoyed great popularity in Germany and Switzerland. The shape of his square piano is reminiscent of that of a lying down

harp. Despite their dainty exterior, they house all of the refined mechanisms customary of that time. Schmahl – like his colleagues – had the idea to transfer the harp-sichord index onto the fortepiano. Five frontal hand-stops enable piano changes and sound effects, with a wide-range between a delicate piano sound with harpsi-chord reminiscences and a sound like a harp. A »drum« takes care of any rhythmic punctuation required, when pushing down on the keyboard, two additional trans-positions of half a note are possible. Schmahl also had thought of a chamber music get-together. Further proofs of the rationally motivated, sound-rich keenness to experiment in the second half of the 18th century are

the tangent piano by Franz Jakob Späth and Christoph Friedrich Schmahl (cat. no. 3400) and the organ piano by Samuel Kühlewind (cat. no. 14). Both are short-lived stand-ins of a typical transitional period, which how-ever enjoyed full validation in their time. English ac-tion mechanisms like those in our square pianos by Schmahl and our organ piano by Kühlewind were not destined for lasting success. Another mechanism de-rived from the acquired taste for the clavichord sound of musicians and listeners of that time: trip. The most important difference from the English action mecha-nism is that the hammer is connected to the key. Here the hammer, in order to keep it moveable, is pivoted and encased in a wooden, and later a metal capsule on the key. The hammer handle grabs with its rear part (the beak) under a knee-shaped escapement bar, later known as the escarpment tongue. If you push the key down, then the back end lifts up and pushes the beak down against the key. The hammer bangs against the string and remains under it for a short time. There are the same constraints as with the English action mecha-nism without the release, the hammer not being imme-diately ready to re-strike. Here the spirit of innovation and the good craftsmanship of the Augsburger organ and piano builder Johann Andreas Stein (1728–1792) kicked in. He furnished the simple trip with a release, he would place a springy piece of wood into the rigid escapement bar for each hammer, namely the escape-ment tongue. Directly after the strike, it bounces back and the hammer does not stay on the string, but falls back into its rest.

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in-struments, which could hold their own in larger rooms and an orchestra.

The increasing energetic playing of virtuosos needed more and more instruments. Piano builders in Vienna, London, Paris and overseas reacted to these demands with a series of important inventions. First of all thicker strings were used, usually triple stringed keys is found. For this reason, the wooden frame had to be strength-ened in order to withstand the increased pulling pow-er. This development can be noticeably followed on the Viennese grand pianos in our museum, made by Joseph Brodmann (cat.no. 312 and 4073), Conrad Graf (cat. no. 5011) and Ignaz Bösendorfer (cat. no. 4934). However, the development possibilities of the Viennese mechanics were, inasmuch the ener getic transfer of

the striking action mechanism reaching the string, had reached their limits in the middle of the 19th century,

de-spite the strengthening of the grand piano frames with iron supports. In London the Cristofori-Silbermann tra-dition was able to continue through its forward-thinking English jack mechanism with release, which the German emigrants had uninterruptedly furthered. From there it was probably passed on to the Paris companies Erard and Pleyel. Record-breaking for the modern production of pianos is the Erard invention from the year 1821: The repetition mechanism with double release. Although it allows the hammer to release the string after striking, it does not fall into the original rest afterwards, so the repeated striking action has a shorter distance and is therefore quicker and more accurate. Pleyel took charge of this particular significant alteration. Our grand piano built in 1842 (cat. no. 5333) has this double repetition mechanism. Like many other piano companies, Pleyel endorsed business friendships with great virtuosos of the time, above all Frédéric Chopin, who held his first concert in the Salon Pleyel on the 20th March 1832. He

appreciated the easy playing style and the resonating sound of the Pleyel grand piano.

In Germany alongside the effort of piano builders to solve technical problems at the beginning of the 19th

cen-tury, there was the experimentation of stylish piano designs which were more compact than the unwieldy grand pianos. If you opened the string lid upwards, the pianos would look like pyramids (cat. no. 4878), giraffes (cat. no. 4612) and Lyra shape (cat. no. 4100). Alongside the square piano, these piano types only lasted until about 1850. What has survived is the pianino, which among others had been development projects of the Paris companies Pleyel and Pape. Its small measurement still met its customers’ requirements. In 1825 the piano manufacturers Hawkins in Philadelphia and Babcock in Boston (USA) succeeded in building an iron frame which now permanently solved the tiresome problem caused by the reverberations of the enormous development of the strings being on a larger frame. Together with the

Model of mechanism of the fortepiano by Johann Heinrich Silbermann, Netherlands, 1695/1705 cat. no. 2154 © MIM, drawing: Horst Rase

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cross-string connection, which made better use of the resonance chamber and the felting of the now bulky hammer heads, there was now an instrument for virtu-osos since the 60 s of the 19th century, which enabled the

resonance of the romantic orchestra as part of its sound spectrum. The grand piano of the Koblenz company Carl Mand (cat. no. 5203), who worked together with the famous Jugendstil architect Joseph Maria Olbrich in around the 1900’s to develop the compactness (weight: about 550 kg), reaching an end to just about 200 years of developments on the grand piano.

In the following period the flourishing piano building industry worked with its mass products on further im-provements. In the 30 s of the 20th century it con ducted

experiments with electro-acoustic pianos (see the Neo-Bechstein grand piano, cat. no. 5239), but the tech-nical development of the two most important, still used types of piano – fortepiano and upright piano – was completed already in the middle of 19th century.

Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIM PK Guide Sheet No. 3, 2nd revised edition 2015

Author: Gesine Haase; Editor: Conny Restle Translation by Übersetzungsbüro Nastula ©2015 Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

Pyramid grand piano with pedal clavichords, Germany, around 1770, cat. no. 4878 © MIM, photo: Jürgen Liepe

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Guide Sheet No. 4

The instruments of the

St. Wenzel Church in Naumburg

Schryari, crumhorns, pommers, dulcians, recorders, cornets, trumpets and trombones

In 1657, the vocal music director in the St. Wenzel Church in Naumburg on the Saale river, the choirmaster Andreas Unger, drafted a will, according to which his extensive collection of music supplies and instruments should be inherited by the church. That happened al-ready in the following year.

It was often the case that a choirmaster passed his sheet music or instruments on to his church. However, the richness of the Unger’s collection was unusual. In the first half of the 17th century Naumburg could not

compete with Leipzig or Freiberg in Saxony, but was still a major centre of music culture. The music in the St. Wenzel Church, which was largely subordinated to the city council, competed to some extent with the mu-sic in the Cathedral. In those days, urban mumu-sic culture was mostly the church music culture; accordingly, the choirmasters were called »music directors« of the city where they worked. They held musical events also on secular occasions. Here, as in the divine service, the main focus was on the vocal music, but in most cases numerous instrumentalists joined the vocalists.

Unger’s inheritance included 53 wind instruments and 10 string instruments, namely two »five discant vio-lins«, »four violas and tenor violins« as well as »one bass violin«. A list of instruments in the St. Wenzel Church of 1728 includes, apart from the Unger's heritage, four German shawms, three pommers and two cornets; all of these instruments were acquired in 1663.

The wind instruments have probably not been used at least since the first decades of the 18th century: they no

longer met the demands of the modern world. Probably they were only kept because one shied away from re-vealing their destruction; the reason behind this could have been the devotion to the founder. There was hardly any historical interest; a church magazine was suitable as a curiosity cabinet only to a limited extent. In addi-tion, the instruments embodied no luxurious craftwork. Things were quite different in regard to stringed instru-ments: On the one hand, they were universal and of-fered the player more opportunities to adapt to the taste of a new era; compared to the crumhorn or recorder player, violinist could produce the sound more freely, compared to the ancient trumpet player he could vir-tuously make music in any situation. Also the absolute and the relative attunement were less fixed.

On the other hand, certain parts of stringed instruments could be replaced; this was done since about 1770, among other things to reinforce the sound and extend the pitch range. As the ancient stringed instruments can thus be used until today, it is not surprising that around

1890 only the wind instruments – useless for the nor-mal practise – were sold from the St. Wenzel Church; the buyer was the Prussian Ministry of Culture, which acquired them at the price of 4.000 German marks for the former collection of ancient musical instruments at the Royal College of Music, the today’s Musical Instru-ment Museum of the State Institute for Music Research, Prussian Cultural Heritage. The intellectual basis for this offered the historicism, in particular the growing interest for old music in the 19th century, which finally

led to renewed appreciation of ancient instruments. The stringed instruments of the St. Wenzel Church, of which only »23. a viola. 24. a small violoncello. 25. a bass

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violon« appear on the list of 1728, were probably hand-ed over the musicians in 17th or 18th century.

Unger’s instruments, which he might have purchased since about 1630, are equivalent to the types of instru-ments largely described by Michael Praetorius in the second volume in his Syntagma Musicum in 1618. Although all the instruments of the choirmaster were probably used in St. Wenzel Church at the same time – probably except for those which were first and last purchased – the historical development of each type, as already indicated in connection with the stringed in-struments, was very different. Crumhorns and schryari – the latter are called »cry arias« in the Naumburg re-cords – lost their original timeliness. The sound of these instruments is produced, like in the modern oboe, by the vibrations of a double reed enclosed by a windcap. The wind player can thus not hold the reed with the lips; they cannot influence the vibrations and therefore the tone and volume. Certain rigidity of the tone induced in this way as well as the nasal sound colouration met expectations of the musicians of the higher social class-es in the course of the 17th century less and less. Due to

their larger fingerholes, the wider sound outlet and the conical hole, the schryari sounded stronger and harsher than the crumhorns. However, a comparatively quieter and softer sound formed to some extent a guiding prin-ciple of instrument making in the 17th and 18th century.

It is reasonable to assume here among others a social reason: The higher social classes distanced themselves with the soft sound of their instruments from the music exercise of lower social classes. This is partly the reason why schryari lost its importance.

»Pommer« means according to Praetorius an instru-ment family with double reed; the reed is conical, a windcap is usually omitted. The high instruments of this family were also referred to as »shawms«, accord-ing to the lists of the St. Wenzel Church dated about 1720 and 1728. Here they are mentioned with the addi-tion of »German«, probably to differentiate them from the French oboe, which was modern in those days and came from the shawn. The pommers originally sound-ed like the schryari. Praetorius compares the sound of the shawm with the cackling of a goose. This sound was among other things due to the fact that the wind play-er vibrated the reed more or less freely in the mouth cavity, thus using it to a certain extent as a windcap. However, the absence of a real windcap meant that a change of the sound was already possible through the playing technique; the lips could hold the reed. Actually the oboe has been developing from the discant pom-mer (the shawm) relatively continuously. The pompom-mer was often played with pirouette, i. e. with a wooden top part which forms a small disc above. It served as sup-port for the lips so that the player could often use the windcap. The ending of the lip-ring was one of the steps on the way to the oboe: Due to holding the reed with the lips, the sound was mild and could be shaped, an articulation of the melody was possible, and the pitch

range expanded by overblowing. The dulcian (at that time already called »bassoon«) was the youngest of the wind instruments from St.Wenzel after his invention: It was built around the middle of the 16th century. Its

sound was probably inherently softer than that of the pommer; this suggests the name which comes from the Latin »dulcis« (sweet). The bell was narrower than in the pommer, a lip-ring was missing. In contrast to the previously treated instruments, it is common to regard the dulcian of the period around 1600 and the modern bassoon as the same type: The changes made to the in-strument in the course of time are felt less as funda-mental innovations but rather as nuances.

A type of instrument that, according to the under-standing of the 18th /19th century, was not capable of

develop ment is the recorder: The fact that the airflow first passes through a channel, limits the influence of the wind player on the sound formation and thus the expressivity of the instrument. Recorders of the 16th or

17th century, like those from Naumburg, sound slightly

darker, less »solo« that those from the time of Bach and Telemann.

It is not very easy to understand why the cornets fall into desuetude in the 18th century. The conical

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ment that was made mostly of wood was played like a trumpet, the sound could be modulated. The cornet could be played melodically from a upwards, the trum-pet, by contrast, only about from c2. The reason was that

the cornet had finger holes, while the wind player could produce only the so-called natural tones on the trumpet. Probably the nasal sound has also played a role in the disappearance of the cornet. Mattheson mentions the technical difficulty: »The hard cornet … is extremely dif-ficult, probably most difficult to play among all instru-ments.« As a powerful wind instrument with the pitch below that of the ancient trumpet, the cornet could be replaced by the oboe, whose sound gradually changed from the vocal colouring »ä« to »i«. And it was easier to play than the cornet. Already in the 16th century wind

players sometimes placed double (oboe) reeds on their cornets. 1765 a town musician from Stade was accused of using the oboe instead of cornet to avoid the diffi-culties of use: »… however plaintiff takes all sorts of liberties and … uses oboe instead of cornet …« To play from the church steeple – i. e. for relatively simple wind music from ancient tradition – the cornet was used until the 19th century.

From Unger’s time until the beginning of the 19th

cen-tury construction of the trumpet changed only in de-tails. There was a tendency to increase the bells. The demands on the trumpet decreased in the second half of the 18th century: previously the instrument was used

to play virtuosic melodies; this was done, as has been mentioned, by using the harmonic series. A change in each produced tone was effected by the lip tension. The natural tones are close to each other only at the top of the scale so that trumpet melodies were always played in this register. Such solo performance of the trumpet fell gradually into desuetude after 1750. To enable melo-dies in the lower register, the keyed trumpets were deve-loped at the end of 18th century and the valve trumpets

(patent for valves 1814 Blühmel and Stölzel) at the be-ginning of the next century.

However, the slide trumpet developed already in 1400 allowed playing in the low register:

The instrument could, depending on the melody, be extended or shortened using the movable tube which was inserted into the trumpet at the end of the mouth-piece. The slide trumpet from Naumburg is, as far as we know, the only remaining trumpet of its kind. Fast tem-pos were difficult to play on such instruments because large movements were needed almost with the whole trumpet.

Things are different with the trombone: Here you only need to operate the u-shaped slide; and as the player thus extends the two tubes simultaneously, their move-ments are shorter. From all types of the wind instru-ments of the St. Wenzel Church the trombone con-tinues to live with the slightest changes until today. The church originally had eight trombones; only one of them came to the museum. Its bell was lost during the World War II. The remaining slide and the information

in the catalogue of the Berlin museum of 1922, however, show how much the trombone itself has changed since the 17th century: The ancient instruments had a far

narrower diameter, the sound was quieter and slighter. This was particularly important in the ancient church music, where the focus was often on the transparency of a blend of multiple equal melodic lines. The clarity of the trombone sound from the 16th to the 18th century

was substantially due to the mouthpiece; the flat shell, the sharp edges on the transition in the tube caused a light tone even in relatively quiet play.

As all these instruments came to us from a church, they were used in the secular world as well, e. g. in wedding celebrations or in the domestic music. Schryari and pommer are today popular again not least because of the austere colour of their sound. According to recent research, also the crumhorns not always sounded as gentle, as one often believed: This is not least a question of reeds, of which very few have survived to date. Obvi-ously they were related to those, which are used, for ex-ample, for the shawms (Pifferi) of Italian folk music up to the present day. Recordings with such instruments show in a way the revival of the Naumburg instruments.

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Bibliography:

CD: Klingendes Museum 12. Die Blasinstrumente aus der St. Wenzelskirche in Naumburg

Historical wind instruments from Naumburg – role models for instrument makers since the beginning of the historical performance practice – resound with other historical instruments. A special and for conserva-tional reasons rare sound experience. With richly illu-strated 35-page booklet.

Dieter Krickeberg: Die alten Musikinstrumentensam-mlung der Naumburger St. Wenzelskirche im Spiegel ihrer Verzeichnisse. In: Jahrbuch des Staatlichen Instituts für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz 1977, Berlin 1978, p. 7–30.

Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIM PK Guide Sheet No. 4, 2nd revised edition 2015 Author: Dieter Krickeberg

Translation by Übersetzungsbüro Nastula © 2015 Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

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Guide Sheet No. 5

The harpsichord:

national differences

The harpsichord is one of the »quill pianos«. This term is now common to designate instruments which are shaped like a piano – i. e. harpsichords – and small-er shapes lying crosswise in front of the playsmall-ers forms, such as spinet and virginal. The designations »spinet« and »virginal« were formerly defined differently, as is the case today. Here it will suffice to know that »vir-ginal« is often used for the typical Flemish instrument while »spinet« is used for the typical Italian ments. Moreover, a quill piano is any musical instru-ment where the player snaps the strings with »quills«, i. e. elongated pieces of the crow quill shaft (also other material), by depressing keys.

The harpsichord as the largest instrument of the fam-ily also offers the most musical possibilities. Based on this, but also based on the inner structure and the ex-terior of the harpsichords, one can distinguish several types, which can be associated with different regions of Europe.

Although Italian harpsichords form no uniform pic-ture, they differ from the instruments that have been built north of the Alps. This is particularly true for the harpsichords made by the famous Ruckers family that are relatively similar to each other. They were cre-ated in Antwerp some time between 1570 and 1670. Our museum has four of these instruments. Italian harpsichords have comparatively thin walls (ribs). The dimensions are usually between 3 and 6 mm, at the Ruckers by contrast 14 and 16 mm. Many of the sensitive Italian instruments were kept in a box. Un-til the beginning of the 17th century they were taken

out for playing and put on a table. The boxes could be unadorned or painted simply, however, the instru-ments had decorative features: When playing music, not only listening was important, but also the pleas-ure that one felt while looking at a beautiful object. A harpsichord built by Vito Trasuntino in Venedig in 1560 (cat. no. 806) bears the slogan: Rendo Lieti in vn Tempo gli Occhi el Core (I delight both the eyes and

Musikinstrumenten-Museum

Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung

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the heart). From the beginning of the 17th century, the

box was often painted more spectacularly than before. In addition, a table no longer served as a base; rather, three feet were used that were not rigidly connected to the box.

It was said about the Italians that they design their harpsichords rather in the spirit of the sculptor than the painter; what is meant by that is on the one hand the slim shape, the profile strips, walls running in curves on the side of the keyboard, the carvings and marquetry, the arcades in the face edges of the natural keys, the ornamental nails of ivory, on the other hand the absence of paint (except for the box) in favour of the mentioned inlays: the use of natural materials in-stead of paint was also relatively expensive; the outfit of the Italian quill pianos was more precious than that of the Flemish. Our Italian gravecembalo (this was probably the name of the longer instruments) dating from about 1700 lost a part of its decoration in the second world war; carved, angel-like water spirits once rested on the edges on both sides of the keyboard. In Antwerp, especially from the 17th century onwards,

the use of decorative materials was sometimes faked by painting: Thus the ribs offer the sight of red-brown marble or you can see other large, precious stones. The right-angled walls of the keyboard – simpler than those made by the Italians – are only the extensions of the ribs. In the area of the keyboard, the inside of the walls and the inside of the lid are partly covered with printed paper (wallpaper). On the inside of the lid, you can also often find the imitated grain of expensive wood (but not its colour!). There were also the Latin inscriptions from the theological humanist spiritual world; our harpsichord that was built by the elder An-dreas Ruckers (cat. no. 2224) in 1618 bears the slogan Soli Deo Gloria (honour is due to God alone). A harp-sichord of our museum (cat. no. 2232) with built-in virginal (octave virginal) sounding one octave higher, which was made by Joannes Ruckers (1578–1643), is provided with the inscription Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum (Let every spirit praise the Lord). The rich painting on the soundboard represents in many Flem-ish instruments in a sense a garden, with flowers, fruit, birds, butterflies and other animals. In the Ruckers’ quill pianos, the sound hole is usually a lead rose with the initials of the builder and an angel playing harp. The lids are often provided inside with paintings instead of wallpaper, although the question always arises whether it is the original decoration. An exam-ple is the just mentioned harpsichord with built-in octave virginal by J. Ruckers. Such double instruments are documented since the late 16th century; they were

deemed to be custom-made for customers who were aware of the importance of prestige; the equipment with a relatively precious painting would meet this expectation.

The cover painting of our instrument represents the conversion of Saul and is probably related to a

tem-plate made by Francesco Salviati (1510–1563). How-ever, it is questionable whether it was specifically made for this quill piano; it could still have been made for its first owner.

A musically relevant feature is the so called scale length, i. e., the length of the vibrating part of a string or all of these string lengths. A longer string, as we know, leads to a deeper tone than a shorter one under otherwise equal conditions. However, as other factors such as the thickness and tension of the string also affect the pitch, there are very different scale lengths. The length of the string for the note c2 in the

Ruck-ers’ quill pianos was usually about 360 mm, while it strongly fluctuated in Italian instruments, but was on average much shorter than in the Netherlands. In the Ruckers’ harpsichords there is even a string length of around 480 mm for c2: They built harpsichords with

two manuals (keyboards), whose tuning was a fourth apart. The f key of the lower manual is located below the c key of the upper manual. Because the keys locat-ed in the same position snap the same strings, e. g. the f1 key of the lower key produce the same tone as the

c1 key of the upper manual. Thus, c2 of the lower

man-ual has the said string length of 480 mm. Such a dou-ble instrument in our museum was built by Andreas Ruckers in around 1620 (cat. no. 2230).

Also in more recent times the »concert pitch« is not the same in all cities. In the old days, the differences were even larger, and different moods were common at the same place. Michael Praetorius (De organograph-ia, 1618, p. 44) says, for example, that the English, when they play music with the pure viola da gamba ensemble, chose a pitch shifted by a fourth or even a fifth. It is disputed whether he has meant here a raise or a lowering. What is interesting is his observation that the shifted pitch produces »much more graceful / brilliant and glorious harmony than if you stay in the right pitch«. Such widely spaced attunements appear to have been common also in Italy; However, they have not been combined in the same instrument. The differences in the scale length – the string length of c2

is in many instruments about 270 mm, in others about 320 – may indicate different pitches. As the Italian scales were overall shorter than the Flemish ones, the string tension could be lower because, even with lower tension conditioned by the shortness of the string, and probably by its smaller thickness, the same pitch can be reached as in Flemish harpsichords. The low string tension is characterised by the above-mentioned thin walls.

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the normal pitch, which are obtained when the C whis-tle in the organ is eight feet long. The four-foot stop that can be found in most Flemish instruments sounds one octave higher; in conjunction with the eight foot it makes the sound clearer.

A »stop« of the harpsichord mostly refers to the vari-ous individual sound possibilities. Types, number and connection possibilities of the stop are called »compila-tion of stops« of the instrument. To better understand these subtleties of the sound, the following should be noted with respect to the mechanical system of the harpsichord (Fig. 1): On the back of the keys there are vertically positioned jacks, which are also provided with a vertical reed moving around an axis. Quills are mounted inside of them in an approximately horizon-tal position (Fig. 2). The jack is raised by the finger pressure of the player, the horizontal string is snapped by the quill. When the key is released, the quill reaches the string from above again and passes sideways be-cause it is installed in a movable reed. Thus it resumes its initial position without producing a further sound; at the same time, the damping strip lowers onto the string and stops the sound.

A register generally consists of a jack row and a cor-responding set of strings. As mentioned above, there are mainly eight-foot and four-foot stops; the six-foot, which makes an octave sound deeper, is rare, and the two-foot is very rare. However, two jack guides ar-ranged one behind the other can be allocated to the same set of strings – normally the eight foot; this case is shown in Fig. 1. The same string is then snapped in different places; the closer to the web the snapping point is, the more nasal and clear will be the sound. Of course, a sound difference due to different snapping points is also observed if each of two eight-foot stops has an own set of strings: The jacks are arranged one behind the other, while the two strings for the same sound are located on the same webs. In many areas of harpsichord construction, the contrast and connec-tion possibilities of the eight-foot stops are of greater importance than the stops of other pitches. – The indi-vidual stops can be switched off by the lateral displace-ment of the whole jack row, so that the quills pass the

string. – Another important way to change the sound is the lute stop: This is a sliding bar, which is used to press the piece of leather or felt affixed thereto to the strings of a stop. Thus the sound is strongly damped. The German harpsichord construction is still compar-atively little known; there have obviously been strong, regionally-related differences that were exacerbated by the change of epochs. Many German harpsichord build-ers were also open to any suggestions from abroad. Our harpsichord with cat. no. 316, whose initialling has probably been lost, was most likely made by Johann Heinrich Harrass from Großbreitenbach / Thuringia in about 1710. It has two so-called contrast manual, which differ, in contrast to the aforementioned trans-posing manuals, by the sound rather than the pitch. The stop of the upper manual (8' with lute, 4'), after in-serting this manual, can also be played from the lower manual (16', 8'). This instrument can later be changed; anyway we know that Harrass used the six-foot stop. – By the way, during the 17th century, the transposing

manuals of the above mentioned harpsichords made by Andreas Ruckers have been converted to contrast manuals. Here, the four-foot stop can be played using

Fig. 1: Model of a quill piano mechanism using the example of the harpsichord by Johann Christoph Fleischer, Hamburg, 1710, cat. no. 5083 © MIM, drawing: Horst Rase

String Plectrum

(20)

long, step-like jacks of the two manuals; each jack is located on two key levers that produce the same tone in the lower and the upper manual.

Our harpsichord (cat. no. 5), which was probably built around the middle of the 18th century in the workshop

of Gottfried Silbermann, was also provided with this device: Thus the eight-foot stop of the upper manual could also be played from the lower manual equipped with a second eight-foot and four-foot stop. Today, this harpsichord is provided with a push-pull coupler as that made by Harrass for the same purpose. To switch the stops by the feet instead of by the hands, which are needed for playing, a pedal was used, especially in the English harpsichord construction, in the second half of the 18th century (harpsichord by Jacob Kirckman,

London 1761).

After the harpsichord was no longer used in around 1800, probably the first three reconstructions were ex-hibited at the world exhibition in Paris in 1889. They are now in our Museum. The harpsichord built by Pleyel Wolff Lyon & Cie (Paris 1889) established that trend in the modern harpsichord construction, which is far away from the historical models. This is reflected in the sturdy design, installation of all stop levers in a pedal box, the damping by independent links. The instruments built by Louis Tomasini and Erard in the same year are more history-focused, which can be ob-served in the recent trends of harpsichord construc-tion again. As a special feature, Tomasini’s harpsi-chord has a stop referred to as »Pianissimo«: The jack row of the upper manual is laterally slightly displaced so that the quills touch the strings just very gently. The instrument from Erard has a lute stop in both manuals. – The Renaissance of the harpsichord be-gan in Germany later than in France. The instruments built by Johann George Steingraeber (Berlin 1930) and Hans Neupert (Bamberg 1931) are based on the orig-inals of our museum. Both of them have the compi-lation of stops of a harpsichord; as regards the outer shape, Neupert used our instrument, which was built by Silber mann, as a basis. By their sturdy design, the use of leather for the »quills« and many other details, both harpsichords remind of the 20th century.

Musikinstrumenten-Museum SIM PK Guide Sheet No. 5, 2nd revised edition 2015

Author: Dieter Krickeberg, editorial: Conny Restle Translation by Übersetzungsbüro Nastula © 2015 Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung Preußischer Kulturbesitz Berlin

References

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