Page:EB1911 - Volume 21.djvu/589

Rh the rectangular instrument in Italy is “ spinetta tavola.” In England, from Henry VII. to Charles II., all quilled instruments (stromeutz di penna), without distinction as to form, were known as virginals. It was a common name, equivalent to the contemporary Italian clawcordo and Flemish c lav ism gel. From the latter, by apocope, we arrive at the French clavecin-the French clfwier (davis, a key), a keyboard, being in its turn adopted by the Germans to denote any keyboard stringed instrument.

FIG 9.-Spinetta Tavola (Virginal), 1568; Vict. and Albert Museum.

Mersenne (op. ci!, liv iii, p. 158) gives three sizes for spinets -one Qé ft. wide, tuned to the octave of the “ ton de chapelle ” (in his day a half tone above the present English medium pitch), one of 3% ft. tuned to the fourth below, and one of 5ft. tuned to the octave below the first, the last being therefore tuned in unison to the chapel pitch. He says his own spinet was one of the smallest it was customary to make, but from the lettering of the keys in his drawing it would have been of the second size, or the spinet tuned to the fourth. The octave spinet, of trapeze form, was known in Italy as “ ottavina ” or “ spinetta di Serenata.” It had a less compass of keys than the larger instrument, being apparently three and two-third octaves, E to Cwhich by the “ short measure ” would be four octaves, C to C. We learn from Praetorius that these little spinets were placed upon the larger ones in performance; their use was to heighten the brilliant effect. In the double rectangular clavisingel of the Netherlands, in which there was a movable octave instrument, we recognize a similar intention. There is a fine spinet of this 7/7 //J c

FIG 10 -English Spinet (Spinetta Traversa), by Carolus About 1668.

kind at Nuremberg. Praetorius illustrates the Italian spinet by a form known as the “ spinetta traversa, ” an approach towards the long clavicembalo or harpsichord, the tuning pins being immediately over the keyboard. This transposed spinet, more pon erful than the old trapeze one, became fashionable in England after the Restoration, Haward, Keene, Slade, Player, Baudin, the Hitchcocks, Mahoon, Haxby, the Harrir family, and others Haward.

having made such “ spinets ” during a period for which we have dates from 1664 to 1784. Pepys bought his “Espinette” from Charles Haward for, E 5, July 13, 1664

The spinets of Keene and Flayer, made about 1700, have frequently two divided sharps at the bass end of the keyboard, as in the description by Mersenne, quoted above, of a spinet with short measure. Such divided sharps have been assumed to be quarter tones, but enharmonic intervals in the extreme bass can have no justincation. From the tuning of Handel's Italian clavichord already mentioned, which has this peculiarity, and from Praetorius we find the further halves of the two divided sharps were the chromatic semitones, and the nearer halves the major thirds below i.e. the dominant fourths to the next natural keys. Thomas Hitchcock (for whom there are dates 1664 and 1703 written on keys and jacks of spinets bearing Edward Blunt's name and having divided bass sharps) made a great advance in constructing spinets, giving them the wide compass of iive octaves, from G to G, with very fme keyboards in which the sharps were inlaid with a slip of the ivory or ebony, as the case might be, of the naturals. Their instruments, always numbered, and not dated as has been sometimes supposed, became models for contemporary and subsequent English makers. We have now to ask what was the difference beween Scaliger's harpichordum and his clavicymbal. Galilei, the father of the astronomer of that name (Dzalogo della musica antica e moderna, Florence, 1581), says that the harpsichord was so named from having resembled an “ arpa giacente, " a prostrate or “ couched” harp, proving that the clavicymbal was at Iirst the trapeze-shaped spinet; and we should therefore differentiate harpsichord and clavicymbal as, in form, suggested by or derived from the harp and psaltery, or from a “ testa di porco ” and an ordinary trapeze psaltery. We are inclined to prefer the latter. The Latin name “ clavicymbalum, ” having early been replaced by spinet and virginal, was in Italy and France bestowed upon the long harpsichord, and was continued as clavicembalo (gravecembalo, or familiarly cembalo only) and clavecin. Much later, after the restoration of the Stuarts, the first name was accepted and naturalized in England as harpsichord, which we will define as the long instrument with quills, shaped like a modern grand piano, and resembling a wing, from which it has gained the German appellation “ Flugel." We can point out no long instrument of this kind so old as the Roman cembalo at South Kensington (Iig. II). It was made by Geronimo of Bologna in 1521, two years before the Paris Portalupis spinet. The outer case is of nnely tooled leather. It has a spinet keyboard with a compass of nearly four octaves, E to D. The natural keys are of boxwood, gracefully arcaded in front. The keyboard of the Italian cembalo was afterwards carried out to the normal four octaves. There is an existing example, dated 1626, with the bass keys carried out without sharps in long measure (unfortunately altered by a restorer). It is surprising to see with what steady persistence the Italians adhered to their original model in making the instrument. As late as the epoch of Cristofori,1 and in his 1722 cembalo at Florence,2 we still find the independent outer case, the single keyboard, the two unisons, without power to reduce to one by using stops. The Italians have been as conservative with their forms of spinet, and are to this day with their organs. The startling “ piano e forte ” of 1598, brought to light from the records of the house of D'Este by Count Valdrighi of Modena,3 after much consideration and a desire to find in it an anticipation of Cristofor1's subsequent invention of the pianoforte, we are disposed to regard as an ordinary cembalo with power to shift, by a stop, 1 In the harpsichord Cristofori made for Prince Ferdinand dei Medici in 1702, recently acquired by Mr Stearns, of Detroit, and presented by him to the University of Michigan, U S A., there arc three keyboards, thus arranged: 1st, highest keyboard, octave strlng only; 2nd, mlddle, octave and first unison; 3rd, lowest, both unisons. A harpsichord similarly designed with three keyboards, inscribed “ Vmcentlus Sodi Florentinus Feclt, Anno Domini 1779, " was presented by Mrs ]. Crosby Brown to the Metropolitan Museum, New York

2 In the Kraus Museum Catalogue (1901), No. 559. 3 See Van der Straeten, v1. 122.