Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/79

Rh P I A N O F R T E board, which Mersenne s short measure, and the realization at that time of the independence of each key in the chromatic scale, may be taken when combined to explain. FIG. 10. English Spinet (Spinetta Traversa), by Carolns Haward. About 1668. Collection of Mr W. Dale, London. Hitherto such cut sharps have been assumed to be quarter tones, but enharmonic intervals in the extreme bass can have no justification. From the tuning of Handel s Italian clavichord already mentioned, which has this peculiarity, we are led to infer that the nearer halves of the two cut sharps were the chromatic semitones, and the farther halves the lower thirds or fourths below what they appeared to be. Thomas Hitchcock (for whom we have a date 1703 upon a spinet jack in an instrument of older model with two cut sharps by Edward Blunt) and his son John made a great advance in con structing spinets, giving them the wide compass of five octaves, from G to G, with very fine 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 the contemporary and subsequent Eng lish makers. We have now to ask what was the difference between Scaliger s harpichor- dum and his clavicymbal. Galilei, the father of the astronomer of that name (Dutlogo delta Musicd Antica e Moder-rwi, Florence, 1581), says that the harpichord was so named from having resembled an &quot; arpa giacente, &quot; a prostrate or &quot; couched &quot; harp, proving that the clavicymbal was at first the trapeze- instrument of this kind so old as the Roman cembalo at South Kensington (fig. 11). It was made by Geronimo of Bologna in 1521, two years before the Paris Portalupis spinet. The outer case is of finely tooled leather. It has a spinet compass of keyboard of nearly four octaves, E to D. T!i3 natural keys are of boxwood, gracefully arcaded in front. The keyboards of the Italian cembalo were after wards carried out to the normal four octaves. There is an existing example dating as early as 1526, with the bass keys carried out in long measure. It is surprising to see with what steady persistence the Italians adhered in making the instrument to their original model. As late as the epoch of Cristofori, and in his 1722 cembalo at Florence, we still find the independent outer case, the single keyboard, the two unisons, neither of which could be dispensed with by using stops. The Italians have been as conservative with their forms of spinet, and are to this day with their organs. The startling &quot;piano e forte&quot; of 1598, brought to light from the records of the house of D Este, by Count Valdrighi of Modena, after much consideration and a desire to find in it an anticipation of Cristofori s subse quent invention of the pianoforte, we are disposed to regard as an ordinary cembalo with power to shift, by a stop, from two unisons (forte) to one string (piano), at that time a Flemish practice, and most likely brought to Italy by one of the Flemish musicians who founded the Italian , school of composition. About the year 1 600, when accom paniment was invented for monody, large cembalos were made for the orchestras to bring out the bass part the performer standing to play. Such an instrument was called &quot; archicembalo, &quot; a name also applied to a large cembalo, made by Vito Trasuntino, a Venetian, in 1606, intended by thirty-one keys in each of its four octaves one hundred and twenty-five in all to restore FIG. 11. Boman Clavicembalo, by Geronimo of Bologna, 1521 ; Soutli Kensington Museum. shaped spinet; and we should therefore differentiate harpi chord and clavicymbal as, in form, suggested by or derived from the harp and psaltery, or from a &quot; testa di porco &quot; and an ordinary trapeze psaltery. We are inclined to prefer the latter. The Latin name &quot; clavicymbalum, &quot; having early been replaced by spinet and virginal, was in Italy and France bestowed upon the long harpichord, and was con tinued 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 quill instrument shaped like a modern grand piano, and resembling a wing, from which it has gained the German appellation &quot;Fliigel.&quot; We can point out no long the three genera of the ancient Greeks. How many attempts have been made before and since Trasuntino to purify intonation in keyboard instruments by multiplying keys in the octave ? Simultaneously with Father Smith s well-known experiment in the Temple organ, London, there were divided keys in an Italian harpsichord to gain a sepa rate G sharp and A flat, and a separate D sharp and E flat. Double keyboards and stops in the long cembalo or harpsichord came into use in the Netherlands early in the 1 6th century. We find them imported into England. The following citations, quoted by Kimbault in his History of the Pianoforte, but imperfectly understood by him, are from the privy purse expenses of King Henry VIII., as extracted by Sir Harris Nicolas in 1827.