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Scan 377
grove's dictionary of music and musicians, 1916
13 lines. Read by computer on 11 September 2026. Printed page 331. See the scan on archive.org.
1seat of harpsichord-making; the second, a double harpsichord, no stops being named but probably existing, landed at the more or marsh adjoining Whitehall, afterwards known as Scotland Yard. Hans Ruckers the elder was not born in 1530, hardly before 1550. His merit, and that of his sons Jean and André, was rather that of the great violin-maker Stradivari, to make perfect an existing model. The tension of harpsichords being comparatively small, they lasted longer than our modern pianos. They were sometimes expensively decorated a hundred years after they had been made. James Shudi Broadwood (Notes, 1838) states that many Ruckers harpsichords were in existence and good condition until nearly the end of the 18th century, and fetched high prices; one having sold in 1770 for 3000 francs (£120).
3To Jan Couchet we may attribute the addition of the unison string and limitation of the octave string—the little octave, as Van Blankenberg called it—to the lower keyboard.1 It was Couchet who, about 1640, changed the double keyboard harpsichord from a mere transposing instrument, contrived to accommodate the authentic and plagal church modes with the singer's capabilities, to a forte and piano instrument, with three strings (reducible to two and one) upon the lower keyboard, and one string always for the upper. Of Couchet's instruments, which are rare, one is in Edinburgh, and the other in Mrs. J. Crosby Brown's splendid collection.2
5When the Ruckers family passed away we hear no more of Antwerp as the city of harpsichord makers; London and Paris took up the tale. But all these Antwerp workmen belonged of right to the Guild of St. Luke, the artists' corporation, to which they were in the first instance introduced by the practice of ornamenting their instruments with painting and carving. In 1557 ten of the Antwerp harpsichord makers petitioned the deans and masters of the guild to be admitted without submitting masterpieces, and the chiefs of the commune consenting, in the next year they were received. The responsibility of signing their work was perhaps the foundation of the great reputation afterwards enjoyed by Antwerp for harpsichords and similar musical instruments. (Recherches, etc., Léon de Burbure, Brussels, 1863.)
7The earliest historical mention of the harpsichord in England occurs under the name of Claricymball, A.D. 1502. The late Dr. Rimbault (The Pianoforte, London, 1860) collected this and other references to old keyed instruments from records of Privy Purse expenses and from contemporary poets. The house-proverbs of Leckingfield, the residence of Algernon Percy in the time of Henry VII., preserved (for the house was burnt) in a MS. in the British Museum, named it 'clarisymbalis.' For a long while after this, if the instrument existed, it was known under a general name, as 'virginalls.' It was the school of Ruckers, transferred to England by a Fleming named Tabel, that was the real basis of harpsichord-making as a distinct business in this country, separating it from organ-building with which it had been, as in Flanders, often combined. A Tabel harpsichord with two keyboards is in the possession of Helena, Countess of Radnor. It is inscribed 'Hermanus Tabel Fecit Londini, 1721,' and is very like an early Kirkman. Harpsichords had, however, been made in London in the 17th century, by the spinet-makers, the Hitchcocks, Hayward, and Keene. The spinets by the first and last of these have been preserved here and there, but only one harpsichord, by John Hitchcock, is known. Tabel's pupils, Burkhard Tschudi (anglicé, Shudi) and Jacob Kirchmann (anglicé, Kirkman), became famous in the 18th century, developing the harpsichord in the direction of power and majesty of tone to the farthest limit. The difference in length between a Ruckers and a Shudi or Kirkman harpsichord,—viz. from 6 or 7 1/2 feet to nearly 9 feet, is in direct proportion to this increase of power. Stronger framing and thicker stringing helped in the production of their pompous, rushing-sounding instruments. Perhaps Shudi's were the longest, as he carried his later instruments down to CC in the bass, while Kirkman remained at FF; but the latter set up one row of jacks with leather instead of quills, and with due increase in the forte combination. Shudi, in his last years (A.D. 1769), patented a Venetian Swell, on the principle of the Venetian blind, but the invention was in use some years before, as it is described in the Salzburger Zeitung of August 6, 1765, together with his use of the machine stop, which, from a London report concerning the child Mozart's last concert there, it also attributes to him, and which was invented about 1750. Kirkman added a pedal to raise a portion of the top or cover. Both used two pedals; the one for the swell, the other by an external lever apparatus to shut off the octave and one of the unison registers leaving the player with both hands free, an invention of John Hayward's, described in Mace's Musick's Monument, A.D. 1676, p. 235. There is a Silbermann harpsichord in the de Wit collection at Leipzig, of wonderful tone, far finer than that of any Shudi or Kirkman, in which all the strings are overspun.
9In these 18th-century harpsichords, the Flemish practice of ornamenting with painting—often the cause of an instrument being broken up when no longer efficient—was done away with; also the laudable old custom of mottoes to remind the player of the analogous brevity of life and sound, of the divine nature of the
111 A. J. Hipkins. History of the Pianoforte (1897), p. 83.
122 Catalogue, Metropolitan Museum, New York. Musical Instruments of all Nations (Mrs. J. Crosby Brown, 1903). Preface by A. J. Hipkins.
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