A bowed keyboard instrument patented by Adam Walker of London in 1772 (no.1720); it is occasionally confused with the Celestinette in writings on the history of keyboard instruments. It was also a model of Organette. When the keys were depressed the strings were drawn against a continuous band of silk (although the patent also mentions flax, wire, gut, hair and leather) driven by a weight, spring or foot treadle. The celestina could be added to a harpsichord as a special stop; Thomas Jefferson ordered a harpsichord with a Venetian swell and a celestina (to be made by Walker) from Jacob and Abraham Kirkman in 1786, and a group of letters between Jefferson, Charles Burney, Francis Hopkinson and John Paradise concerning this instrument has been reprinted by Russell. Jefferson wrote that the stop ‘suits slow movements, and as an accompaniment to the voice’. Burney noted that the example fitted to Jefferson's instrument ‘is not confined to mere psalmody, as was the case at the first invention. On the degree of pressure [on the keys] depends, not only the durability of the tone but its force’. Although no celestina has survived, a restored celestina stop can be found on a 1768 Kirkman harpsichord in the private collection of Andreas Beurmann in Hamburg.
See also Organ stop; Sostenente piano, §1.
R. Russell: The Harpsichord and Clavichord (London, 1959, rev. 2/1973), 177–82
H. Cripe: Thomas Jefferson and Music (Charlottesville, VA, 1974), 49–52
A. Beurmann: Die schöne Welt der Tasteninstrumente (Munich, forthcoming)
EDWIN M. RIPIN