A bowed keyboard instrument reportedly invented by William Mason (1725–97); it is occasionally confused with the Celestina in writings on the history of keyboard instruments. Mason had one of Adam Walker’s newly patented celestinas applied to his harpsichord in 1772, but the celestinette, of which Mason is said to have written a description in 1761, appears to have been a far simpler instrument in which a string was sounded by a hand-held bow while the other hand controlled its pitch by means of a keyboard. For further information see J.W. Draper: William Mason: a Study in Eighteenth-Century Culture (New York, 1924), 289.
See also Sostenente piano, §1.
EDWIN M. RIPIN