Clavichord
(Fr.
clavicorde, manicorde, manicordion; Ger. Clavichord,
Klavichord; It. clavicordio, clavicordo, manicordo,
monacordo, monocordo, sordino; Lat. clavicordium;
Port. clavicórdio; Sp. clavicordio, manicordio, manucordio,
monacordio).
A
keyboard instrument, the simplest and at the same time the most subtle and
expressive of those whose sound is produced by strings rather than by pipes.
The oldest and most enduring type of clavichord is ‘fretted’, in which a given
pair of strings may be struck by more than one tangent, producing two, three,
or even four different notes according to the distance from the bridge, but
only one at a time. ‘Unfretted’ clavichords, in which each tangent strikes its
own string, began to appear in the late 17th century. It is likely that the
mysterious Chekker of the 14th century was, in fact, a clavichord; in any
event, it is clear from both pictures and writings that clavichords not too
unlike those that are known from surviving examples were in existence in the
early years of the 15th century. Clavichords were used throughout western
Europe during the Renaissance, and in Germany and Scandinavia until the early
19th century. In Spain it was still used as a practice instrument in some
ecclesiastical establishments in the second half of the 19th century. The
instrument is classified as a box zither.
1. Structure and tone
production.
2. 15th and 16th
centuries.
3. 17th century.
4. 18th-century
Germany.
5. Spain, Portugal and
Scandinavia.
6. Austria.
7. The modern revival.
8. Repertory.
EDWIN M. RIPIN/JOHN BARNES/ALFONS HUBER, BERYL KENYON DE PASCUAL/BARRY KERNFELD
Clavichord
1. Structure and tone production.
The
usual shape of the clavichord is a rectangular box, with the keyboard set into
or projecting from one of the longer sides. The strings pass from hitch-pins
near the left end of the box across the back half of the keys and over the
bridge and soundboard to the tuning-pins near the right end. Each key rests on
a transverse piece of wood called a balance rail, which acts as a fulcrum when
the key is depressed. At the point of the fulcrum the position of the key is
maintained by a pin, which passes through a slot in the key and is driven into
the balance rail below. In the back end of each key is driven a slip or blade
of wood, horn or whalebone, which slides in one of a series of vertical slots
cut in a piece of wood (the rack or diapason) running along the inside of the
back of the case. Some clavichords have a vertical guide pin set in a rail
under the key end; in the key-lever is a leather-lined slot which engages the
pin. This arrangement is quieter than the common one and therefore an advantage
for the small volume of the clavichord. A third system consists of wooden
strips, attached to the inside of the case back, between which the keys ends
move. Between the back of the key-lever and the balance rail, a brass blade
called a tangent is driven down into each key; when the front of the key is
depressed by the player’s finger, this blade rises until its top edge strikes
the pair of strings above it (at a point between the hitch-pins and the
bridge), setting them into vibration. The vibrations of the section of each
string between the tangent and the bridge are communicated to the soundboard,
yielding a tone of small volume but great sensitivity and flexibility. The
vibrations of the section of each string between the tangent and the hitch-pins
are damped out by strips of cloth called ‘listing’ that are woven between the
strings; when the key is released, causing the tangent to drop from the string,
this cloth immediately damps out the vibrations of the string as a whole,
instantly silencing the tone (fig.1).
The
loudness of the tone depends on the force with which the tangent strikes the
strings and thus is under the direct control of the player. Moreover, as the
tangent remains in contact with the strings while they are sounding, the
performer can continue to influence the sound of a note after it has been
struck. By increasing or decreasing the pressure on the key, the pitch of a
note can be altered after it has begun, thereby producing a portamento, a
vibrato (Bebung) or even the illusion, within its quiet range, of swelling
the tone. While striking the key with velocity produces a louder sound than
depressing it slowly, too much pressure lifts the strings too far, increasing
their tension and distorting their pitch. The dynamic range between the
instrument’s all but inaudible pianissimo and this rather limited fortissimo
is, however, quite significant: within it the performer can achieve the most
sensitive possible control of dynamic effects.
The
soft tone characteristic of the clavichord is a result of the acoustically
inefficient way in which its sound is produced. Instead of a string with both
ends fixed being struck or plucked at some intermediate point (as in the
harpsichord or piano), the clavichord string, fixed only at the bridge end, is
first ‘stopped’ and then, in effect, shaken by the stopping agent. There is a
close parallel in a guitar technique, where instead of the usual plucking
action, the stopping finger presses the string smartly on to the fret to set it
vibrating. The result, as in the clavichord, is a sound which is much quieter
than the plucked sound. In a well-designed clavichord, however, the sound is
strong enough to be effective in a domestic situation.
Almost
invariably, bichord stringing is used on clavichords, i.e. the strings are
sounded in unison pairs. As in the piano, multiple stringing allows the desired
total tension for the note to be divided between several strings, each of which
is thinner than the single string that would otherwise be needed. Thinner
strings have the advantage of giving harmonics which are better in tune and so
sound clearer and truer. A more important advantage of bichord stringing for
clavichords, however, lies in the strong coupling action between the two
strings due to the comparatively light tangent. This causes the two strings to
react on each other and gives a more prominent attack than is heard with single
stringing (which sounds insipid by comparison). Careful tuning of the unisons
is necessary, otherwise the strength and sustaining power of the note concerned
will be affected.
The
bass strings of clavichords are foreshortened more than is usual with
harpsichords, and octave strings were sometimes introduced in the bass of
18th-century clavichords to brighten and add definition to the sound. These
strings usually had their own separate bridge on the soundboard, but sometimes
they matched the unison strings in length and used the unison bridge. The other
method of improving the sound of the bass was to use covered strings consisting
of a core, usually brass, wound with an open spiral of a thinner wire, usually
copper. These became common after about 1750. Sometimes octave strings and
covered strings are found on the same instrument.
In
determining the vibrating length of the strings, the tangent (while in contact
with them) also determines the resulting pitch in much the same way as a
guitarist determines the pitch that a string will sound by pressing it against
one or another of the frets on the fingerboard of his instrument. Accordingly,
by positioning a series of clavichord tangents so that they will strike the
same pair of strings at different points along their length, a series of
different notes can be sounded. This possibility was exploited in all the
earliest clavichords, which are termed ‘fretted’ to distinguish them from
‘unfretted’ instruments (of the late 17th century and since), in which each
note is produced by its own pair of strings. The use of only a single pair of
strings to serve several keys has the obvious advantage of reducing the number
of strings on the instrument, which permits in turn a lighter and simpler case
to withstand their tension. Moreover, the narrower stringband reduces the
length of the treble keys, which tend to give the player slightly better
control. Finally, the smaller number of strings permits the instrument to be tuned
more rapidly and more easily (see §2 below).
A
disadvantage of the fretted clavichord comes from the fact that a single pair
of strings can sound only one note at a time, making it impossible to play
chords involving two notes whose tangents strike the same pair of strings (only
the upper note will be heard, usually with an unpleasant clicking from the
tangent of the lower note). The same factor makes it necessary to preserve a
slightly detached touch in playing scale passages (particularly descending) on
a fretted clavichord when the scale involves consecutive notes produced from
the same pair of strings.
The
clavichord is not easy to play well, the chief difficulty being to control the
tendency in instruments of traditional design for the tangent to bounce off the
strings at first contact, particularly in the treble. To produce clean notes,
the player has to acquire an especially firm touch, a matter of training which
was well understood in the 18th century and was thought beneficial when playing
other keyboard instruments. Clavichords have been designed during the early
revival which are easier to play, but always at the sacrifice of dynamic range,
pitch stability or both. Notes must always be held on the clavichord with the
appropriate pressure, since this affects the pitch, so that holding a three- or
four-note chord with one hand requires a greater continuous arm pressure than a
pianist or harpsichordist is accustomed to apply.
Clavichord
2. 15th and 16th centuries.
The
earliest known appearance of the term ‘clavichord’ occurs in the Minneregal
(1404) by Eberhard von Cersne of Minden, north-west Germany, and the oldest
known representation of the instrument with a precise dating is in a carved
altarpiece of 1425, also from Minden.
As
described, all the earliest clavichords were so designed that each pair of
strings was struck by the tangents of several keys; hence the keys had to be
curved or bent laterally (fig.2) so that their tangents
would touch the strings at appropriate points along their length. These points
were determined by the monochord measurements for the intervals, and
clavichords were, accordingly, called monochordia by many 15th- and
16th-century writers. It was, of course, necessary to have more than a single
string or pair of strings, as it would otherwise have been impossible to sound
more than one note at a time; nevertheless in the earliest clavichords the
strings were all of the same length and all tuned in unison, so that these
instruments were, in effect, a series of identical monochords built into a
single box, and the positions of the tangents along the strings were determined
as if there had been only a single string. This may be seen clearly in the
directions for laying out clavichords that occur in a number of 15th-century
sources, the first step in which is to divide the total string from the bridge
to the tangent of the lowest key into several parts corresponding to notes
covering virtually the entire compass of the instrument.
Instructions
of this kind accompany the scale diagram of a clavichord layout (fig.2) given
in the manuscript treatise (c1440) by Henri Arnaut de Zwolle, which is
the earliest source of information on the way in which the tangents were
apportioned to the strings of the instrument. The tangents for the first seven
pairs of strings on Arnaut’s three-octave instrument (after this point there
seems to be an error in the manuscript) are assigned in fours and threes
corresponding to the following groups of notes: B–d, e
–f
, g–a, b–c', d'–e', f'–g' and a'–b'.
Except in the first of these groups, four keys are served by the same string
only when the outermost notes form an augmented 2nd, and whenever a fourth key
would produce the interval of a minor 3rd (such as d'–f' or a'–c'')
the number of tangents allotted to a single pair of strings is reduced to
three. The result of this arrangement is that virtually any consonant chord can
be played, as its constituent notes will always be sounded from different
strings, and the only notes that cannot be sounded simultaneously are those
forming the dissonances of a minor, major or augmented 2nd. The clear
implication of having the tangents allotted in this pattern, which continued in
use on some clavichords until the end of the 17th century, is that even as
early as the mid-15th century, keyboard players expected to be able to play
consonant chords with complete freedom. The tangents are positioned for Pythagorean
temperament.
In
addition to having all its strings of equal length and tuned in unison, the
mid-15th-century clavichord differed from later ones in having its soundboard
located near the bottom of the instrument and extending underneath the keys.
The bridge over which the strings passed was, accordingly, quite high, and
15th-century representations are unanimous in indicating that it had a shape
resembling that of the bridge of a viol.
Despite
the ease of laying out a clavichord of the kind just described, and the ease in
tuning suggested by the intriguing possibility of simply removing the listing
cloth from the strings, strumming them, and bringing them into unison,
instruments of this type had at least one important disadvantage. Because on such
an instrument the sounding length of the strings had to double for each octave,
the sounding length of the string for the lowest note of an instrument with a
three-octave compass like Arnaut’s had to be fully eight times as long as that
for the highest note. This meant that some of its keys had to be sharply bent,
and any appreciable increase in range would have required keys too bent (in the
tenor) or too thin (in the treble) to function.
It
was not really necessary, however, to leave the same amount of space between
keys playing on different strings that would be required if they played on the
same strings. For each change of string, a space could be eliminated by placing
the highest key playing one pair of strings immediately next to the lowest key
playing the adjacent pair of strings. This, however, sacrifices the unison
tuning of all the strings because the pair of strings of the lower group of
keys would be tuned somewhat lower to compensate for this group being
relatively closer to the bridge. Carrying this principle to its logical
conclusion, the inordinately wide spaces between each of the keys in the
extreme bass could all be avoided by giving each key its own pair of strings.
Thus, abandoning unison tuning of all the strings would make it possible to
produce a far more compact three-octave instrument with less sharply cranked
keys, or to make a workable instrument of wider compass.
The
earliest representation of the newer type of instrument is the intarsia of a
clavichord in the ducal palace at Urbino (fig.3), dating
from 1476, which shows an instrument with a four-octave range F to f'''
(but without F
and G),
sounded from 17 pairs of strings. The first five notes (F, G, A,
B, B)
each have strings of their own, and the remaining three and a half octaves are
accommodated on 12 pairs of strings, which, with the exception of the highest
pair, have their tangents arranged in threes and fours in the manner described
for Arnaut’s instrument (i.e. no group of four tangents encompassing a
consonant interval). The Urbino example avoids Arnaut’s anomalous inclusion of
his bottom note (B) in a group of four tangents (B to d)
but includes the top note (f''') in a group of four tangents rather than
giving it an extra pair of strings to itself. The rack is so accurately
depicted in the intarsia that it is possible to identify the temperament as
Pythagorean and the accidentals as flats rather than sharps.
Clavichords
of this kind were probably still being made in the 1530s, when an interesting
representation attributed to the south Netherlandish artist Jan van Hemessen was
painted (fig.4). This instrument still has a low
soundboard, and its keyboard range of E to a'' (without F, G and g'') is sufficient for Hugh Aston’s famous Hornpype,
Attaingnant’s Quatorze gaillards (1531) and Gardane’s Intavolatura
nova di varie sorte de balli (1551).
By
the date of the earliest surviving clavichord, a hexagonal instrument made by
Domenico da Pesaro in 1543 (fig.5), a second significant
change in clavichord design had occurred. The soundboard of Domenico’s
instrument does not run beneath the keys, but, as in all other surviving
instruments, it is at a higher level than the keys and placed entirely to their
right. As a result, the keyboard is no longer placed at the centre of one of
the long sides of the case but is off-centre to the left. The shift in the
position of the soundboard also meant that there was no longer the need for the
bridge to be so high, although it had to be quite close to the left edge of the
soundboard in the treble if the treble strings were to be short enough to be
tuned to an appropriately high pitch. However, if the bridge ran straight
across the soundboard from front to back, like the bridges on Arnaut’s
clavichord and the one shown in the Urbino intarsia, this would have left the
bridge too close to the edge of the soundboard, causing the resonance of the
bass notes to suffer. The solution adopted by Domenico and a number of other
16th-century makers, still to be seen in the clavichord ‘italienischer Mensur’
depicted by Praetorius (fig.6) and that shown by Mersenne (1636–7),
was to divide the bridge into segments. One segment, carrying the 11 pairs of
strings that serve more than a single key, is set near the left-hand edge of
the soundboard; two others carrying five and six pairs respectively (the 11
pairs of strings serving the first 11 notes in the bass) are set farther to the
right. The soundboard slopes downwards to the right, so that the strings leave
the low treble bridge at a fairly sharp angle and exert a downward pressure on
the bridge that ensures their not being lifted from the bridge when they are
struck by the tangents. Neither the sloping soundboard nor a hexagonal shape
characterizes all 16th-century Italian clavichords; some are rectangular and
have horizontal soundboards. In the latter type, transverse bars placed over
the strings behind the bridges are provided to press down on the strings. The
bridges of all the clavichords so far mentioned were without the spacing pins
found on later instruments.
Like
the case of an Italian virginal, the case of an Italian clavichord may be made
of thin wood strengthened by elegant mouldings, or of thicker softwood with a
cypress lining and half-moulding to counterfeit the appearance of a thin-cased
instrument in a protective outer case. The similarities in style between German
and Italian instruments make it unclear whether all the surviving examples of
clavichords with segmented bridges and relatively thin cases are actually of
Italian origin, and there is some evidence that, of the two well-known
rectangular examples in the Henkel catalogue (1981) of the
Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Universität Leipzig, no.2 is from Naples and no.3
from Leipzig (see Steiner, 1993).
The
sound of the surviving 16th-century clavichords is surprisingly loud and
virginal-like; they are sensitive and exciting instruments to play, ideally
suited to pieces like the dances found in the Attaingnant and Gardane
collections (both of whose title-pages mention the clavichord) as well as the
elaborate intabulations of vocal works that seem to have comprised most of the
balance of the 16th-century keyboard player’s repertory.
Despite
the 16th-century title-page references to the clavichord, implying an
importance comparable with the harpsichord and virginal, the clavichord at this
period seems to have been thought of primarily as a teaching and practice
instrument. Many early references cite it in these connections, extolling its
virtues in developing facility and a proper touch which might then be
transferred to other instruments, notably the organ. Its advantages as a
practice instrument were outstanding, especially its cheapness; it gave
organists the opportunity of practising at home instead of in an unheated
church in winter, and eliminated the need for an assistant to pump the bellows.
A number of writers even praise the softness of the clavichord’s sound as being
of advantage when practising.
A
further advantage of the clavichord was that it tended to stay in tune and was
easy to put back into tune when necessary. With most of the strings serving
several keys, there were fewer strings to tune, and as the intervals between
notes sounded from the same pair of strings were ‘built in’ by the spacing of
the tangents, much of the difficulty in setting the base tuning of the
instrument was eliminated and a means of checking the accuracy of one’s
attempts was more quickly arrived at. One highly ingenious system set down by
Correa de Arauxo (1626) makes use of the alternating fretting pattern of threes
and fours (which produces different groupings of notes in adjacent octaves) to
tune the instrument entirely by alternating upward and downward octaves,
without having to use 5ths or 4ths. Although clavichords are usually strung
with brass wire, it seems likely that many in 16th-century Italy were strung
with iron.
Several
of the 16th-century instrument treatises and methods provide considerable
information about the clavichord. Virdung mentioned clavichords with all their
strings tuned in unison and showed a clavichord keyboard with a range of just
over three octaves, F to g'' without F. He stated that the ‘newer’
clavichords – which might have a range as great as four octaves – might be
triple-strung to avoid problems if a string broke during playing and that the
treble was strung with steel and the bass with brass. The use of strings made
of different types of wire makes it clear that these larger instruments did not
have all their strings tuned in unison. Virdung also wrote that the four-octave
instruments had pedals hanging from their lowest keys and that such clavichords
had extra strings which were not struck by any tangents. No surviving
clavichord has sympathetic strings, but one can imagine how they might enhance
the tone with a halo of sustained sound.
Both
Bermudo (1555) and Santa María (1565) included diagrams of a clavichord
keyboard extending to a'' in the treble (including g'') and C in the
bass by means of a Short octave, like that in Domenico da Pesaro’s 1543
clavichord. Santa María provided a highly detailed discussion of clavichord
technique, but neither he nor any of the other early writers alluded to the
instrument’s expressive possibilities or suggested that they felt the
clavichord to have any special musical potential of its own. A brief biography
(in F. Pacheco: Libro de descripción de verdaderos retratos, 1599) of
the Spanish organist, Francisco Peraza (d 1598), however, refers to his
ability to reproduce the undulating Vox humana organ stop on the clavichord,
suggesting the use of Bebung technique (see §1 above). Information on
the clavichord in Austria is only fragmentary, but it seems that the new
keyboard instrument was accepted relatively early. The monks of the Styrian
monastery of Seckau were granted permission to play the clavichord in 1418,
which suggests that controversial discussion of the subject had been going on
for some time before that date. Expenditure ‘pro clavicordio’ is recorded in
the accounts of the monastery of Klosterneuburg near Vienna for 1438 and 1442.
An early picture of a clavichord is in the Kuttenberger Codex, a late
15th-century Bohemian manuscript (A-Wn, 15501, f.12v; fig.7).
The clavichord was probably very highly esteemed early in its history, as shown
by a woodcut of 1505–16 by Hans Burgkmair, showing Emperor Maximilian I
(1459–1519) in the character of Weisskunig in his music room (see
Habsburg,
fig.1); the only keyboard instruments in sight
are a positive organ and a clavichord, the latter chosen as the representative
of the relatively new genre of string keyboard instruments. The clavichord lost
this privileged position in the Habsburg provinces during the 16th century, and
was probably chiefly used, as elsewhere, as a cheap and convenient practice instrument
for organists. No Austrian clavichords of the 16th and 17th centuries have been
preserved, and there are only sporadic mentions of the instrument in written
records of the time: for instance, an inventory drawn up by the organist at
Kremsmünster in 1584 lists ‘2 clavicordi, darzue ein Pedall’, and the purchase
of a second pedal clavichord made by the Styrian organ builder Georg Hacker is
documented in 1591.
Clavichord
3. 17th century.
Inventories,
account-book entries, and other writings suggest that clavichords were common
all over Europe in the 16th century but that in time the instrument became
appreciably less popular outside Germany, Spain, Portugal and Scandinavia. As
early as 1547 the collection of instruments owned by Henry VIII included only
two clavichords in contrast to 30 ‘virginalles’ of various types, 24
‘regalles’, ‘portatives’ and ‘organes’ and three ‘virgynalles’ and ‘regalles’
combined. In France, Mersenne (1636–7) provided a description of a clavichord
so vague and inconsistent that one wonders if he had ever actually seen one;
and the instrument in his illustration, despite its vaulted lid and alleged
chromatic bass octave, looks more like the hexagonal, thin-cased Domenico da
Pesaro instrument of 1543 set into a protective outer case than it does an
instrument made either in France or in the 17th century. In the Low Countries
the clavichord appears in a small number of 17th-century paintings. Relatively
unsophisticated types were discussed by both Douwes (1699) and Blankenburg
(1739), the latter specifically referring to the clavichord as ‘the organist’s
study instrument’; but, although Douwes described a Pedal
clavichord
and Blankenburg mentioned a two-manual instrument, neither devoted as much
space to clavichords as to quilled instruments, and Verschuere-Reynvaan, when
he copied Douwes’s already archaic text (1795), added nothing but an
illustration of a pedal clavichord. This suggests that the clavichord was well
out of the mainstream in the Low Countries, which is hardly surprising in view
of the great importance of Flemish harpsichord building.
The
surviving instruments support the written evidence: most of the surviving
clavichords of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries are German, the rest being
mostly Scandinavian and Iberian. Only a few clavichords that may have been made
in the Low Countries are known; there is only one English example and no French
example at all. Accordingly, the history of the clavichord from the 17th
century onwards is largely the history of the clavichord in Germany.
In
1618 Praetorius gave a good idea of the clavichord’s importance in Germany at
the time, predictably citing its value as a practice instrument, and one of the
woodcut plates (fig.6) later issued to illustrate his text
shows three representative types: a polygonal Italian instrument (labelled
‘Clavichordium, Italienischer Mensur’ which Praetorius said had been brought to
Germany 30 years before, and two rectangular instruments presumably of German
make. The smaller of these has a compass of C/E–a'' (without g''), is designed to sound
at octave pitch and appears to have a high viol-shaped bridge with a low
soundboard. The larger one, labelled ‘Gemein clavichord’ (‘ordinary
clavichord’; shown reversed in the engraving), has a C/E–c'''
compass and a protruding keyboard like Praetorius’s other two clavichords, but
it also has a high soundboard and a bridge similar to that of the contemporary
harpsichord, curved and with a pin for each string, very prominently shown in
the engraving. The strings are held against the pins by being diverted towards
the back by a small angle known as ‘side-draft’, and the aggregate of these
side-forces makes it necessary to glue such a bridge to the soundboard. All the
hitch-pins are placed along the bass end. As far as is known, only a single
example (without a tangent rail) has survived with this combination of
characteristics (fig.8). The application to the
clavichord of this type of bridge was a great technical advance, having its
treble end close to the left edge of the soundboard and its bass end towards
the opposite edge, so that the bass strings could be longer and the possibility
of resonance improved.
Each
of Praetorius’s clavichords is equipped with a tangent rail, a flat triangular
board padded with cloth on its underside that rests on the damped section of
the strings. This is surprising, since tangent rails are rare on surviving
17th-century clavichords. It is possible that such boards obviated the need for
listing woven between the strings, which would have simplified the replacement
of broken strings, but experience with the tangent rails on surviving original
instruments and on 20th-century examples suggests that listing is still
required and that the principal function of the tangent rail is to restrict
somewhat the upward movement of the strings caused by the tangents, making the
touch less yielding. Alternatively, some makers may have included it as a
decorative feature or may have found that it eliminated the tendency for woven
listing to transmit the impact of the tangent to adjoining strings and produce
a faint drumming sound.
Surviving
17th-century German instruments show a number of variable features. In many
cases, the bridge is not S-shaped like those shown by Praetorius and fig.6 but rather is straight or only gently
curved, and placed obliquely on the soundboard (fig.9);
other instruments have a bridge with a single sharp curve at the treble end, a
shape seen commonly on 18th-century instruments as well. The system of fretting
in fours and threes began to be replaced later in the 17th century by systems
involving only threes and eventually by another system of great importance
involving the allotment of no more than two keys to any pair of strings (see
below).
The
single greatest advance in clavichord design during the period following
Praetorius was the adoption of a layout that included bringing the front of the
case forward so that the keyboard would be inset rather than projecting (fig.8). This resulted in an enlargement of the soundboard area
and made it possible to use diagonal stringing, as the front part of the bridge
carrying the bass strings could now be brought forward on the soundboard. As a
result of diagonal stringing, with about half of the hitch-pins along the back
of the instrument, the row of tangents could follow a line far more nearly
parallel to the front of the keys, and the keys could be made somewhat shorter
and more uniform in length, thereby improving the touch of the instrument. This
design had certainly appeared by about 1665, when it is shown in a group of
paintings by Gerrit Dou. It may by that time have been known for two or three
decades, but this is uncertain since none of the surviving clavichords of this
style is reliably dated until 1670.
An
instrument of this kind with a C/E to c''' four-octave compass
can be quite small – a typical example (inscribed DOM 1652, at Yare University,
New Haven) is only 109 × 32 × 10 cm and uses only 20 pairs of strings. The
first six notes in the bass each have their own pair of strings, there are two
groups of two keys each, and the rest of the compass is fretted in threes.
These 17th-century clavichords retain much of the bright assertive tone of
16th-century examples, while their improved touch tends to make their sound
rather more flexible.
By
the 1690s instruments of this size or even a trifle smaller were being made
with no pair of strings struck by more than two tangents. The first five to
eight keys would each have their own pair of strings, and in a version of the
system used in Germany the remaining notes would be disposed as follows: all Cs
paired with C, all Ds
unpaired, all Es paired with E, all Fs paired with F, all Gs paired with G, all As unpaired, and all Bs paired with B. The advantages of this
arrangement to the performer are enormous. There are still relatively few strings
to go out of tune – a maximum of 30 pairs for a four-octave instrument – and to
some extent the simplified tuning of earlier instruments remains; however, the
performer gains virtually all the freedom in playing dissonant chords and
legato scales as if each key had its own pair of strings – as long as the piece
remains within the bounds of those tonalities employing no more than two flats
or three sharps, since none of the paired notes will then be required
simultaneously, and rarely in immediate succession.
At
this time, however, clavichords were already being made in which each key was
provided with its own pair of strings, and Johannes Speth, in the preface to
his collection of keyboard pieces, Ars magna Consoni et Dissoni (1693),
specified that the music should be played on a virginal or a clavichord ‘so
made that each key has its own strings and not so that two, three and up to
four keys touch a single string’. (Yet there is nothing apparent in Speth’s
music itself to require such an instrument rather than one fretted in pairs.)
The
structure of a 17th-century clavichord tends to be very simple. The sides of
the case, usually dovetailed together at the corners, are mounted on a solid
bottom, which is not stiffened by any transverse member other than the balance
rail of the keyboard. The wrest plank is attached to the right-hand end of the
case and in some examples does not run all the way down to the bottom; the
hitch-pins for the left-hand ends of the strings are driven into hardwood
liners along the back and left-hand ends of the case, and the slotted diapason
and a padded rail on which the keys rest are placed immediately in front of the
back liner. A small toolbox is usually provided in the space to the left of the
keyboard, and a major brace supporting the left-hand edge of the soundboard
runs from the front of the case to the back at the right of the keyboard. This
brace is often pierced by a soundhole, or there may be a soundhole decorated
with a rose in the soundboard itself.
Clavichord
4. 18th-century Germany.
Occasional
clavichords from the last years of the 17th century have divided sharps in the
lowest octave to provide the F and G omitted in the normal C/E short octave, and
some instruments were made with chromatic bass octave (still occasionally
omitting the C)
around 1700.
The
disappearance of fretting in threes and its replacement by the much less
restrictive fretting in pairs seems to have coincided with a new appreciation
of the unique virtues of the clavichord as contrasted with those of the harpsichord
and organ that had begun to appear in writings on music. As early as 1713
Mattheson singled out the clavichord as ‘beloved above all’ other keyboard
instruments and declared it superior for performing ‘overtures, sonatas,
toccatas, suites, etc.’ because it permits one to produce a ‘singing style’ of
performance. The importance of such a style is emphasized in the title of
Bach’s Two-and Three-part Inventions (1723), where the pedagogical purpose of
the music is specified as being ‘above all to achieve a cantabile manner of
playing’; it is in just this respect that the clavichord excels in contrast (to
quote Mattheson again) to the ‘always equally loud, resonant harpsichord’. This
emphasis on singing style, with dynamic nuance explicitly demanded, heralds the
period in which the clavichord began to have a literature of its own and in
which large clavichords were first made.
The
earliest surviving instruments of this type, longer and wider than the previous
norm and with string lengths implying a lower pitch, were all made in Hamburg.
They were of two distinct kinds, which persisted in Germany almost to the end
of the century, either fretted in pairs with the ‘organ compass’ from C,
or unfretted with the ‘harpsichord compass’ from F' or G'. The
earliest survivors of each are by J.C. Fleischer: one of 1722, fretted and with
a compass of C–c''', in the Stiftelsen Musikkulturens Främjande,
Stockholm, and an unfretted clavichord of the following year, F'–c'''
compass, in the Drottningholm Court Theatre museum, near Stockholm. By 1742,
H.A. Hass had extended the compass of the unfretted type up to f''',
giving the full harpsichord compass of five octaves. If we may judge by
surviving examples, the five-octave unfretted clavichord became the normal
Hamburg model from this date, although the fretted type with a C–d'''
compass continued to be made in smaller quantities, probably for the needs of
organists. The Hamburg clavichords have, in addition to the usual unison pair
of strings, a third string tuned an octave higher in the bass and extending
mostly to d. These strings have a short, straight bridge of their own
and are held by hitch-pins set in the soundboard, rather like the 4' strings of
a harpsichord; their tuning pins are at the left-hand end of the case. The
effect of such strings, which seem to be a particular feature of the Hamburg
instruments and those of makers in nearby Brunswick, is to brighten and lend
definition to the bass, but there tends to be an audible break at the point at
which they are no longer present. The unison bridge has an S-shape curve and
all the bass strings of Hamburg clavichords are plain brass.
Hass’s
clavichords are impeccable in their workmanship and choice of materials, and
are often decorated with rich veneers, engraved toolbox lids, painted
soundboards, and chinoiserie casework (fig.11). With
well-chosen string lengths, well-balanced keys and an ample soundboard area,
they are very rewarding to play. The survival of at least 27 Hass clavichords
has tended to overshadow the merits of the Saxon school, but this large number
may be partly due to their having been selectively preserved for their lavish
decoration and because many were exported to more stable regions, Hamburg being
a busy seaport.
The
clavichords of the Saxon builders differed from those of Hamburg by having a
bridge that was hooked in the treble but otherwise completely straight, and had
along the straight section a series of shallow channels to guide each string
across the bridge. Instead of using plain strings in the bass and brightening
the effect with octave strings, the Saxon builders chose to use covered strings
which sound bright enough without octave strings. When properly designed,
covered strings have the advantage over plain strings of keeping in tune with
the treble when the temperature varies, and the transition between covered and
plain strings is almost inaudible.
The
history of the Saxon school is less secure than that of Hamburg because fewer
examples now exist. For instance, Gottfried Joseph Horn made more than 500
clavichords of which only four appear to have survived. The important Saxon
builders were Christian Gotthelf Hoffmann of Ronneburg, the Fridericis of Gera,
Gottfried Silbermann of Freiberg, Lower Saxony, the Horns of Dresden and
Deckett of Grossbreitenbach. Surviving examples cover the years 1765–95, but
the Saxon school probably began at least a decade earlier. They are excellently
made and of outstanding musical quality, but are mostly sober in appearance.
Throughout
the 18th century small, unpretentious instruments, many of them fretted,
continued to be made in Germany in addition to the large unfretted ones (fig.12). Some of these were designed as travelling
instruments, like the one made by Johann Andreas Stein for the Mozart family in
1763 and the small ones belonging to Beethoven and Grétry. But certain makers,
most notably C.G. Hubert of Ansbach, specialized in making intermediate-sized
fretted instruments of the highest quality, with a four-and-a-half-octave range
of C to f''' or C to g'''. Although these
instruments might be about as long as an unfretted instrument of comparable
range, permitting bass strings of adequate length for good sound, the
elimination of the notes below C and the use of fretting by pairs yields
a very narrow stringband and permits the keys to be short, which provides a
snappy action and superb, sensitive touch.
This
advantage, together with that of easier and quicker tuning, had to be balanced
against the inconvenience that the player experienced when straying into
tonalities with more than two flats or three sharps. These remoter keys might
demand playing two notes sounded from the same pair of strings either in quick
succession (which would circumscribe the use of a legato touch) or even
simultaneously (which would be impossible). With the smaller instruments which
ended in the bass on ‘organ C’, the advantages of fretting remained
real, though some unfretted clavichords with this bass limit were built during
the later 18th century. However, the larger clavichords with a full five-octave
compass from F' were becoming more popular as the century advanced, and
fretting had little effect in reducing their size or improving their touch. In
Germany they were, in consequence, almost always unfretted.
Thus,
during the 18th century, the German clavichord gradually changed from a small
fretted instrument probably kept in a cupboard and placed on a table when used
for domestic practice, into a piece of furniture with its own stand and
occupying a permanent place in the home. Then, for the first time, composers
recognized the clavichord’s particular advantages for serious musical study,
and composed music which exploited its dynamic expression and its ability to
introduce slight variations of pitch. Such music only achieved its full effect
on the clavichord.
Jacob
Adlung (1758 and 1768) gave the most detailed surviving account of the
clavichord in Germany, though much of his text is devoted to elementary
descriptions and to faults only found in amateur-built clavichords (he was an
amateur clavichord builder himself). His writings on instruments, which were
began in 1726 and gradually supplemented until his death in 1762, included
descriptions of such types as the Pedal clavichord and the Cembal
d’amour. He
describes a Buff stop in which half of each tangent is covered
with leather, so that by shifting the whole keyboard in or out a very short
distance, the strings are either struck by the bare or the covered parts of the
tangents. He also describes a Pantalon stop or ‘celeste stop’ (Ger. Cälestin)
which, when engaged, raises a series of extra tangents, each one close to the
right of the corresponding normal tangent (the clavichord must be unfretted).
In playing, when the normal tangent releases a pair of strings they settle on
the celeste tangent and continue to sound. If the sustaining effect is too
obtrusive, Adlung suggests that the celeste tangents should be covered with
thin leather or even cloth. He mentions in passing that he had never seen a
single-strung clavichord (thus proving their rarity) and also that builders
were in the habit of improving their soundboard wood by boiling it in water. He
also rightly insists that the lengths of string between the bridge and the
tuning pins should always be undamped (and also free from makeshift joins) in
order to provide a resonance which he calls ‘after-singing’ (nachsingen).
A
more systematic account of clavichord building was published by Peter Sprengel
in 1773, detailing the woods and tools used and including descriptions of wire
drawing and the winding of covered strings for the bass. He gives a drawing of
a hand-driven string winding machine. Sprengel says that by his time the buff
and celeste stops of the clavichord had gone out of fashion, because they
tended to put the instrument out of tune and provided no real benefit.
C.P.E.
Bach, writing in 1753, confirmed that musicians continued to value the
clavichord in its basic form. He mentioned no stops or special effects,
speaking rather of the instrument’s ability to render all shades of dynamic
nuance and to produce a vibrato and portamento, and concentrating on such
essentials of a good clavichord as an even, responsive touch, a ‘sustaining,
caressing tone’, and a range of at least C to e''' (the highest
notes being required when playing music intended for other instruments –
presumably the violin or the flute). C.P.E. Bach ‘could not bear’ octave
strings in the bass of a clavichord and made no distinction between fretted and
unfretted instruments, while J.S. Petri (2/1782) and D.G. Türk (1789) insisted
on the latter. Bach’s personal instruments by Silbermann and Friderici were
almost certainly unfretted.
C.P.E.
Bach’s views concerning the clavichord are especially significant, as in
addition to writing the most influential treatise on 18th-century keyboard
playing he was certainly the most important composer to conceive his music in
terms of the clavichord. The appearance of pianissimo indications, as
well as forte and piano, in certain of his sonatas published in
the 1740s, despite the title-pages describing them as ‘per cembalo’, suggests
that he had the clavichord in mind for these works. Explicit Bebung
indications appear in one of the compositions written to illustrate his Versuch
(1753–62) and in the first of the Kenner und Liebhaber collections
(1779).
Later
German writers were utterly unrestrained in their praise of the clavichord,
especially as a vehicle for the most intense and private personal expression.
Schubart wrote (in 1786) that a clavichord ‘made by Stein, Fritz, Silbermann,
or Späth is tender and responsive to your soul’s every inspiration, and it is
here that you will find your heart’s soundboard … Sweet melancholy, languishing
love, parting grief, the soul’s communing with God, uneasy forebodings,
glimpses of Paradise through suddenly rent clouds, sweetly purling tears … [are
to be found] in the contact with those wonderful strings and caressing keys’.
The heightened sensibility and sentimentality evident in Schubart’s
rhapsodizing are closely attuned to the Sturm und Drang and Empfindsamkeit
styles of the second half of the 18th century, part of the special climate in
which the clavichord had its great flowering of popularity and in which all of
its special literature was created.
During
the last quarter of the century some clavichord makers seem to have been
working towards an instrument with the intimate sensitivity and flexibility so
highly praised by Schubart, while others seem to have been aiming to achieve a
louder sound more appropriate for the piano repertory that was developing at
this time. Virtually all the important German clavichord makers were by this
time building pianos as well. F.C.W. Lemme, who developed a clavichord with a
case with rounded ends for which he claimed ‘an uncommonly beautiful tone’,
advertised in 1802 that he made ‘large grand pianos in the style of the English
masters … another large grand piano … square pianos … and clavichords of all
kinds, all of them unfretted’. (He listed no fewer than 14 different models.)
The
tendency to build piano-like clavichords was increasingly reflected in the
sound and massiveness of structure of many instruments made in the 19th century
by such German builders as Voit and Schmahl and the Scandinavian makers, some
of whom were still producing clavichords in the 1820s. The structure of a large
18th-century clavichord differs from that of a 17th-century instrument in a
number of details. A certain massiveness was required to withstand the tension
imposed by the greater number of strings used for the expanded range of the
later instruments and because they were generally unfretted. In the 1790s a
diagonal brace running parallel to the strings was often attached above the
bottom to stiffen it and thus help prevent twisting of the case. The diagonal
section of the wrestplank was not usually thick enough to reach the bottom of
the case but, rather, was let into the case linings at its ends and supported
along its length by blocks resting on the bottom, so that the air chamber below
the soundboard was not divided.
The
soundboard barring found on 18th-century instruments is extremely variable,
some instruments having a series of diagonal ribs passing under the bridge
approximately at right angles to its tenor section, while others have a cut-off
bar running parallel to the tenor section of the bridge to separate the bridge
from the triangular portion of the soundboard nearest to the keyboard. (In
those instruments having octave strings in the bass, a cut-off bar of this sort
serves as a hitch-pin rail for the octave strings.) Some instruments have a
similar diagonal rib behind the bridge that cuts off the soundboard at the back
right-hand corner as well. The use of one or even two decorated soundholes in
the soundboard is characteristic of the work of the Saxon makers listed above.
Clavichord
5. Spain, Portugal and Scandinavia.
The
interest in clavichords displayed by Bermudo and Santa María in the 16th
century continued on the Iberian peninsula in the 17th and 18th centuries,
although the instruments themselves appear to have been predictably conservative
and intended for use principally as practice instruments for organists. As late
as 1723–4 Nassarre wrote about clavichords having a projecting keyboard and, a
compass of only C/E to a'', a soundboard running underneath and
divided bridges. Nassarre’s remarks on musical instruments tended to be out of
date, however, and more modern clavichords with paired fretting may already
have been available in Spain, as they seem to have been in Portugal. In
surviving Spanish and Portuguese instruments of this type, there tends to be a
different arrangement of tangents from that found in German instruments fretted
in pairs. Instead of the Es being paired with E and the Bs being paired with B so that the Ds and As are left unpaired,
the Iberian instruments (and some Scandinavian ones) pair E with D and B with A, leaving the Es and Bs unpaired.
Other
less common fretting arrangements found on Spanish clavichords include the
pairing of a few bass notes, unfretted Gs (allowing the string to be retuned to A, a requirement of certain
church modes expressed by Bermudo nearly two centuries earlier), and
consecutive paired fretting in the treble. A feature peculiar to 18th- and
19th-century Spain is the use of straight key-levers in a number of fretted
clavichords. Another element, unusual for the period and found in at least two
18th-century Spanish clavichords and several Latin American examples dating
from the 17th to the 19th century, is the so-called ‘second soundboard’, i.e. a
board running underneath the key-levers and thus below the level of the main
soundboard. This enlarges the soundbox but has no contact with the bridges and
thus cannot contribute to transmitting the vibrations of the strings to the
resonating chamber. Latin American clavichords not uncommonly have tool
compartments on both sides of the keyboard.
In
Spain, short-octave instruments continued to be built until the end of the 18th
century, and small 51-key instruments as late as 1829 (a clavichord by Antonio
López de Dueñas). Although few instruments with five or more octaves survive,
contemporary newspaper advertisements show that unfretted, five-octave instruments
were being built in Madrid in competition with square pianos and that ownership
at that time was not limited to organ players, although no specific repertory
for the clavichord seems to have been created. As a tool for organists,
however, the clavichord survived as late as the 1870s and 80s in some
cathedrals and churches, and even into the first half of the 20th century in
some closed-order convents.
The
majority of Iberian clavichords are anonymous. The earliest identified Spanish
maker was Juce Albariel (fl Saragossa, 1465), and the latest were Pedro
and Teodoro Serrano, father and son, who worked in the second third of the 19th
century. Those Portuguese makers whose signatures appear on surviving
clavichords are all from a late period: Jacinto Ferreira (Lisbon, 1783), Manuel
do Carmo (Porto, 1796) and José Baptista Camacho (Braga, 1841).
Although
about 12 Danish-built clavichords are known, Scandinavian building was
dominated by Sweden, from which at least 150 clavichords dated between 1688 and
1832 have survived. This was probably the result of a healthy domestic market
protected by import duty. The early Swedish builders followed the German
tradition, but an intervention by the Royal Academy of Science of Stockholm in
about 1740 resulted in the development of a typically Swedish design which
became standardized by about 1770. An instrument of this kind is unfretted with
octave strings in the bass (with the tuning pins at the left-hand end of the
case, as in the Hamburg instruments), has a soundboard with diagonal grain, a
treble scaling appropriate to the use of iron wire, and a compass of more than
five octaves. The left-hand edge of the soundboard has a gracefully curved
shape, partly overhanging a few of the top keys. By 1775 the compass had reached
F'–a''', by 1785 F'–c'''', and by 1795 some
instruments were built with extra bass notes giving six octaves (C'–c''''),
although F'–c'''' remained the more usual compass. Whereas German
clavichords are restricted to a length of about 1·75 metres so that the tuner
can reach the bottom note from the tuning pins on the right, a typical Swedish
clavichord is over two metres long. In order to tune the lower strings, the
tuner would first tune the octave strings on the left-hand tuning pins, and
then tune the unisons to the octaves, presumably using a hand-held stick to
reach the lower keys while working on the tuning pins at the right-hand end of
the case. This proves how the octave strings had become an indispensable part
of the design.
Iron
stringing gives a treble with a clear, relatively strong sound and the extra
length and ample soundboard area give a fine bass. The instruments are also
surprisingly sensitive and controllable in spite of their size. Their
popularity, together with their large compasses, made them a substitute in
Swedish homes for the early piano.
Clavichord
6. Austria.
The
few surviving Austrian clavichords date from the 18th century onwards. Many of
them display structural characteristics that were out of date in contemporary
German clavichords. They generally have a compass of C/E–c''' or C/E–d''',
and in later instruments C/E–f'''. The layout of the keywork
usually displays a modified mean-tone temperament, the kind in use in small
organs until the early 19th century. It seems to be typical of these relatively
small clavichords to have a soundboard with no bars, or at most only one, and
instruments with a straight bridge were still being built in the second half of
the 18th century. The relatively short scaling indicates a high Chorton pitch
standard. Surviving strings indicate that iron wire was preferred. The material
used for the tangents was usually tinned iron. The large unfretted clavichords
preferred in the mid-18th century in northern Germany and Scandinavia were
something of an exception in Austria. The cases of those instruments that have
survived are usually made of solid walnut, with plain ornamentation. The
interior of the soundboard and keyboard area may be painted with red bole. An
unfretted instrument of this kind (compass F'–f''') was built in
1794 for Haydn by the Bohemian organ builder Johann Bohák and is now in the
Royal College of Music, London. A similar instrument made by Ferdinand Hofmann
is kept in the house where Haydn died in Vienna. When the pianoforte ousted the
clavichord around the turn of the century, a small circle of people remained
loyal to the clavichord, partly out of enthusiam, partly for economic reasons.
Türk recommended the clavichord instead of the piano for teaching children in
the Viennese edition of Clavierschule (1789). As late as 1831 the board
of the civic music school in Buda was urgently requesting repairs to the 11
clavichords which had been the only instruments available for teaching the
keyboard ever since the school was founded in 1777.
The
last traditionally built instrument (compass F'–f''', fretted)
was made in 1839 by Klemens Kunz (1786–1840) in Jaroměřice, Bohemia
(now in the Museum of Czech Music, Prague). Other Austrian clavichord makers included
Johann Moysè (c1700–71), Ferdinand Hofmann (1756 or 1762–1829),
Englebert Klingler and Johann Bohák (1754–1805) in Vienna; Carl Matthias
Gschwandtner, Georg Mitterreiter, Franz Xaver Schwarz and Anton Römer in Graz,
J.C. Egedacher (1664–1747) in Salzburg, and Johann Anton Fuchs (fl
1770–96) in Innsbruck.
Clavichord
7. The modern revival.
The
first clavichords to be built in modern times were the work of Arnold
Dolmetsch. Having restored a five-octave Hass clavichord with octave strings in
the bass, one that he owned himself, and having played it in some of his
historical concerts in London in the 1890s, he created an interest in the
clavichord among a group of enthusiasts, one of the most supportive being Bernard
Shaw. This led to his making four accurate copies of the Hass instrument in
1894, three of which were immediately sold, followed by two more in 1895 and
1896. Apart from three smaller pentagonal clavichords of compass C'–f''',
made to his own design in 1897, his next clavichords were a group of 34 made
between 1906 and 1910 while he was working with the Chickering company in
Boston. These were based on a Saxon five-octave clavichord of 1784 by Christian
Gotthelf Hoffmann, without octave strings, and which was also owned and
restored by Dolmetsch. Rather than copying it strictly, Dolmetsch combined its
general layout with a bridge shape derived from Hass.
Initially,
in 1894, Dolmetsch fitted strings of traditional diameters in the treble,
presumably having measured the strings he found on his Hass, but he soon
reduced the diameters, and thus the tensions, presumably to make playing
easier. In Boston, Dolmetsch standardized on treble tensions about 30% below
those of Hass. In 1912, while working for Gaveau near Paris, he took the
decisive step of introducing the well-known model of his own design with a C–d'''
compass (and a further small reduction of treble tension). Dolmetsch thus
abandoned copying, ‘the best training for a beginner’, in order ‘henceforth to
realise my own ideals’, the better to overcome the prejudice of a piano-based
culture. A similar redesigning was currently taking place with harpsichords.
This ensured the successful revival of interest in the clavichord and was a
potent influence on builders of the early revival, mostly in England and
Germany.
While
most makers followed the conventional layout, some took the basic idea of the
tangent action and experimented with single-stringing, down-striking, metal
frames or even metal soundboards, none of which has proved to be of lasting
value. The only non-traditional design apart from Dolmetsch’s to gain a
significant following among players was that developed by Thomas Goff in 1934,
which had a long sustaining power derived from heavy keys and a heavy bridge.
This school of players on Goff instruments, led by Thurston Dart, developed a
delicate, legato, romantic style of playing in which vibrato had a prominent
role.
From
about 1965, clavichord makers began following the lead of harpsichord makers in
returning to making accurate copies of old designs, giving players the
opportunity of exploring the more vigorous style of playing witnessed by Burney
on his visit to C.P.E. Bach and described in his book of 1773. The Nederlands
Clavichord Genootschap was formed in 1988 to support the study of all periods
of the instrument, and they began to publish a journal in the same year.
Clavichord societies have also been formed in Germany, Britain, Switzerland,
Japan and the USA, and the first of a series of biennial international
clavichord symposia was held in 1993 in Magnano, Italy.
Clavichord
8. Repertory.
For
most of its long history the clavichord was primarily valued as an instrument
on which to learn, to practise and occasionally to compose. It appears as an
alternative to the virginal and the harpsichord on the title-pages of a number
of 16th-century keyboard collections and is similarly mentioned in some German
publications of the late 17th century, but there seems to have been little or
no recognition of the clavichord’s special capabilities before the beginning of
the 18th century and no music specifically composed for it before the mid-18th
century. At that time a large body of music written particularly for the
clavichord or alternatively for the clavichord and the relatively new
fortepiano began to be composed, but only in Germany, where the clavichord was
still very popular, judging by the output of makers such as Lemme and the Horn
brothers, who numbered their instruments. Some of this music, including most of
that by C.P.E. Bach, is highly demanding from both musical and technical
standpoints, but much of it was composed for middle-class ladies of modest
capabilities and is accordingly far easier to play. The most notable composers
of clavichord music apart from C.P.E. Bach include W.F. Bach, E.W. Wolf, J.G.
Müthel, J.W. Hässler, C.G. Neefe, D.G. Türk, and F.W. Rust, one of whose
sonatas includes a variety of special effects to be achieved by strumming or
drumming on the strings, playing harmonics, and the like. Haydn’s solo keyboard
works, also, must be counted as essentially for clavichord over most of his
life, since the Esterházy court appears to have received its first piano when
he was 49 and he only acquired his own piano at the age of 56. His sonatas lose
much when played on the harpsichord and even the late ones remain idiomatic and
effective on the clavichord.
Although
the clavichord is par excellence a solo instrument on which one plays by
oneself for oneself, it was also used in the 18th century to accompany solo
singing; it is specifically cited in this connection by writers of the period
and on the title-pages of several song collections.
The
20th-century repertory for clavichord is far less extensive than that for the
harpsichord, reflecting not only the inability of the clavichord to make itself
heard in an ensemble but also the problems encountered in public performance
even when it is presented as a solo instrument (although some of these have
been partly overcome with the aid of discreet electronic amplification).
However, especially in England and clearly as a reflection of the importance of
English makers in the modern revival of the instrument, a number of
compositions specifically for the clavichord have appeared, beginning in 1928
with Herbert Howells’s Lambert’s Clavichord, op.41; a smaller group of
works by German composers, beginning with Ernst Pepping’s Sonata no.1 of 1938,
similarly reflects the German revival of the instrument between the wars. The
jazz pianist Oscar Peterson played the clavichord on the album Porgy and
Bess (Pablo, 1976), a duo with Joe Pass, who plays the guitar. To
compensate for the low volume of the clavichord, microphones were evidently
placed close to the strings for the recording; the resulting timbre is biting,
like that of the harpsichord. A feature of the performance is Peterson’s
playing of bends and blue notes by using the Bebung technique of varying
the pressure with which the key is held down.
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