(fl c1521). Italian harpsichord maker. A ‘Jerome of Bologna’ was referred to by Michel Corrette in Le maître de clavecin (Paris, 1753), but otherwise little is known of this maker who worked in Rome. His only known harpsichord, dated 1521, is now at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. It was held to be the oldest surviving harpsichord, which distinction has passed to an instrument of 1515–16 by Vincentius. A harpsichord in the Castello Sforzesco, Milan (cat. no. 579), falsely dated 1503 and now converted to a crude clavichord, was probably made in 1539 but is of similar size and style and assists in identifying the original state of the Hieronymus instrument.
Recent examinations of the 1521 harpsichord have led to conclusions that supersede some of those of earlier literature (Hubbard, Schott and Grove I). Originally the instrument was single strung and, as Debenham discovered, had a 50-note compass. Wraight (1997) judged that the present keyboard may be original, but that the compass has been reduced from C/E–f''' (50 notes) to C/E–d'''. The wrestplank is a replacement and any estimation of the original scaling and pitch is therefore speculative, but a c'' string of about 277 mm has been suggested. This would place this instrument with a group of Italian 16th-century harpsichords and virginals intended for iron-wire stringing at a relatively high 8' pitch, effectively at about a' = 520, see Harpsichord, 2 (i).
F. Hubbard: Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making (Cambridge, MA, 1965, 1972)
W. Debenham: notes on the Hieronymus harpsichord, included with a technical drawing (1975, GB-Lv)
H. Schott: Catalogue of Musical Instruments [in the Victoria & Albert Museum], i: Keyboard Instruments (London, 1985)
D. Wraight: ‘Vincentius and the Earliest Harpsichords’, EMc, xiv (1986), 534–8
D. Wraight: The Stringing of Italian Keyboard Instruments c1500–c1650 (diss., Queen's U. of Belfast, 1997), ii, 185–8
DENZIL WRAIGHT