(Fr. clavecin-luth; Ger. Lautenklavecimbel, Lautenklavier, Lautenwerck).
A gut-strung harpsichord (occasionally supplemented with a choir of metal strings) intended to imitate the sound of the lute. It should not be confused with the so-called Lute stop on some harpsichords. Some writers have described the Arpicordo as a form of lute-harpsichord, but this is incorrect because ‘arpicordo’ is only another name for the Italian polygonal virginal. Gut-strung arpicordi were known, however – Michel de Hodes made an ‘arpicordo leutato’, and Banchieri’s Arpitarrone (L’organo suonarino, 2/1611) was probably gut-strung – and in all probability there were other experiments with gut-strung keyboard instruments. A ‘Harfentive’ was described by Virdung (1511) as being gut strung, but exactly what kind of instrument it was is unclear; it seems to have been intended to imitate the harp.
German makers in the first half of the 18th century seem to have been those most interested in the potentials of the lute-harpsichord and a number of different types were produced by such builders as Johann Christoph Fleischer, Zacharias Hildebrandt and Johann Nicolaus Bach. The form and layout of lute-harpsichords was quite variable. Some were rectangular, some oval, some wing-shaped like a harpsichord; some had a hemispherical resonator below the soundboard (similar to the lute); some had individual bridges for each string and others had continuous bridges like those in a conventional harpsichord. Of all these instruments, Fleischer’s ‘Theorbenflügel’ was probably the most elaborate, having three sets of strings: the register at 8' pitch and the one tuned an octave lower were of gut, but there was also a 4' register with metal strings, presumably to brighten the overall sound.
Jacob Adlung devoted a chapter of his Musica mechanica organoedi (ii, 1768, pp.133ff) to lute-harpsichords and considered them to be ‘the most beautiful of all keyboard instruments after the organ … because it imitates the lute, not only in tone quality, but also in compass and delicacy’. He gives the compass as generally three octaves, C to c'', with strings that are not as long in the bass as in a harpsichord. The two lower octaves have two strings to every note and in the bass octave these are tuned as unison and octave, as on the lute; the top octave is single strung. According to Adlung the ‘Lautenwerk’ sounded so like the lute that it could deceive even experienced lutenists, but had the serious disadvantage of not being able to imitate the lute’s dynamic gradations. J.N. Bach (a second cousin of J.S. Bach) partly overcame this difficulty by devising instruments with two or three keyboards. The jacks plucked the strings at different distances from the nut, those furthest from the nut giving the softest tone.
Among the instruments in the inventory of J.S. Bach’s estate, made after his death in Leipzig in 1750, there were two lute-harpsichords, valued at 30 Reichsthaler each. An interesting eyewitness account of a lute-harpsichord which Bach is said to have designed, and had built for him by Zacharias Hildebrandt, is given by J.F. Agricola, who was himself a pupil of Bach. Agricola wrote in Adlung’s Musica mechanica organoedi (p.139) that
It had two courses of gut strings, and a so-called Little Octave of brass strings. In its normal disposition – that is, when only one stop was drawn – it sounded more like a theorbo than a lute, but if one drew the lute stop [i.e. the buff stop] such as is found on a harpsichord together with the cornet stop [i.e. the 4' brass strings], one could almost deceive even professional lutenists.
One work by J.S. Bach that must surely have been written for a lute-harpsichord is the Suite in E minor, bwv996. Bach’s autograph has not survived but a contemporary manuscript copy, by J.L. Krebs, has the following inscription on the title-page: ‘Preludio con la Svite / da / Gio: Bast. Bach./ aufs Lauten Werck’.
J. Adlung: Musica mechanica organoedi, ii, ed. J.L. Albrecht (Berlin, 1768/R); ed. C. Mahrenholz (Kassel, 1931)
U. Henning: ‘The Most Beautiful Among the Claviers: Rudolf Richter’s Reconstruction of a Baroque Lute-Harpsichord’, EMc, x (1982), 477–86
U. Henning: ‘Zur Frage des Lautenklaviers bei Johann Sebastien Bach’, Alte Musik als ästhetische Gegenwart: Bach, Händel, Schütz: Stuttgart 1985, 465–9
U. Henning and R. Richter: ‘Die “Laute auf dem Clavier”: zur Rekonstruktion des Theorbenflügels nach Johann Christoph Fleischer (1718) durch Rudolf Richter (1986)’, Basler Jb für historische Musikpraxis, xii (1988), 109–22
EDWIN M. RIPIN/DENZIL WRAIGHT