(Ger. Pantalonzug, Pantaleonzug, Cälestin, Cölestin).
A device occasionally applied to unfretted clavichords in Germany and Scandinavia from about 1725 to 1800. It was named after the pantaleon or pantalon, a large dulcimer invented by Pantaleon Hebenstreit (1667–1750), the tone of which was characterized by the resonance of undamped strings. The pantalon stop consists of a series of tangent-like brass blades set in a movable bar so that all of them can be raised at once by the action of a stop-knob. When raised, these blades touch the strings immediately to the right or left of the point at which they are struck by the tangents carried by the keys. When the keys are released the strings rest on the pantalon-stop blades, which continue to separate the sounding part of the strings from the cloth damping woven between them at their left-hand end: hence the strings continue to sound instead of having their vibrations damped out as soon as the key is released. In addition, the strings vibrate sympathetically with other notes being played. The effect produced by the stop is essentially that of a hand-operated damper-lifting mechanism like that on many early square pianos, and it is likely that this device on pianos was sometimes also called by the same name.
The first known use of the pantalon stop was not in a conventional clavichord but in a type of Cembal d’amour made about 1727 by Johann Ernst Hähnel of Meissen, an associate of Hebenstreit. From 1732 onwards, Jakob Adlung made clavichords with the device and suggested that the blades could be covered with leather or cloth to make the sound die away more quickly. In the several surviving clavichords equipped with a pantalon stop (the earliest dating from 1752, made by Christian Kintzing of Neuwied), it is usually divided so that it may be used in only the treble or bass. While Adlung favoured the ‘beautiful and almost heavenly’ sound of the stop (a quality reflected in its alternative name, Cälestin), D.G. Türk (Clavierschule, 1789) wrote that it caused students to acquire a ‘hacking’ manner of playing. Another disadvantage is that, since the pantalon-stop blades cannot touch the strings at exactly the same point as the tangents do, there may be a detectable change in the pitch of a note after the key is released.
J. Adlung: Anleitung zu der musikalischen Gelahrtheit (Erfurt, 1758/R, 2/1783), 568–71
B. Brauchli: The Clavichord (Cambridge, 1998), 152–7
EDWIN M. RIPIN/JOHN KOSTER