Strictly the same as organetto, organino, i.e. in 14th- and 15th-century usage the name given to the little organ of treble flue pipes carried (Lat. portare) by a strap over the player’s shoulder. It was played by the right hand (fingering 2-3-2-3 is implied in many paintings), and its bellows were blown by the left hand. It contained one, two or more octaves of pipes in single or multiple ranks, sometimes with one or two larger bass pipes like the Bourdons of larger Positive organs. The keys are earlier shaped like buttons or typewriter keys. The sound was like a set of flutes played by a keyboard. Some composers, such as Landini and Dufay, are represented playing small organs, and the instrument was useful in the many 15th-century Italian paintings (especially Venetian ones) of angel choirs at the Virgin’s Coronation, etc. French sources give the impression of not knowing the term (a bill from St Maclou, Rouen, in 1519, refers to ‘portaige d’une petites orgues’), while portiff was used in Germany (Frankfurt, 1434) and also organi portatili in Italy (Barcotto, MS c1650) and England (Roger North, MS c1715). Since in England ‘positive organ’ is a term very rarely used, such references as ‘portatives’ (poem of Gawin Douglas), ‘payre of portatives’ (1522 will), ‘portatyffes’ (St Andrew, Canterbury, c1520) are as likely to mean a small, movable organ as a portative proper, especially since some such organs evidently contained a regal stop (1536 contract). Often, as in Henry VIII’s inventory of 1547, such a ‘payre of portatives’ in a privy chamber is contrasted with the larger ‘organes’ in the chapel.
For further illustration see Performing practice, fig.5.
H. Hickmann: Das Portativ (Kassel, 1936/R)
J. Perrot: L'orgue de ses origines hellenistiques à la fin du XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1965; Eng. trans., 1971)
E.A. Bowles: ‘A Preliminary Checklist of Fifteenth-Century Representations of Organs in Paintings and Manuscript Illuminations’, Organ Yearbook, xiii (1982), 5–30
P. Williams: The Organ in Western Culture, 750–1250 (Cambridge, 1993)
PETER WILLIAMS