(b Low Countries c1660; d London, before 8 May 1738). Flemish harpsichord maker. He may have learnt from the Couchets, successors to the Ruckers of Antwerp. Probably about 1700 he settled in London, where both Shudi and Kirkman worked for him. In 1738 Kirkman married Tabel’s widow. Only one of Tabel’s instruments survives, and is now in the County Museum, Warwick; the top key of the lower manual is inscribed ‘No. 43 Herm Tabel Fecit Londini 1721’ (see Mould).
Tabel’s one surviving harpsichord caused Russell to think it ‘likely that the standard large harpsichord made in this country derived from his designs’, Hubbard to suggest it ‘likely that the traditional role ascribed to Tabel and his posthumous fame were the fabrication of both Kirkman and Shudi in their dotage’ and Mould to point out that in any case ‘there is no element of this disposition which is not found elsewhere on earlier English harpsichords’. Nonetheless, the 1721 instrument is one of the few extant English double-manual harpsichords to have been built before 1730, and its dogleg upper-manual jacks and original lute arrangement (perhaps both familiar in Flanders by 1720) did become normal. Burney called him ‘the celebrated Tabel’, and an advertisement in the Evening Post for 30 May 1723 noted that he had three harpsichords for sale, ‘which are and will be the last of his making’. Nevertheless, on 8 May 1738, Kirkman advertised ‘several fine harpsichords’, made by ‘Mr Hermann Tabel … the famous harpsichord maker, dead’. In short, his historical position is uncertain, as are the details of his work, known from one, much altered instrument. For a more detailed account of Tabel's life and work see Boalch, 3/1995 (pp.188–9).
R. Russell: The Harpsichord and Clavichord (London, 1959, 2/1973)
F. Hubbard: Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making (Cambridge, MA, 1965, 2/1967)
C.M. Mould: ‘The Tabel Harpsichord’, Keyboard Instruments: Studies in Keyboard Organology, 1500–1800, ed. E.M. Ripin (Edinburgh, 1971, 2/1977), 59–65
D.H. Boalch: Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord, 1440–1840 (Oxford, rev. 3/1995 by C. Mould, with index by A.H. Roth)
DONALD HOWARD BOALCH, PETER WILLIAMS