A bowed keyboard instrument, in the shape of an upright piano, invented by John Isaac Hawkins, who called it the ‘claviole’. It had four semi-circular columns of gut strings with four semi-circular rotating horsehair bows operated by a pulley. A foot treadle kept the bows in motion and the keys brought the strings into contact with the bow. It was first demonstrated publicly at a concert on 21 June 1802 in Philadelphia, when it was used to perform Hawkins’s own concerto. It was shown again in London in 1813–14 and illustrated in Rees. The most famous claviola to survive is a kind of upright zither by Ole Breiby, now at the Metropolitan Museum, New York. Behind the keyboard is a resonance chest on which is mounted a small viol-shaped soundboard bearing 25 metal strings stretched over three nuts and three bridges. The player fingers the keys with the left hand and with the right manipulates the bow, which moves in a groove. When a key is depressed the corresponding string is raised and brought into contact with the bow; dynamics can be controlled by touch. The range of the Claviola is just over two octaves (g–b''), but the top four keys lack strings of their own; by means of a lever the player operates a small bar which stops the string belonging to the note an octave lower, so that a harmonic (said to sound like a flageolet) is produced at the required pitch. The instrument enjoyed some popularity and was manufactured until the end of the 19th century. Breiby patented a larger version requiring two foot-operated bows on 4 May 1897.
See also Sostenente piano, §1.
Rees’s Cyclopaedia, iii (London, 1820), pl.xiv
J.I. Hawkins: The History and Resuscitation of the Claviole, or Finger-Keyed Viol (London, 1845)
A.W.G.J. Ord-Hume: ‘Hawkins’ Claviole or Finger-Keyed Viol’, Music & Automata, no.11 (1988), 139–41
HOWARD SCHOTT, MARGARET CRANMER