(Fr. épinette; Ger. Spinett, Querflügel; It. spinetta, spinettone, spinettina, cembalo traverso).
A small keyboard instrument with a plucking mechanism, a smaller variety of harpsichord, almost invariably with one keyboard and a single set of strings and jacks. The precise application of the term is as much debated as that of Virginal and for many of the same reasons. ‘Spinetta’ was the original 15th- and 16th-century Italian term for the square virginal, possibly derived from the name of its inventor, Giovanni Spinetti, whose instrument of 1503, ‘tal forma longa quadrata’ with the inscription ‘Iones Spinetus Venetus Fecit ad 1503’, was seen by Banchieri (1609). However, a contemporary author, Giulio Cesare Scaligero (1484–1558), attributed the origin of the same term to the ‘spine’ (from Lat. spina: ‘thorn’) used for the jacks. ‘Spinetta’ is the modern Italian equivalent of ‘spinet’. In France ‘épinette’ was used for all quilled instruments well into the 17th century, much as ‘virginal’ was used in England. Furthermore, Claas Douwes (1699) used ‘spinett’ to distinguish those virginals which have their keyboards at the left from the centre-plucking ‘muselaar’ (muselar), which has its keyboard at the right; Quirinus van Blankenburg (1739) implied a similar understanding of the term in naming the close-plucking lute stop of his four-register harpsichord ‘spinetta’. The difficulty lies in the fact that although virtually the same word has been used in English, French, German, Italian and Dutch, the instruments designated are not identical. In preferred current usage, ‘spinet’ refers to an instrument whose strings run diagonally from left to right instead of directly away from the player as in a harpsichord or transversely as in a virginal; however, some writers use ‘spinet’ to mean a pentagonal or polygonal instrument, regardless of the direction of stringing, and reserve ‘virginal’ for rectangular instruments. During the 1930s in the USA, the term ‘spinet’ was also applied to miniature upright pianos (see Pianoforte, §I, 10).
The oblique stringing of a spinet produces a trapezoid in the smaller instruments and a wing shape in the larger ones, whose bass strings are longer than the keyboard. The longest strings of a spinet are at the back (those of a virginal are at the front), and the tuning pins are set in a pinblock directly over the keys instead of at the right-hand end of the case. One of the bridges over which the strings of a spinet pass is attached to the pinblock instead of resting on a free soundboard. For this reason the sound of a spinet more closely resembles that of a harpsichord of similar size than that of a virginal.
Apart from a small number of tiny rectangular instruments, made in Germany in the late 16th century and often equipped with a pin-barrel mechanism, the earliest surviving spinets are early 17th-century Italian. They have two straight sides set perpendicular to the keyboard, the left one shorter than the right. The back of the case thus slants away from the keyboard and runs parallel to the strings (fig.1). These small compact instruments, designed to sound at 4' pitch, were, according to Burney, used to accompany singing.
The keyboard of the earliest spinets occupies virtually the entire case, leaving little room for internal structure. The sides and back of the case overlap the edges of the bottom; the pinblock is supported by a block at each end, and these blocks are attached to the bottom and to the shorter sides of the case. The single set of jacks runs in a line in pairs, the members of which face in opposite directions, immediately behind the pinblock (fig.2). There is only one string per note, and no buff stop or other means of changing tone-colour.
The wing-shaped ‘bentside’ or ‘leg-of-mutton’ spinet which was to become the normal English domestic keyboard instrument in the late 17th century appears to have been invented by a widely travelled Italian, Girolamo Zenti, whom Giovanni Bontempi praised in 1695 for having created the ‘most modern harpsichord … in the form of a nonequilateral triangle’. Bontempi went on to speak of these instruments as having two keyboards and three registers, leaving this interpretation open to doubt; however, the earliest known example of a bentside spinet, dated 1637, bears Zenti’s signature (fig.3). A few other Italian bentside spinets survive, together with an even smaller number of French or German examples. The instrument had its greatest popularity in England, where it began to replace the rectangular virginal in the last decades of the 17th century. Early examples (by Haward, Keene and others) are made from oak or walnut and usually have a marquetry-decorated nameboard, which is removable. Many have the compass G'/B' (short or broken octave) to d''' with ebony naturals and either solid ivory or skunktail sharps. Later examples (e.g. by Longman & Broderip) are usually veneered in panels of mahogany and have a removable namebatten, the nameboard being an integral part of the case. They have either a G'–g''' or F'G'–f''' compass, with ivory naturals and either ebony or skunktail sharps (fig.4). Although the general layout of these instruments is relatively standard, the precise shape is highly variable and characteristic of the individual maker. English spinets were sometimes exported to America, and at least one maker, John Harris, emigrated to that country. Consequently, the surviving 18th-century American spinets are closely modelled on the English type.
Many English spinets were designed for brass strings: some (c'' about 28·5 cm) were intended to be tuned to normal pitch, others (c'' about 25 cm) were intended to be tuned about one whole tone above normal pitch (see O’Brien, 1994). A number of spinets, however, with longer c'' lengths of 33–5 cm, were intended to be tuned to normal pitch, but were designed for treble strings of iron rather than of brass.
The keyboard of a bentside spinet, like that of the earlier trapezoidal examples, occupies most of the case. There is usually a brace from the front of the case to the back at each end of the keyboard, and the Italian examples, as well as some 17th-century English ones, may have a few triangular knees between the sides and bottom of the case in the unobstructed space to the right of the keyboard. Although some later English spinets continue to display Italianate features (use of boxslides, case sides built around the bottom) others display north European characteristics (case sides built on the bottom, jacks guided by upper and lower registers). Most 18th-century English bentside spinets employ two series of braces, one just under the soundboard and the other in the lower part of the case, a plan similar to that of north European harpsichords. There are usually only two lower braces, one at each end of the keyboard; sometimes a third brace (the lower belly rail) runs transversely behind the keyboard. The pinblock rests on a raised section of the braces at the ends of the keyboard; the bottom of the instrument is fastened to the lower edge of the braces after the construction of the case has been completed and the soundboard installed. The upper braces, usually three in number, pass from the bentside to the spine; they are attached to the lower edges of the liners which support the soundboard, and braced to the face of the liners with small triangular blocks. The many such spinets still in playable condition prove the efficiency of this simple design.
The bentside spinet is a compact instrument. Whereas the harpsichord must always be at least a foot longer than its longest string, the spinet need be only a few inches longer; the performer sits in front of the instrument instead of at the end. The oblique stringing of the spinet produces an instrument which is neither as wide nor as long as a harpsichord of equal compass. It is, however, not only the compactness of the design which leads to the small size of spinets. Many English spinets descend only to G' rather than to F', and have relatively short strings of brass. Furthermore, the bass strings below F are usually more severely foreshortened than those of contemporary harpsichords.
Neither the spinet nor the virginal is normally capable of variation in tone-colour or volume. Since the jacks are placed obliquely in the jack guide and face alternately in opposite directions, any movement advances half the jacks but withdraws the other half; uniform lateral movement with respect to the strings is not possible. Similarly, because both strings of each pair form part of the spinet’s single register, it is not possible to employ the type of buff stop found on harpsichords. Both these problems are solved on certain modern spinets in which the strings are not arranged in pairs and all the jacks face in the same direction; such instruments can have both a buff stop and a half-hitch or ‘piano’ position which permits the jacks to be partly withdrawn from the strings. The 1610 ‘arcispineta’ made by Celestini has all the jacks facing in the same direction, although there is no buff or other stop.
In the rare double-strung spinets, such as the two-manual octave spinet by Israel Gellinger and the ‘cembalo traverso’ or ‘spinettone’ with 8' and 4' strings by Cristofori (both in the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, University of Leipzig), change in tone-colour or volume may be obtained by moving the keyboard in or out so that both or only one set of jacks will be lifted when the keys are depressed. Such elaboration is, however, exceptional and essentially foreign to the nature of the spinet, which is basically a simple, single-strung instrument.
More affordable than a harpsichord (in the 1770s Ferdinand Weber of Dublin charged about £22–36 for a harpsichord, £11 for a spinet), the spinet is essentially a domestic instrument, which cannot be said to have a repertory of its own distinct from that of the harpsichord. However, much of the music printed in such collections as Musick’s Handmaid (1663, 1689), The Harpsichord Miscellany (2 vols., c1763) and The Harpsichord Master (1697–1734) was doubtless intended for use by the amateur performer who had no larger instrument at his disposal.
Boalch M
R. Russell: The Harpsichord and Clavichord (London, 1959, rev. 2/1973 by H. Schott)
F. Hubbard: Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making (Cambridge, MA, 1965, 2/1967)
J.H. van der Meer: ‘Beiträge zum Cembalo-Bau der Familie Ruckers’, JbSIM 1971, pp.100–53
E.M. Ripin: ‘The Surviving Oeuvre of Girolamo Zenti’, Metropolitan Museum Journal, vii (1973), 71–87
J.H. van der Meer: ‘Studien zum Cembalobau in Italien’, Festschrift to Ernst Emsheimer, ed. G. Hilleström (Stockholm, 1974), 131–48, 275 only
N. Meeùs: ‘The Nomenclature of Plucked Keyboard Instruments’, FoMRHI Quarterly, no.25 (1981), 18–20
J. Barnes: Making a Spinet by Traditional Methods (Welwyn, Herts., 1985)
L.F. Tagliavini and J.H. van der Meer, ed.: Clavicembali e spinette dal XVI al XIX secolo (Bologna, 1986)
G.G. O'Brien: ‘The Double-Manual Harpsichord by Francis Coston, London, c.1725’, GSJ, xlvii (1994), 2–32
L.E. Whitehead: The Clavichords of Hieronymus and Johann Hass (diss., Edinburgh U., 1994)
For further bibliography see Harpsichord.
EDWIN M. RIPIN/LANCE WHITEHEAD