back. This box ultimately became Rimbault's; the piano was sold at Goding's sale by Christie & Manson in 1857. [App. p.766 "This Hans Ruckers harpsichord transformed into a grand pianoforte appeared again at the sale of Lord Lonsdale's furniture in June 1887, when it realised £700. Burney's description of Rameau's portrait inside the lid should be amended. The composer does not hold a lyre, and is being crowned with a wreath. The expressive character shown in the portrait should vouch for the resemblance to the composer even if Burney had not said that it was very like. On the front board above the keys is inscribed a complete piece of clavecin music, 'Pastorale par Mr. Balbastre, le 6 Aoust, 1767,' beginning—
The stand for this instrument is rococo, and gilt. In the same house (Carlton House Terrace), and sold by auction at the same time for £290, was an Andries Ruckers harpsichord that had also been made into a pianoforte by Zeitter. In this instrument the original belly, dated 1628, was preserved. The soundhole contained the rose (No. 6) of this maker. The present compass of the piano is five octaves F—F. Inside the top is a landscape with figures, and outside, figures with musical instruments on a gold ground. Round the case on gold are dogs and birds, a serpent and birds, etc. All this decoration is 18th century work. The instrument is on a Louis Quinze gilt stand. It will be seen that these two harpsichords have undergone remarkable changes at intervals of more than one hundred years. They will be numbered 67 and 68 in the list of extant Ruckers clavecins, which completes all that is at present known to the writer concerning the existing instruments of that family."]
It was this intimate combination of the decorative arts with music that led to the clavecin and clavichord makers of Antwerp becoming members of the artists' guild of St. Luke in that city. They were enrolled in the first instance as painters or sculptors. We must however go farther back than Hans Ruckers and his sons to truly estimate their position and services as clavecin makers. For this retrospect the pamphlet of the Chevalier Léon de Burbure—'Recherches sur les Facteurs de Clavecins et les Luthiers d'Anvers' (Brussels, 1863), supplies valuable information. We learn that at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th centuries, precisely as in England and Scotland at the same period, the clavichord was in greater vogue than the clavecin; possibly because clavecins were then always long [App. p.777 "for always long read long, or it may have been trapeze-shaped. It must be remembered that the names Clavicordio in Spain, Clavicordo in Italy, and Clavicorde in France, have been always applied to the quilled instruments. We are not therefore sure whether old references to the clavichord are to be taken as describing a plectrum or a tangent keyboard instrument"], and the oblong clavichord recommended itself as more convenient and cheap for ordinary use; just as is now the case with grand and upright pianos. But about the year 1500 the clavecin had been made in the clavichord shape in Venice, and called Spinet. [See Spinet.] This new form must have soon travelled to the Low Countries, and have superseded the Clavichord, as it did in England and France about the same epoch.
A clavecin maker named Josse Carest was admitted in 1523 to the St. Luke's guild as a sculptor and painter of clavichords (literally 'Joos Kerrest, clavecordmaker, snyt en scildert').[1] Another Carest had been accepted in 1519 as an apprentice painter of clavecins ('Goosen Kareest, schilder en Klavecimbelmaker, gheleert by Peeter Mathys'). This is an earlier instance of the name Clavecin than that quoted by M. de Burbure as the oldest he had found in Belgium, viz. a house in the parish of Notre Dame, Antwerp, which, in 1532, bore the sign of 'de Clavizimbele.' No doubt at that time both clavecins and clavichords were in use in Antwerp, but in a few years we hear of the latter no more; and the clavecin soon became so important that, in 1557, Josse Carest headed a petition of the clavecin-makers to be admitted to the privileges of the guild as such, and not, in a side way, merely as painters and sculptors of their instruments. Their prayer was granted, and the ten petitioners were exempted from the production of 'masterworks,' but their pupils and all who were to come after them[2] were bound to exhibit masterworks, being clavecins, oblong or with bent sides ('viercante oft gehoecte clavisimbale,' square or grand as we should say), of five feet long or more; made in the workshops of master experts, of whom two were annually elected; and to have the mark, design, or scutcheon, proper to each maker (syn eygen marck, teecken, oft wapene), that is, a recognised trade-mark on each instrument. We will give these trade marks of the members of the Ruckers family from sketches kindly supplied by M. Abel Regibo, of Renaix in Belgium; three, belonging to Hans and his two sons, having been already published by M. Edmond Vander Straeten in his monumental work 'La Musique aux Pays Bas,' vol. iii. (Brussels, 1875).[3] It is at once evident that such regulations tended to sound work. The trade-marks we have more particularly described under Rose. They were usually made of lead, gilt, and were conspicuous in the soundholes of the instruments.
Some of the cotemporary Italian keyboardinstruments might be taken to give a general idea of what the Antwerp ones were like prior to the improvements of Hans Ruckers the elder. [App. p.777 "It is doubtful what changes of construction Hans Ruckers made in the harpsichord—perhaps the octave strings only. Yet a clavicembalo by Domenico di Pesaro, dated 1590, lately acquired by South Kensington Museum, has the octave strings with two stops. His great service may after all have only been to improve what others had previously introduced. It is nearly certain that harpsichords with double keyboards and stops for different registers existed before Hans Ruckers' time, and their introduction may be attributed to the great favour the Claviorganum, or combined spinet and organ, was held in during the 16th century. The researches of Mr. Edmond Vander Straeten ('La Musique aux Pays Bas,' vol. viii. Brussels 1885), have done much to bring into prominence the great use of the Claviorganum at an early time; see Rabelais, who, before 1552, described Carêmeprenant as having toes like an 'epinette organisée.'"] In the preparation of the soundboards the notion of the soundchest of Lute and Psaltery prevailed. Ruckers adhered to this principle, but being a tuner and perhaps a builder of organs, he turned to the organ as a type for an improved clavecin, and while holding fast to timbre as the chief excellence and end of musical instrument making, introduced different tone-colours, and combined them after organ analogies and by organ contrivances of added keyboards and registers. The octave stop had been already copied in the little octave spinets which Prætorius tells us were commonly used to reinforce the tone of larger instruments, but the merit of Hans Ruckers, traditionally attributed to him, and never gainsaid, was his placing the octave as a fixture in the long clavecin, boldly attaching the strings to hitchpins on the soundboard (strengthened beneath for the purpose), and by the addition of another keyboard, also a fixture, thus establishing a model which remained dominant for large instruments until the end of the clavecin manufacture.[4]
An interesting chapter is devoted to the Ruckers family by M. Edmond Vander Straeten in the work already referred to (vol. iii. p. 325 etc.) He has gathered up the few documentary notices of the members of it discovered by MM. Rombouts and Van Lerius, by M. Génard and by M. Léon de Burbure, with some other facts that complete all that is known about them.
The name Ruckers, variously spelt Rukers, Rueckers, Ruyckers, Ruekaers, Rieckers, and Rikaert, is really a contraction or corruption of the Flemish Ruckaerts or Ryckaertszoon, equivalent to the English Richardson. Hans the elder was certainly of Flemish origin, being the son of Francis Ruckers of Mechlin. He can hardly have been born later than 1555. Married at Notre Dame (the cathedral), Antwerp, June 25, 1575. as Hans Ruckaerts, to Naenken Cnaeps, he was admitted as Hans Ruyckers, 'clavisinbalmakerre,' to the Lucas guild in 1579. It appears strange that he was not enrolled a citizen
- ↑ See 'De Liggeren en andere Historische Archieven der Antwerpsche Sint Lucasgilde.' Rombouts en Van Lerius. 2 vols. Baggerman, Antwerp; Nijhoff, The Hague.
- ↑ Later on, tuners also became members of the guild. For instance, Michel Colyns, Claversingelstelder, in 1631–2; who was however the son of a member.
- ↑ Burney refers to these marks when writing about the Ruckers.
- ↑ The end of the manufacture for Antwerp is chronicled by M. de Burbure in one seen by him—he does not say whether single or double—made by a blind man, and inscribed 'Joannes Heineman me fecit A° 1795, Antwerpiæ.' [App. p.777 "The latest harpsichord in date known to have been made in London is the fine Joseph Kirkman, dated 1798, belonging to Mr. J. A. Fuller Maitland."]
