A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Clavichord

CLAVICHORD (Ger. Clavichord or Clavier, It. Clavicordo [App. p.593 "The Italian name is Manicordo, the name Clavicordo being the equivalent of the German Clavier in the sense of any keyboard instrument having strings."]), a stringed instrument with keys. In German the name has been limited to that keyed stringed instrument, the tones of which were produced by 'tangents'; while the once synonymous term Clavier became transferred to the successor of the clavichord, the square pianoforte. In Italian, clavicordo may formerly have meant any keyed instrument with strings, whether the tones were produced by tangents or 'jacks.' Existing specimens of Italian make have jack actions, and would be correctly designated in English as virginals. The French have done without this appellation altogether, and perhaps without the tangent instrument itself, unless it was included with the manichord or monochord. The Clavecin (It. Clavicembalo, Eng. Harpsichord) had a jack action, differing from the clavichord in the means by which it produced the sound, and in its musical effect. The French translation of the 'Wohltemperirte Clavier' or well-tuned clavichord, of J. S. Bach, by 'le Clavecin bien temperé,' is therefore inaccurate, inasmuch as it conveys rather the idea of the rigid harpsichord or spinet than that of the gentle and intimate clavichord. In England and Scotland during the Tudor period, frequent mention is found in contemporary records of the clavichord, clarichord, and monochord (see Rimbault's 'Pianoforte,' 1860); all three names seeming to be shared by one instrument, and that most probably the true clavichord—for the virginal also appears at that time. Writers on this subject have followed each other in assuming a gradual progress, and stating that either the clavichord or the clavicytherium was the first, in order of time, of a series of keyed instruments that included the virginal and spinet, and culminated in the clavicembalo or wing-shaped harpsichord. But on this we are quite in the dark, for the earliest dependable mention of the clavichord (Eberhard Cersne's 'Rules of the Minnesingers,' A.D. 1404) includes with it the monochord and the clavicembalo. No English clavichord, as distinct from a virginal, being in existence, unless in the lumber-room of some old country-house, we will confine our attention to the German clavichord, to avoid an endless confusion, from different names having been frequently given to one instrument, while one name has been as often attached to different instruments; even musical authorities having failed to observe the desirability of accurate definition.

In shape the clavichord has been followed by the square pianoforte, of which it was the prototype (Fig. 1). The case was oblong and was placed upon a stand or legs. The length, according to the compass and period of construction, was from four to five feet; the breadth less than two feet; the depth of case five to seven inches. The keys were in front, and extended beneath the sound-board to the back of the case, each being balanced upon a wire pin, and prevented from rattling against its neighbour by a small piece of whalebone projecting from the key and sheathed in a groove behind (Fig. 2). The lower or natural keys were usually black, and the upper or chromatic, white. In Italy and the Netherlands the practice was the reverse. The strings, of finely-drawn brass wire, were stretched nearly in the direction of the length of the cose, but with a bias towards the back. On the right of the player were inserted in the sound-board, strengthened on the under side by a slip of oak to receive them, the wrest or tuning-pins round which the strings were fastened, while at the back and partly along the left-hand ride of the case, they were attached by small eyes to hitch-pins of thicker wire. On the right hand the strings rested upon a curved bridge, pinned to fix their direction, and conducting their sound-waves to the sound-board, a flat surface of wood beneath, extending partly over the instrument, but we miss [App. p.593 adds "in clavichords of the 18th century"] the harpsichord sound-hole cut as a rose or some other ornamental device—often the initials of the maker's name. Nearly at the back of each key, in an upright position, was placed a small brass wedge or 'tangent' (t) about an inch high and an eighth of an inch broad at the top (Fig. 3). The tangent, when the key was put down, rose to the string and pressing it upwards set it in vibration. With a good touch the player could feel the elasticity of the string, and the more this was felt the better the instrument was considered to be. By the pressure of the tangent the string was divided into two unequal lengths, each of which would have vibrated, but the shorter was instantly damped by a narrow band of cloth interlaced with the strings, which also damped the longer section directly the player allowed the key to rise and the tangent to fall. The tangents thus not only produced the tones but served as a second bridge to measure off the vibrating lengths required for the pitch of the notes. Thus a delicate tone was obtained that had something in it charmingly hesitating or tremulous; a tone although very weak, yet capable, unlike the harpsichord or spinet, of increase and decrease, reflecting the finest and most tender gradations of the touch of the player, and in this power of expression without a rival until the pianoforte was invented. To ears accustomed to the pianoforte, the 'blocking' sound inseparable from the clavichord tone would seem a disadvantage. A pianoforte, out of order through the hammers failing to rebound from the strings, would however give a very exaggerated and disagreeable notion of this inherent peculiarity of the clavichord. Koch, in his Musical Lexicon, describes the clavichord as 'Labsal des Dulders, und des Frohsinns theilnehmenden Freund' (the comfort of the sufferer and the sympathising friend of cheerfulness).

Up to the beginning of the present century the use of the clavichord in Germany was general, and we are told by Mr. Carl Engel ('Musical Instruments,' etc., 1874) that it is frequently to be met with there to this day in country places. It was a favourite instrument with J. S. Bach, who preferred it to the pianoforte; and with his son Emmanuel, who wrote the 'Versuch über die wahre Art das Klavier zu spielen,' an essay on the true method of playing the clavichord, and the basis of all succeeding text-books of keyed stringed instruments. Mattheson lauded the clavichord above the clavicymbel or harpsichord. Mozart used the clavichord now in the Mozarteum at Salzburg in composing his 'Zauberflöte' and other masterpieces, although in playing he leant to the harpsichord style. Beethoven is reported to have said 'among all keyed instruments the clavichord was that on which one could best control tone and expressive interpretation' (Vortrag).

Clavichords made prior to the last century had strings for the lower or natural keys only; the semitones on the upper keys being produced by tangents directed towards the strings of the lower. Thus C♯ was obtained by striking the C string at a shorter length; D♯ in like manner from the D string. We are told that in old instruments three and four keys were often sharers in one string. At last, about the year 1725, Daniel Faber of Crailsheim, gave each semitone its own string, and instruments so made were distinguished as 'bundfrei' from the older 'gebunden.' In the clavichords last made there were two strings to each tangent and note, tuned in unison. An admired effect of the clavichord was a change of intonation, caused by a stronger pressure on the key, which displacing a little the point of contact of the tangent, tightened the vibrating part of the string and made the note very slightly sharper in pitch. [App. p.593 adds "'An admired effect due to change of intonation' is inaccurate. To play out of tune was deprecated by C. P. E. Bach. There is no doubt that clavichord players preserved a very tranquil position of the hand in order to preserve truth of intonation."] Another special grace was that of repeating a note several times in succession without quitting the key, a dynamic effect (German Bebung) which could not be done on the harpsichord, although Beethoven sought to imitate it on the pianoforte with the touch, aided by the double shifting of the soft pedal, which in his day was usual (Sonatas, Op. 106 and 110, Bülow's edition, 1871; pp. 53–108). [Bebung.]

The early history of the clavichord previous to the 15th century, together with that of the chromatic keyboard—a formal division at the very foundation of modern music—rest in profound obscurity. We are still free to regard our keyboard as an invention sprung complete from the brain of some one mediæval musician, or as the result of gradual contrivances due to the increasing requirements of many. The small evidence that can be adduced favours the latter notion.

[App. p.593 "With respect to the introduction of the chromatic keyboard, Hubert van Eyck painted the S. Cecilia panel of the famous Ghent altar-piece in which there is a Positive organ depicted with the chromatic division of the keyboard. He died in 1426, and that was therefore the last year in which this panel could have been painted. It is probable that the Halberstadt organ, built in 1360, had this division. If so, it is the earliest known example."]

However, the keyboard with its familiar division into seven long and five short notes, was not designed to bring within the limits of the octave the theoretical circle of fifths; the short notes or semitones were long used 'per fictam musicam,' and not, like the seven naturals, as practical starting-points for scales. It was not until the epoch of J. S. Bach that the semitones gained equal privileges with the naturals. Again, our chromatic keyboard was not suggested by the 'chromatic' genus of the Greeks, a totally different idea. The problem really solved by it was that of the transposition of the church tones, a series of scales on the natural keys employing each in succession as a starting-point. The first and seventh were consequently nearly an octave apart. Bearing in mind that some of the Latin Hymns embraced a compass of twelve or thirteen notes, it is evident that ordinary voices could not sing them or even those of less extent, without concession in pitch. Arnold Schlick ('Spiegel der Orgelmacher und Organisten,' Mainz, 1511) gives several instances of necessary transposition, which were only possible by the insertion of the semitones between the naturals, as even then it was a law that the interval of an octave should be grasped by the hand, the broader keys of the older organs having been abolished. By this insertion of the semitones they became the willing guides to the cadences; the G♯ alone being doubtful on account of the 'wolf' in tuning. Schlick in his chapter on tuning,—in which he includes the clavichord and clavizymmel (clavicembalo), the symphonia, a smaller keyed instrument, lute, and harp—says that the semitones could not be rightly tuned or brought into concord. But he names all the semitones we now use, and speaks of double semitones having been tried in the organ twelve years before (1499), which failed through the difficulty of playing.

Virdung, a priest at Basel, who published his 'Musica getuscht und ausgezogen' also in 1511, (afterwards translated into Latin as 'Musurgia, seu Praxis-Musicae,' Strasburg, 1536 [App. p.593. adds "the Latin version of Virdung is, as is now well known, by Luscinius, whom many have credited with being the original author."]) is the oldest authority we can specially refer to about the clavichord. The next in order of time, but a hundred years later, is Praetorius ('Syntagma Musicum,' 1614–18). We are told by him that the earliest clavichords had only twenty keys, in genere diatonico, with two black keys (B♭), so there were not more than three semitones in an octave; like the scale attributed to Guido d'Arezzo, the full extent of which would have embraced 21 keys in all [App. p.593 adds"The scale of Guido should include the highest note e, and contain, with the B molle et durum, 22 notes."]—

but Praetorius gives no nearer indication of the compass, and of course none of the pitch. [Hexachord.] But in Virdung's time there were thirty-five keys or more, starting from the F below the bass stave and embracing the complete system of half-tones; and in that of Praetorius at least four octaves, still the usual compass when J. S. Bach wrote the 'Wohltemperirte Clavier.'

By the middle of the century five octaves were attained. Welcker von Gontershausen ('Der Clavierbau,' Frankfort, 1870) endeavours to find a solution to the keyboard problem by starting from the B♭ added to the B♮ of the earliest clavichords, and assumed the gradual introduction to the keyboard of other semitones, until the twelve in the octave were complete, an achievement he attributed to Zarlino (1548). Welcker describes the oldest clavichord he had met with as bearing, in the sound-hole, the date 1520; and through the four octaves of this instrument the notes D♯ and G♯ were wanting! [App. p.593 adds "the statement that there was a clavichord dated 1520, wanting two semitones in the octave, proves to be unfounded. See Welcker's earlier account of it in 'Neu eröffnetes Magazin musikalischen Tonwerkzeuge,' p. 106 (Frankfort, 1855)."] But, after the evidence of Virdung, either Herr Welcker had misread the date or the instrument had been made after an obsolete pattern; yet this solitary instance recorded of an incomplete chromatic compass may be as the last word preserved of a forgotten language, or the last peak above the water-line of a submerged island. The statement of the completion of the chromatic scale by Zarlino falls to the ground, and moreover, according to Praetorius, the organ at Halberstadt, built about 1360, had in twenty-two notes a complete chromatic scale. Dr. Rimbault (History of the Organ, 1870) regards this as the earliest authentic account of a keyboard with half tones.

There is great probability that the Greek monochord, a string stretched over a soundboard, and measured off into vibrating lengths by bridges, was a stepping-stone to the invention of the clavichord. Used for centuries in the Church to initiate the singers into the mysteries of the eight tones, it must at last have seemed more convenient to dispense with shifting bridges, and at the points of division to adjust fixed bridges raised by an apparatus imitated from the keys of the organ, to press the strings and produce the notes required. This would be an elementary clavichord action, and may account for clavichords, and harpsichords too, being styled monochords in the 15th and 16th centuries, and even as late as the 18th (D. Scorpione, 'Riflessione armoniche'; Naples, 1701). The earliest notice of a monochord among musical instruments is to be found in Wace's 'Brut d'Angleterre' (circa A.D. 1115), 'Symphonies, psaltérions, monachordes.' Herr Ambros ('Geschichte,' 1864, vol. ii., p. 199), from the silence of Jean de Muris as to the clavichord, though repeatedly enumerating the stringed instruments in use ('Musica Speculativa', 1323), infers that it did not then exist, and from this and other negative evidence would place the epoch of invention between 1350–1400. De Muris refers to the monochord with a single string, but recommends the use of one with four strings, to prove intervals not previously known. These four strings were the indices to the eight church tones. Dr. Rimbault ('The Pianoforte.' p. 36) has been deceived in quoting from Bonn's edition of Sismondi the well-known advice to a jongleur by Guiraut de Calanson (died A.D. 1211). It is there stated that the jongleur should play on the citole and mandore, and handle the clarichord and guitar. Reference to the original (Paris MS. La Vallière, No 14, formerly 2701), confirms the citole and mandore, but instead of 'Clarichord' we find 'Manicorda una corda,' doubtless a simple monochord, for in the 'Roman de Flamenca' we find 'l'autr’ accorda lo sauteri ab manicorda' (the other tune the psaltery to the monochord). In the 'Dictionnaire étymologique,' Paris, 1750, 'manicordion' is rendered by monochord. Citole and mandore are also there, but not clavichord.

As to the etymology of clavichord: the word clavis, key, in the solmisation system of Guido d'Arezzo, was used for note or tone, and thus the clavis was the 'key' to the musical sound to be produced. The claves were described by alphabetical letters, and those occupying coloured lines, as F on the red and C on the yellow, were claves signatae, the origin of our modern clefs. When the simple monochord gave place to an instrument with several strings and keys, how easy the transference of this figurative notion of claves from the notes to the levers producing them! Thus the name Clavichord, from clavis, key, and chorda, string, would come very naturally into use. (Herr Ambros, 'Geschichte der Musik,' vol. ii., Breslau, 1864).

According to Fischhof (Versuch einer Geschichte, etc., 1853), Lemme of Brunswick, Wilhelmi of Cassel, Vensky, Horn and Mack of Dresden, and Kramer of Gottingen, were reputed in the last century good clavichord makers. Mr. Engel quotes the prices of Lemme's as having been from three to twelve louis d'or each; Kriimer's from four to fourteen, according to size and finish. Wilhelmi charged from twenty to fifty thalers (£3 to £7 10s.).

[App. p.593 "The last clavichords that were made were constructed by Hoffmann, Stuttgart, in 1857, on the pattern of one belonging to Molique. They were made for the late Joseph Street, of Lloyds. [See also Tangent.]"]

[ A. J. H. ]