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The rear register is fixed and the front register is moveable but has no stop lever.Gauge numbers: nonePresent string scalings
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For audio examples of this instrument click ← 8ft | ← 8ft | |
e3 | 143 | 57 |
c3 | 167 | 64 |
f2 | 239 | 86 |
c2 | 306 | 102 |
f1 | 430 | 123 |
c1 | 550 | 137 |
f | 805 | 139 |
1104 | 141 | |
F | 1362 | 144 |
C/E | 1380 | 144 |
The outside of the case appears untreated and was probably not even oiled. Although painted on the front of the case, the lower moulding is unpainted along the cheek, bentside, tail and spine. The inner, outer and cap mouldings along the upper edge of the cheek, bentside, tail, spine and nameboard are gilded, as are the soundboard mouldings, the jackrail mouldings, the moulded parts of the front of the nameboard and keyboard and the carved female figures at either side of the keywell.
The soundwell above the soundboard and wrestplank and the flat surfaces of the nameboard, jackrail, jackrail support, lower case-front mouldings are painted a dark bluish-green. Decorating these surfaces are vine- and leaf-work with birds, insects, rabbits and flowers in gold over the green ground. Details of the birds and animals are in ink over the gold.
7 History of earlier states and restorations
State 1: the original compass of C/E to d3, e3 had 29 naturals and 48 notes. There was only one choir of strings and one set of jacks, which plucked towards the left. The position of the bridge is original except in the treble where it has been moved towards the gap in order to reduce the scalings of the top note.
State 2: The compass was increased to C/E to f3 with 30 naturals and 50 notes after adding e flat3 and e3.
State 3: The compass was changed to C, D to d3, the same as at present. The scalings were shortened by either a minor or a major third in relation to the original scalings for the top most critically-stressed string. The scaling of c2 would have been either 278 or 264mm.
State 4: An additional register and choir of strings was added. To do this an extra set of hitch and bridge pins was added, the gap was widened and the wrestplank was replaced. A new nut and a new row of jacks were made, and the original boxslide was sliced horizontally into sections to provide the present upper and lower guides. The diapason rack was replaced and the old keylevers were replaced with new ones of chestnut. There are a number of features of the re-building of this instrument that suggest that the work was executed by Bartolomeo Cristofori or his pupil Giovanni Ferrini. These include the key guide system, the use of upper and lower guides, the moulding on top of the nut and the moulding on the outside edges of the upper guide (O’Brien 1999).
Restored by John Barnes in 1974; work included: cleaning, plugging of woodworm holes, re-gluing the soundbar and the bridge, filling soundboard cracks, replacement of 2 hitchpins, 10 new arcades, 73 new jacks (copying the original 27), and the restringing using brass strings tuned to a1 = 440Hz.
In his restoration report, John Barnes gives 1580 as the approximate date of this instrument. However, the multi-coloured layered rose and the gilt designs are of a style that would suggest a date of 1610.
The original compass of C/E to d3, e3 is very unusual, as most contemporary instruments have a chromatic treble compass to f3. The original pitch scaling of 360mm suggests that it was strung in iron at a pitch similar to other contemporary instruments. There is no way of being sure about the scalings or pitch of the instrument in states 2 and 3. Most of the instruments of Cristofori and Ferrini have a brass scaling of about 285 to 289mm. The deliberate shortening of the scaling of this instrument to 261mm by moving both the treble section of the bridge and the nut closer to the gap suggests that brass stringing was intended at a pitch a semitone to a tone higher than usual.
Gift of Sir George Donaldson, 1900.
Technical drawing with additional notes by Grant O’Brien, 1974, © RCM Edwin M Ripin, editor, Keyboard Instruments (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1971), p.34 John Barnes, Anonymous Italianate Harpsichord No. RCM 175 (unpublished report written for the Museum, Edinburgh, 1974, © RCM) Elizabeth Wells, The Royal College of Music Museum of Instruments: Guide to the Collection (London: Royal College of Music, 1984), p. 5 & ill. p.7 BBC, Early Music Special Issue 1994, p.18 & ill. Edward Kottick & George Lucktenberg, Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997), pp.235–6 Wraight 1997: Denzil Wraight, The Stringing of Italian Keyboard Instruments c. 1500–c. 1650,
PhD dissertation, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1997 (order No.
9735109, UMI Dissertation Services), v.1 p.169; v.2 pp.506 & 526 Grant
O’Brien, ‘The use of simple geometry and the local unit of measurement
in the design of Italian stringed keyboard instruments: an aid to
attribution and to organological analysis’, The Galpin Society Journal, LII (1999), pp.146–8 Denzil Wraight, ‘Arnaut’s clavisimbalum Mechanisms’, Bulletin of the Fellowship of Makers and Restorers of Historical Instruments, 100 (2000), pp.20–5