Clavichord - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Clavichord
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The clavichord is a European stringed keyboard

instrument known from the late Medieval,
through the Renaissance, Baroque and Classical
eras. Historically, it was mostly used as a
practice instrument and as an aid to composition,
not being loud enough for larger performances (a
problem that was solved when the Clavinet was
invented in the mid-20th century). The
clavichord produces sound by striking brass or
iron strings with small metal blades called
tangents. Vibrations are transmitted through the
bridge(s) to the soundboard.

Clavichord

1977 unfretted clavichord by Keith Hill, Op. 44

(Op. 28 reworked)
Keyboard instrument

Contents

HornbostelSachs

314.122-4-8

classification

(Simple chordophone with

keyboard sounded by

1 Name
2 History and use
2.1 Modern music
3 Structure and action
4 Fretting
5 Pedal clavichord
6 Repertoire
7 References
8 External links

tangents)
Developed

Early 14th century

Name
The name is derived from the Latin word clavis, meaning "key" (associated with more common
clavus, meaning "nail, rod, etc.") and chorda (from Greek ) meaning "string, especially of a
musical instrument". An analogous name is used in other European languages (It. clavicordio,
clavicordo; Fr. clavicorde; Germ. Klavichord; Lat. clavicordium; Port. clavicrdio; Sp.
clavicordio). Many languages also have another name derived from Latin manus, meaning "hand"
(It. manicordo; Fr. manicorde, manicordion; Sp. manicordio, manucordio). Other names refer to the
monochord-like nature of a fully fretted clavichord (It. monacordo or monocordo; Sp. monacordio).
Italian also used sordino, a reference to its quiet sound (sordino usually designates a mute).[1]

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History and use

The clavichord was invented in the early fourteenth century.[2][3] In 1504, the German poem "Der
Minne Regeln" mentions the terms clavicimbalum (a term used mainly for the harpsichord) and
clavichordium, designating them as the best instruments to accompany melodies.
One of the earliest references to the clavichord in England
occurs in the privy-purse expenses of Elizabeth of York, queen
of Henry VII, in an entry dated August 1502:
Item. The same day, Hugh Denys for money by him
delivered to a stranger that gave the queen a payre of
clavycordes. In crowns form his reward iiii libres.[5]
The "Lpante" fretted
clavichord,[4] Muse de la
Musique, Paris

The clavichord was very popular from the 16th century to the
18th century, but mainly flourished in German-speaking lands,
Scandinavia, and the Iberian Peninsula in the latter part of this
period. It had fallen out of use by 1850. In the late 1890s,
Arnold Dolmetsch revived clavichord construction and Violet Gordon-Woodhouse, among others,
helped to popularize the instrument. Although most of the instruments built before the 1730s were
small (four octaves, four feet long), the latest instruments were built up to seven feet long with a six
octave range.
Today clavichords are played primarily by Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical music enthusiasts.
They attract many interested buyers, and are manufactured worldwide. There are now numerous
clavichord societies around the world, and some 400 recordings of the instrument have been made
in the past 70 years. Leading modern exponents of the instrument have included Derek Adlam,
Christopher Hogwood, Richard Troeger, Thurston Dart, Wim Winters and Miklos Spnyi.

Modern music
The clavichord has also gained attention in other genres of music, in the form of the Clavinet,
which is essentially an electric clavichord that uses a magnetic pickup to produce a signal for
amplification. Stevie Wonder uses a Clavinet in many of his songs, such as "Superstition" and
"Higher Ground". A Clavinet played through an instrument amplifier with guitar effect pedals is
often associated with funky, disco-infused 1970s rock.
Guy Sigsworth has played clavichord in a modern setting with Bjrk, notably on the studio
recording of "All Is Full of Love". Bjrk also made extensive use of and even played the instrument
herself on the song "My Juvenile" of her 2007 album Volta.
Tori Amos uses the instrument on "Little Amsterdam" from the album Boys for Pele and on the

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song "Smokey Joe" from her 2007 album American Doll Posse. Amos also featured her use of the
Clavinet on her 2004 recording "Not David Bowie", released as part of her 2006 box set, A Piano:
The Collection.
In 1976 Oscar Peterson played (with Joe Pass on acoustic guitar) songs from Porgy And Bess on the
clavichord. Keith Jarrett also recorded an album entitled Book of Ways (1987) in which he plays a
series of clavichord improvisations. The Beatles' "For No One" (1966) features Paul McCartney
playing the clavichord. Rick Wakeman plays the Clavinet in the track "The Battle" from the album
Journey to the Centre of the Earth.

Structure and action

In the clavichord, strings
run transversely from the
hitchpin rail at the
left-hand end to tuning
pegs on the right.
Towards the right end
Schematic diagram of clavichord mechanism: A/B. Keys. 1A/1B. Tangents.
they pass over a curved
2A/2B. Keylevers. 3. String. 4. Soundboard. 5. Bridge-pin, next to hitch-pin.
wooden bridge. The
6. Damping felt, next to tuning peg. (Note that this sketch is a simplification.
action is simple, with the
In the actual instrument, the strings run perpendicular to the keylevers. In
keys being levers with a
other words, the strings run lengthwise in the instrument.)[6]
small brass tangent, a
small piece of metal
similar in shape and size to the head of a flat-bladed
screwdriver, at the far end. The strings, which are usually of
brass, or else a combination of brass and iron, are usually
arranged in pairs, like a lute or mandolin. When the key is
pressed, the tangent strikes the strings above, causing them to
sound in a similar fashion to the hammering technique on a
guitar. Unlike in a piano action, the tangent does not rebound
from the string; rather, it stays in contact with the string as long
Detail of the Clavichord at
as the key is held, acting as both the nut and as the initiator of
Museu de la Msica de Barcelona
sound. The volume of the note can be changed by striking
harder or softer, and the pitch can also be affected by varying
the force of the tangent against the string (known as Bebung). When the key is released, the tangent
loses contact with the string and the vibration of the string is silenced by strips of damping cloth.
The action of the clavichord is unique among all keyboard instruments in that one part of the action
simultaneously initiates the sound vibration while at the same time defining the endpoint of the
vibrating string, and thus its pitch. Because of this intimate contact between the player's hand and
the production of sound, the clavichord has been referred to as the most intimate of keyboard
instruments. Despite its many (serious) limitations, including extremely low volume, it has
considerable expressive power, the player being able to control attack, duration, volume, and even

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provide certain subtle effects of swelling of tone and a type of vibrato unique to the clavichord.

Fretting
Since the string vibrates
from the bridge only as far
as the tangent, multiple keys
with multiple tangents can
be assigned to the same
string. This is called fretting.
Early clavichords frequently
had many notes played on
Fretted clavichord, copy of an
each string, even going so
Large five-octave unfretted
unsigned instrument conserved in
far as the keyed monochord
clavichord by Paul Maurici, after
Namur, Belgium. The way the
an instrument with only
J.A. Hass
same string pair is used for
one stringthough most
several notes is clearly visible in
clavichords were triple- or
the full size image.
double-fretted. Since only one note can be played at a time on
each string, the fretting pattern is generally chosen so that notes
rarely heard together (such as C and C) share a string pair. The advantages of this system
compared with unfretted instruments (see below) include relative ease of tuning (with around half
as many strings to keep in tune), greater volume (though still not really enough for use in chamber
music), and a clearer, more direct sound. Among the disadvantages: temperament could not be
re-set without bending the tangents; and playing required a further refinement of touch, since notes
sharing a single string played in quick succession had to be slightly separated to avoid a
disagreeable deadening of the sound, potentially disturbing a legato line.
Some clavichords have been built with a single pair of strings for each note. The first known
reference to one was by Johann Speth in 1693 and the earliest such extant signed and dated
clavichord was built in 1716 by Johann Michael Heinitz. Such instruments are referred to as
unfretted whereas instruments using the same strings for several notes are called fretted. Among the
advantages to unfretted instruments are flexibility in tuning (the temperament can be easily altered)
and the ability to play any music exactly as written without concern for "bad" notes. Disadvantages
include a smaller volume, even though many or most unfretted instruments tend to be significantly
larger than fretted instruments; and many more strings to keep in tune. Unfretted instruments tend
to have a sweeter, less incisive tone due to the greater load on the bridge resulting from the greater
number of strings, though the large, late (early 19th century) Swedish clavichords tend to be the
loudest of any of the historic clavichords.

Pedal clavichord
While clavichords were typically single manual instruments, they could be stacked, one clavichord
on top of another, to provide multiple keyboards. With the addition of a pedal clavichord, which

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included a pedal keyboard for the lower notes, a clavichord

could be used to practice organ repertoire. Most often, the
addition of a pedal keyboard only involved connecting the keys
of the pedalboard to the lower notes on the manual clavichord
using string so the lower notes on the manual instrument could
be operated by the feet. In the era of pipe organs, which used
man-powered bellows that required several people to operate,
and of churches only heated during church services if at all,
J. Verscheure Reynvaan:
organists used pedal harpsichords and pedal clavichords as
engraving of an eighteenthpractice instruments (see also: pedal piano).[7] There is
century pedal clavichord
speculation that some works written for organ may have been
intended for pedal clavichord. An interesting case is made by
Speerstra (2004) that Bach's "Eight Little Preludes and Fugues", now thought spurious, may
actually be authentic. The keyboard writing seems unsuited to organ, but Speerstra argues that they
are idiomatic on the pedal clavichord. As Speerstra and Williams (2003) also note, the compass of
the keyboard parts of Bach's six trio sonatas for organ (BWV 525530) rarely go below the tenor C,
so they could have been played on a single manual pedal clavichord, by moving the left hand down
an octave, a customary practice in the 18th century.

Repertoire
Much of the musical repertoire written for harpsichord and organ from the period circa 14001800
can be played on the clavichord; however, it does not have enough (unamplified) volume to
participate in chamber music, with the possible exception of providing accompaniment to a soft
baroque flute, recorder, or single singer. J. S. Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach was a great
proponent of the instrument, and most of his German contemporaries regarded it as a central
keyboard instrument, for performing, teaching, composing and practicing. The fretting of a
clavichord provides new problems for some repertoire, but scholarship suggests that these problems
are not insurmountable in Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier (Loucks (1992)). Among recent
clavichord recordings, those by Christopher Hogwood (The Secret Bach, The Secret Handel, and
The Secret Mozart), break new ground. In his liner notes, Hogwood pointed out that these
composers would typically have played the clavichord in the privacy of their homes. In England,
the composer Herbert Howells (18921983) wrote two significant collections of pieces for
clavichord (Lambert's Clavichord and Howells' Clavichord), and Stephen Dodgson (19242013)
wrote two clavichord suites.

References
Notes
1. All of these translations appear in Edwin M. Ripin et al. "Clavichord". In Macy, Laura. Grove Music
Online. Oxford Music Online. Oxford University Press. (subscription required)

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2. Brauchli 1998
3. Jeans 1951
4. Catalogue entry (http://mediatheque.cite-musique.fr/masc/?INSTANCE=CITEMUSIQUE&
URL=/ClientBookLineCIMU/recherche/NoticeDetailleByID.asp) for the Lpante clavichord, Cit de la
Musique, Paris (in French)
5. Brinsmead, Edgar. History of the Pianoforte, London, 1879. pp. 9091
6. Brauchli 1998, pp. 110. The introduction to this book contains far more detailed and accurate diagrams,
labeled by the technical names of the different parts of the clavichord.
7. The use of the pedal clavichord as a practice instrument is discussed by Friedrich Griepenkerl in the
1844 foreword to Volume I of the first edition of the complete organ works of J.S. Bach; see
Riemenschneider 1950.

Sources
Kipnis, Igor (2007), The Harpsichord and Clavichord: An Encyclopedia, Routledge,
ISBN 0415937655
Brauchli, Bernard (1998), The Clavichord, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-63067-3
Jeans, Susi (1951), The Pedal Clavichord and Other Practice Instruments of Organists,
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association, 77th Sess., 19501951, Oxford University
Press, JSTOR 766144
Kottick, Edward L. (1997), Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums, Indiana
University Press, ISBN 0-253-33239-7
Riemenschneider, Albert (1950), Preface and translations of forewords by Friedrich
Griepenkerl to Organ works of J.S. Bach, 2067, C.F. Peters
Speerstra, Joel (2004), Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: an Organist's Guide, University of
Rochester Press, ISBN 1-58046-135-2
Williams, Peter (2003), The Organ Music of J.S. Bach (2nd ed.), Cambridge University Press,
pp. 46, ISBN 0-521-89115-9
Loucks, Richard (1992), Was the 'Well-Tempered Clavier' performable on a fretted
clavichord?, Performance Practice Review, 5/1, pp. 4489

External links
Introduction of "The Clavichord" by Bernard Brauchli
Wikimedia Commons
(http://assets.cambridge.org/97805216/19899/excerpt
has media related to
/9780521619899_excerpt.pdf)
Clavichords.
What is a clavichord? (http://www.classical-music.com
/article/what-clavichord) Julian Perkins gives a brief introduction to the clavichord for BBC
Music Magazine.
Clavichord International (http://www.clavichordgenootschap.nl/)
British Clavichord Society (http://www.bcs.nildram.co.uk/)
Boston Clavichord Society (http://www.bostonclavichord.org/)
"Clavecin-pdalier" (http://www.fmil.org/instruments.php?instrument=clavecins-pedalier) by
Yves Rechsteiner, 2001 (in French)

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Clavichords (http://heinrich-schuetz-haus.de/instrumente_schuetzzeit/clavichord.php) at the

house of Heinrich Schtz (in German)
Historical clavichords at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Clavichord by Christian Kintzing, Neuwied, Germany, 1763
(http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/cris/ho_1986.239.htm)
Clavichord by John Christopher Jesse, Halberstadt, Germany, 1765
(http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_database/musical_instruments
/clavichord_john_christopher_jesse/objectview.aspx?page=1&sort=0&sortdir=asc&
keyword=clavichord&fp=1&dd1=18&dd2=0&vw=1&collID=18&
OID=180013539&vT=1)
Clavichord, Germany, 18th century (http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art
/collection_database/musical_instruments/clavichord/objectview.aspx?page=1&sort=0&
sortdir=asc&keyword=clavichord&fp=1&dd1=18&dd2=0&vw=1&collID=18&
OID=180015702&vT=1)

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