The Old Clavier or Keyboard Instruments; Their Use by Composers, and Technique

Extract

The object of this paper is to bring before your notice the clavier or keyboard stringed instruments that preceded the pianoforte; to make it evident, by performance upon instruments of various kinds, wherein they differed from the pianoforte and from each other, and to show, as far as is in a short time possible, the historic development of composition for them and of the corresponding technique. The instruments shown, taken in the order of illustration, are an Italian trapeze-shaped spinet of sixteenth century model, an English transverse spinet of late seventeenth century; a Flemish double keyboard harpsichord, dated 1614; an English double keyboard harpsichord, dated 1771; and a German clavichord made about the middle of the last century. In order of invention the clavichord was first; it will be seen why I prefer to place it last in the historic order of illustration. The use of the spinet began about the year 1500; it was nearly contemporary in its start with the larger harpsichord, and both remained popular until nearly the close of the eighteenth century. Relatively they were met with much as grand and smaller pianos are met with now. As I have said, the clavichord or keyed monochord was invented and came into use earlier, and most likely in the fourteenth century—about the time of the composer Josquin des Près; but it was a pitch carrier or interval measurer only for a very long while, without the least suggestion of independent musical effect. The dawn of such effect in keyboard stringed instruments was due to the invention of the spinet jack, with its quill, or perhaps, at first, brass plectrum, and little cloth damper. This was in the last years of the fifteenth century. As far as we know, independent instrumental compositions or separate accompanying parts to the voices did not exist until about 1529; the keyboard instruments of all kinds and even the lute, viol, and psaltery, were treated as voices, and as such were submitted to the interweavings of contrapuntal ingenuity. When an instrumental treatment, as apart from vocal, arose, it was by grafting upon the counterpoint and canonical imitation, the devices of variation, a natural and world-wide tendency, accomplished chiefly by figuration and passages contrived to display executive skill. The great secular revolution which, following the invention of printing, ushered in the sixteenth century, brought about the recognition of the people's song and dance which the domination of church modes and school theories had hitherto kept out of notice. From this time came about, by degrees, the substitution of the major and minor scales for the ecclesiastical modes, helped no doubt by the facilities the keyboard instruments, including the organ, gave to the practice of harmony, upon which our modern European music rests.