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The keyboard of NMM 5943 is in the typical seventeenth-century French style with ebony naturals, solid bone sharps, carved trefoil key fronts, and, originally, a compass of fifty notes, apparent BB (tuned to GG) to c3. There are two sets of 8' strings. Although the upper jack guides are eighteenth-century replacements and the jacks stem from a modern restoration, the plucking directions can be inferred from the original lower guide. The undercutting of the holes indicates that the jacks of the front register were inclined slightly to the left to provide adequate space for plectra plucking to the right; vice versa for the back register. Thus the disposition was: |
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The cheek and bentside are walnut, a favored wood in seventeenth-century French cabinetry, and the exterior surfaces of these walls were presumably left unpainted. The instrument’s plain softwood spine, would have been unseen, facing the wall of the room. The present painted decoration on the outside of the instrument is a twentieth-century "enhancement," as are the lid and the painted cabriole-legged stand. Bands of flowers beautifully painted on paper applied to the interior walls around the soundboard, however, are original, as are the painted decoration of the soundboard and wrestplank, as well as the geometrical rose made of layers of carefully cut and punched parchment. At the upper edge of the case interior is a delicate applied walnut molding.
Two of the original soundboard ribs, those nearest the front edge of the soundboard, remain in their original positions, and the positions of the other four, which were replaced during a restoration, can be determined by scars or other marks and by gaps in the pieces of linen tape that the maker glued to reinforce the joints between the planks from which the soundboard was assembled. There are now also four ribs in addition to the six in the original positions (original ribs highlighted in image below). The original ribs were cut out to free the soundboard where they passed under the bridge.
Detail of the underside of the soundboard with the two original ribs and linen tape with which the maker reinforced a joint in the soundboard. He discontinued the tape where the ribs were to be glued. Other gaps in the tape show the positions of the missing original ribs.
The instrument has undergone a series of relatively minor alterations to extend and modify its compass. All but the first key (BB/GG) and f1-sharp of the original keyboard remain, with their limewood levers numbered from 2 to 50. The most likely sequence of alterations is that at some time before 1796, the compass underwent two stages of extension, first up to d3 in the treble, then down to AA in the bass, leaving the instrument with its present fifty-four note compass of AA to d3. In addition to alterations to the keyboard, the ends of the bridge and nut would have been extended to accomodate the added strings. The original lower guide was retained, with holes cut for the jacks added in the treble and bass. Two new upper guides, however, were made for the fifty-four note compass.
The inscription on the front edge of the wrest plank records further work on the instrument in 1796 by Honoré Grinda (1754-1843), a prominent organ builder in Nice. Grinda probably made the present c3-sharp and d3 keys, with pine levers, as he sometimes wrote the digit 5 in the distinctive manner seen on these levers, numbered 51 and 52 (above). Since the d3 lever has been filled in where there had once been a d3-sharp key, Grinda extended the compass at least up to e3 but almost certainly to f3. With a compass of fifty-four notes ending on f3, no keys below C would fit in the keywell. Grinda must have discarded the original GG/BB lever along with the previously added AA and BB-flat. With the compass of C to f3, the keys had to be moved to the left relative to their original positions, such that, for example, the c2 key played the strings originally intended for a1. Letters indicating the note names for this shifted compass are written near a few of the wrest pins, which remain staggered in the order of naturals and sharps for the original position of the keyboard. To compensate for the shifting of the keyboard a minor third lower, Grinda shortened all the strings by moving the nut closer to the bridge. Still, the scaling, with c2 about 396 mm long, was significantly longer than it had been, and the instrument must have been tuned to a very low pitch, approximately a1 = 380 hz.
Length: 2107 |
The spine is of fir (Abies) 15 thick; cheek, 9 thick; and bentside, 8 thick, reduced to just over 7 near the tail, of walnut. The bottom, of fir, is attached to the bottom edges of the walls. It consists of a main board, 14 thick, with grain parallel to the spine, breadboarded to a transverse piece, 21 thick, under the front of the keyboard. The wrestplank is of oak; soundboard of quarter-sawed spruce (Picea); original ribs of spruce. The nut and bridge are of walnut, basically triangular in cross section, molded on the leading edge. The bridge is bent to its curve in both treble and bass.
< 8' |
8' > |
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c3 |
176 / 66 |
165 / 41 |
c2 |
352 / 84 |
336 / 58 |
c1 |
710 / 104 |
676 / 79 |
c |
1272 / 132 |
1235 / 106 |
C |
1704 / 164 |
1695 / 139 |
GG/BB |
1723 / — |
— |
Note: Many of the bridge and nut pins were moved slightly during the various stages of alteration and restoration. The present measurements were made to the positions judged most likely to be original. At some stage in the instrument’s history, the strings would have been a few millimeters longer because the bridge pins were about 3 mm closer to the spine. The plucking points are measured to the center of the jack slots in the present upper guides.
Literature: Sheridan Germann, "Monsieur Doublet and His Confreres: The Harpsichord Decorators of Paris," pt. 2, Early Music, Vol. 9, No. 2 (April 1981), p. 192.
Michel Foussard and Jean-Loup Fontana, eds., Clans 1792, l’Orgue d’Honoré Grinda (Nice: Conseil Général des Alpes-Maritimes, 1982).
Dieter Krickeberg and Horst Rase, "Beitrage zur Kenntnis des mittel- und norddeutschen Cembalobaus um 1700," in Studia Organologica: Festschrift fur John Henry van der Meer, edited by Friedemann (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1987), p. 301.
Elisabeth Pastorelli, Orgues et facteurs de Nice (fin XVIIIe, début XXe siècle), (Béziers: Société de Musicologie de Languedoc, 1988).
John Koster, Keyboard Musical Instruments in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994), p. 45, note 4.
Donald H. Boalch, Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440-1840. Third edition, edited by Charles Mould (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), p. 300.
John Koster, "Rare French Harpsichord Enters Museum's Collections," Shrine to Music Museum Newsletter, Vol. 23, No. 4 (August 1996), pp. 1-3.
Alain and Marie-Christine Anselm, "La Collection Yannick Guillou," Musique, Images, Instruments (Revue francaise d'organologie et d'iconographie musicale), No. 2 (1996), pp. 147-148, note 42.
Alain and Marie-Christine Anselm, "Petit prelude a l'etude des clavecins francais du XVIIe siecle," Musique, Images, Instruments (Revue francaise d'organologie et d'iconographie musicale), No. 2 (1996), p. 228.
Denzil Wraight, The Stringing of Italian Keyboard Instruments c.1500-c.1650 (Ph.D. thesis, The Queen’s University of Belfast, 1996; revised 1997), vol. 1, p. 179.
Alain and Marie-Christine Anselm, "Le deux clavecins signés 'J. Collesse', 1768 et 1775," Musique, Images, Instruments (Revue francaise d'organologie et d'iconographie musicale), No. 4 (1999), p. 84, note 16.
R. Dean Anderson, "Extant Harpsichords Built or Rebuilt in France During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: an Overview and Annotated List, Part 1," Early Keyboard Journal 19 (2001), pp. 137-138.
John Koster, "Traditional Iberian Harpsichord Making in its European Context," Galpin Society Journal 61 (2008), pp. 10, 58, 67.
Charles Astro, Robert Adelson, et al., Trois siècles de facture instrumentale à Nice, exhibition catalogue, Musée du Palais Lascaris (Nice: Éditions Nice Musées, 2009), p. 21.
John Koster, "Domenico Scarlatti and the Transformation of Iberian Harpsichord Making," in Domenico Scarlatti en España / Domenico Scarlatti in Spain, Luisa Morales, ed. (Garrucha, Almería, Spain: Asociación Cultural LEAL, 2009), pp. 187-208 (especially fig. 4).