I have spent an enjoyable week researching the chekker. At least it was more enjoyable than just sitting around healing.
Anyway, I was able to acquire some of the papers associated with the Christopher Page article and the Early Music article itself: "The Myth of the Chekker", Christopher Page, EM Vol7, No.4, Keyboard Issue 1 (Oct.,1979) pp 482-489, Oxford University Press (http://www.jstor.org/stable/3126484) "Four More 15th-Century Representations of Stringed Keyboard Instruments", Christopher Page and Lewis Jones) Galpin Society Journal, Vol 31 (May 1978), pp 151-155, Galpin Society (http://www.jstor.org/stable/841204) "Toward an Identification of the Chekker", Edwin M Ripin (op. post.) Galpin Society Journal, Vol 28 (Apr 1975) pp 11-25, Galpin Society (http://www.jstor.org/stable/841566) "The Canon and Eschaquiel of the Arabs", Henry George Farmer, Journal of the Royal Asiatic ZSociety of Great Britain and Ireland, No. 2 (Apr 1926) pp 239-256 (http://www.jstor.com/stable/255220946) While the background of the last three articles is good to have, it can be summarized fairly succinctly: The chekker, called at various times in history by the terms eschiquier, exaquier, chekker, Schachtbrett, eschaquiel, exquaquiel, exaquir, echiquier, eschequier Virginal, and assumed at various times to be synonymous with or derived from al-shaquira (Farmer), "an instrument seeming like organs which sounds like strings" (King John I of Aragon), manicordium (Ryet),and therefore an upright harpsichord, clavichord (Ripin), and dulce melos (Arnault de Zwolle), either is or isn't a mysterious instrument of which no existing example can be produced, or is a mere synonym for an instrument that is extent. Much time is spent on the excheqer, a 5' x 10' board covered with a cloth "bought in Easter term" with rulings "a full span" or a foot apart. (Ripin's translation of a medieval diologus ascribed to "Richard, son of Nigel".) Ripin simultaneously presumes the rulings to be a reminder of parallel stringed instruments, although the lines seem to have been both parallel and perpendicular, ala checker board (or chess board). It is interesting that the chekker is first recognized as being referred to in 1360 (according to the first reference in Rippin's Appendix, which quotes 14th to 16th Century instances) as leschequier, and the excheqer description (with the ruled lines a foot or span apart) is from a 12th C source, while the drawings presented date from 15thC and later sources. Page starts by deconstructing Farmer's association between Al-shaquira and eschiquir, kindly not pressing the comparison between Farmer and Iago... "But yet, I say, If imputation and string circumstances Which lead directly to the door of truth Will give you satisfaction, you might have't." ..making the chekker controversy entertaining if not necessarily educating. The final score is chekker 1, musicologists 0, as Page concludes that Gerson's drawings of the chessboard-shaped excheqer, as a "potent image for the medieval mind," is the best indicator of the shape of the chekker, at least least at some time. He also figures that the chekker cannot be isolated to a single type of action, even from its close positional association in medieval poetry with clavichords or monochords. His conclusion is that we need more pictorial sources which are well-connected to mechanisms that resemble the excheqer before we can begin to guess whether the Chekker was a specific kind of instrument, or as multi-valued as "Instrument" might have been in Praetorius' time. Clearly,Marc Lewon has grasped the situation, and has assigned the value chekker to something, secure in the knowledge that no one now stands to dispute with him, and that, if at sometime in the future definitive evidence arises to prove that his instrument is not a chekker, he can still be utterly correct to rename it "ex-chekker"! ray To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
