On 4 Sep 2009 at 13:57, dhbailey wrote: > Certainly the start of the quoted blurb seems to indicate > that the people who put the webpage up thought it would have > been common during the Baroque.
Just Googling around, I found these tidbits: 1. Bach's estate included a pedal clavichord: http://tinyurl.com/nk2rlu (http://books.google.com/books?id=4nlSus0xpqMC&pg=PA299&lpg=PA299&dq=i nventory+of+bach%27s+estate&source=bl&ots=FESx58LW5e&sig=eE1HYdWseTFgg QOq7jmMx439p30&hl=en&ei=MFehSobDB-KFmQer2- 3eDQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#v=onepage&q=inventory%20of %20bach%27s%20estate&f=false) Scroll to p. 300, which transcribes the inventory, and is followed by a discussion of what it means. 2. Pedal harpsichords were common, but none have survived: http://www.harpsichord.org.uk/pedal/pedalharpsichord.htm That article is a hasty translation from the original French, and I would think one would need to check any passages that raise questions against the original, which is linked at the top of the translation. I would note that the translation captions the first picture in the article as "Pedal-harpsichord" but the original reads "clavicorde- pédalier", which makes much more sense, as the form of the pictured instrument would be called "spinet" and not "harpsichord" were it a plucked instrument (instead of struck, as is the case with the clavichord). 3. Biggs's pedal harpsichord was made by Challis, which is unfortunate, given that Challis was a modern maker who built harpsichords somewhat on the Pleyel model, with metal frames and such (though by the 1950s and 60s at much lower string tension than the Pleyels created for Landowska). I would speculate that the reason none of these instruments has survived is because the string tension for 16' registers would have been higher than for the regular harpsichords and there was little use of metal framing. The result of that is the pedal harpischords would have collapsed in on themselves. You can see the beginnings of this in many historical harpsichords and fortepianos, where the string tension has begun to buckle them in a shallow V shape, right at the join between the tuning block and the sounding board, i.e., something like _/ . -- David W. Fenton http://dfenton.com David Fenton Associates http://dfenton.com/DFA/ _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
