The Father of the Piano
THE CLAVICHORD - The Father of the Modern Piano
The Clavichord
The clavichord was invented in the early fourteenth century.[
In 1404, 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:
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 reviveclavichord 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.
Until electronic amplification in the twentieth century, it was impossible to use the quiet clavichord in anything but a small room. However, during the clavichord's heyday, evenings of music-making in the home formed the largest part of people's musical experiences. In the home the clavichord was the ideal instrument for solo keyboard music and instrumental accompaniment.[
Today clavichords are played primarily by Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical music enthusiasts.
How does it work
The mechanism of the clavichord is simple in the extreme: The strings which run across the instrument from hitchpin to tuning pin are struck by tiny blades of brass called tangents. These are fixed near the far end of each key. At rest, each tangent lies only a few mm below the strings. When the musician plays a note, the key pivots like a tiny see-saw on its balance pin. The back part of the key rises, and the tangent taps the string, both exciting it into vibration and determining its speaking length at the same moment. If the player then exerts a little more pressure, the pitch can be varied somewhat while the note is still sounding. The other end of the speaking string length is always fixed by the bridge, which passes the tiny vibration of the string to the soundboard for radiation so we can hear it. There is a direct mechanical connection between the finger and the string as long as the note is sounding. As soon as the key is released, the vibrations travel backwards along the strings to the left, where they are promptly stopped by the listing cloth—this material woven between the pairs of strings also affects the stiffness of touch, but has nothing to do with muting the tone of the instrument.
Most clavichords are strung in pairs so are said to be double-strung. Yellow brass (70% Copper, 30% Zinc) is the usual stringing material, and the thickness of the wire varies from bass to treble. Heavier red brass (90% Copper, 10% Zinc) strings, or even overspun strings might be used in the extreme bass. The smallest clavichords have fewer pairs of strings than keys, resulting in an easy-to-tune, smaller and (because of the lesser tension) often seemingly louder instrument. Similar to guitars and lutes, this arrangement is called “fretting”, and a clavichord could said to be either double- or triple-fretted, according to whether the strings are shared in twos or threes throughout most of the compass. The light weight and small size of fretted clavichords enable them to be taken anywhere. Many of the surviving original small clavichords lack legs, so perhaps they were table-top instruments, or meant to be played on one’s knees in a stage coach or in bed. (One wag once remarked that the clavichord was the only musical instrument that a person in one half of a double bed could play without disturbing the person in the other half—and he might well have been right!)New Paragraph
Finer Points
It is because the strings are struck at their most inefficient part that the clavichord is so sweet and gentle—it has been compared to playing the guitar by using the back of a knife on the fingerboard, and not plucking the strings with the right hand at all. The dynamic range, though, is quite extreme—all the way from ppp to perhaps mp— but what is remarkable is the variation of pitch possible by repeatedly exerting (down) and relaxing (up) slight pressure on the key after it has been played. Bebung was the term given by the Germans to this vibrato effect, although it was probably meant to be used with discretion like an ornament, and not an indiscriminate wallowing around on every single note like a badly trained singer. It is the degree of control allowed by this immediacy of touch, which is so lacking in all other keyboard instruments: In the clavichord, the finger is always in direct connection through the key and tangent to the sounding string.