Plate VI. Clavicytherium or Upright Spinet
This singularly interesting and rare key-board instrument, now the property of Mr. Donaldson, belonged to the collection of Count Correr of Venice. There is no maker’s name or any date upon the instrument, which is of the kind named Clavicytherium by the earliest writer on musical instruments, Virdung (Musica getutscht und auszgezogen, Basle, 1511), who gives a drawing of one. It is in fact a spinet, set upright. The internal decoration, as old as the instrument itself, may be North Italian or South German, authorities differ, but a piece of paper pasted over a split in the inside of the wooden back, possibly by the maker, proves to be a fragment of a lease or agreement contracted at Ulm, which is in favour of the Swabian origin. The instrument can hardly be of later date than the first years of the sixteenth century, and is probably the oldest spinet or key-board stringed instrument existing. The earliest date that can be given for the introduction of the Spinet must be within the second half of the fifteenth century.
The key-board is of narrow compass—three octaves and a minor third—from the second E below, to the second G above, middle C, this note being the ledger-line C between the bass and treble clefs
[audio/mpeg] —an extent about the compass of the human voice, which long ruled that of key-board instruments. In Virdung’s time their compass was being extended. It is, however, more than likely that the lowest E key was here tuned down to the still lower C, according to the so-called “short octave” arrangement, which altered the lowest E, F♯, and G♯, to make fourths below F, G, and A, instead of semitones, and thus get deep dominant basses for cadences. Examination of the plectra or “jacks” of this instrument shows they were furnished with little tongues of wire, and not quills or leather, as in later spinet instruments. It is in a painted pine case, the inside being also painted. An unusual feature of the interior is the Calvary below the narrow sound-board, in which the sound holes, judging by the ornament that remains in one, have been Flamboyant windows. There must also have originally been figures, perhaps the Transfiguration or the Crucifixion, but there is no trace of them left. The treatment of the landscape, without other evidence, nearly determines the epoch when the instrument was made.
The stand and the paintings on the door, one of which represents a figure holding a mirror and a serpent, are of later date.
The dimensions of this truly remarkable spinet are—height of instrument, 4 feet 10½ inches, and extreme width, 2 feet 3 inches—the key-board being 2 feet wide. The depth of the case at base, 11 inches, diminishes in ascending to 55/8 inches. The table upon which it stands is 2 feet high and 2 feet 11 inches wide.