For an exception to this point, see "spinettone", below. Spinet by Zenti from 1637, now in the Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels The angling of the strings also had consequences for tone quality: generally, it was not possible to make the plucking points as close to the nut as in a regular harpsichord. Thus spinets normally had a slightly different tone quality, with fewer higher harmonics. Spinets also had smaller soundboards than regular harpsichords, and normally had a weaker sound.
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John Harris (17??–1772) was a Bostonian maker of spinets and harpsichords. Bentside spinet by John Harris John Harris emigrated from England to Boston sometime before 1768. He completed his first spinet in 1769.
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The English diarist Samuel Pepys mentions his "tryangle" several times. This was not the percussion instrument that we call triangle today; rather, it was a name for octave-pitched spinets, which were triangular in shape.
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The theatre the Prince had available at Pratolino was small, so the prince had a strong incentive for a compact instrument that could fit in the orchestra, but had multiple string choirs to provide volume. The oval spinets may have been Cristofori's effort to fulfill this requirement (and not the only such effort--see below). The two oval spinets are luxury items--the novel product of a very skilled craftsman--which alone would have made them expensive. Moreover, they are enclosed in fine cabinetry made from costly woods.
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The spinet was also the bane of piano technicians. Concerning the difficulty of servicing them, Fine writes > Spinets ... are very difficult to service because even the smallest repair > requiring removal of the action becomes a major ordeal. Each of the > connecting stickers has to be disconnected and tied up to the action and all > the keys have to be removed from the piano before the action can be lifted > out.Not all spinets had this design; some utilized a method of making a > railing for the rods to terminate sticker connection to the keys.
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The next Medici instrument inventory, evidently made by Cristofori himself, dates from 1716, three years after Prince Ferdinando's death. The oval spinets do not appear in this inventory, and evidently had been disposed of (through gift or sale). In 1726, long after the two original spinets were built, but still in Cristofori's lifetime, the Bolognese builder Giuseppe Maria Goccini (1675-post 1733) built an instrument on similar principles, with the longest strings in the middle, alternating key lengths, and the ability to change stops by sliding the keyboard. However, Goccini's instrument was octagonal (a rectangle with truncated corners) rather than rectangular with appended arches.
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Cristofori's oval spinets have two choirs of strings, each at 8-foot (normal) pitch. In the pairs of strings seen in the diagram above, each pair consists of one string from each choir. The purpose of having two choirs was evidently twofold. First, when both strings are played at once, a louder sound is obtained.
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We Can Build You is set in the then-future year of 1982. It centers on Louis Rosen, a small businessman whose company produces spinets and electronic organs. Rosen's partner wants to begin production of simulacra, or androids, based on famous Civil War figures. The firm completes two prototypes, one of Edwin M. Stanton and one of Abraham Lincoln.
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The conservatory of the Pietà hospital was the only hospital to remain active until approximately 1830. All the other hospitals completely closed their musical activity during the first years of the nineteenth century. From an instrument inventoryPio Stefano book dated 1790 we learn that during that year the Pietà hospital had still “four violins with used bows, four cellos, seventeen violins, two marine trumpets [this may in fact refer to violino in tromba marina, six small violas, two viola d’amore, two mandolines, two lutes, one theorbo, four hunting horns with accessories, two psalteries with harmonic box, two cymbals, three flutes, two big cymbals with spinets, six spinets. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's account of 1770 conveys his impressions but has been over-generalized as a description of the institution over an entire century.
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Furthermore, he gave his daughter Marie-Louise a considerable dowry when she became a Visitandine nun in 1750, and he paid a pension to one of his sisters when she became ill. Financial security came late to him, following the success of his stage works and the grant of a royal pension (a few months before his death, he was also ennobled and made a knight of the Ordre de Saint-Michel). But he did not change his way of life, keeping his worn-out clothes, his single pair of shoes, and his old furniture. After his death, it was discovered that he only possessed one dilapidated single-keyboard harpsichordCompare the inventories of François Couperin (one large harpsichord, three spinets and a portable organ) and Louis Marchand (three harpsichords and three spinets) after their deaths.
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He traded on his own account until 1770 from premises in Wych Street, LondonWestminster Rate Books. In around 1770, two of his nephews, John Crang Hancock and James Hancock, joined him in business, trading as Crang & HancockOrgana Britannica: Organs in Great Britain 1660-1860 (Vol 1 p98). Together they repaired and made a range of keyboard instruments including harpsichords, spinets, pianos and organs.
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The spinettone was a kind of spinet, which means specifically that its strings were placed in pairs along a diagonal relative to the position of the keyboard. The jacks that plucked the strings were placed in opposite-facing pairs within the larger gaps between strings. Most spinets are smaller than regular harpsichords. The spinettone was very long, but narrower than a regular harpsichord.
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Cristofori built the two oval spinets for the Medici family of Florence. Cristofori's patron was Prince Ferdinando, the son of Grand Duke Cosimo III and heir to the Tuscan throne. Prince Ferdinando, a great opera enthusiast, organized many operatic productions at the Medici villa at Pratolino. According to William Holmes (references below), the prince often participated as the continuo player, seated at a harpsichord among the orchestral musicians.
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Ottavini are small spinets or virginals at four-foot pitch. Harpsichords at octave pitch were more common in the early Renaissance, but lessened in popularity later on. However, the ottavino remained very popular as a domestic instrument in Italy until the 19th century. In the Low Countries, an ottavino was commonly paired with an 8' virginals, encased in a small cubby under the soundboard of the larger instrument.
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Bills that Cristofori submitted to his employers indicate that the cabinetry is the work of a different craftsman, subcontracting for Cristofori. The cabinet maker probably also produced outer cases to enclose the instruments--but, if so, these are now lost. The two oval spinets both appear in a 1700 inventory of Prince Ferdinando's musical instrument collection. This inventory is better known today as the first written evidence for the existence of Cristofori's newly invented piano.
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The vibrato was a simpler circuit than on other consoles and spinets. Two variations of the vibrato were provided, plus a chorus that mixed various vibrato signals together. The expression pedal, based on a cheaper design, was not as sophisticated as on the other organs. The L-100 was particularly popular in the UK and sold well, with several notable British musicians using it instead of a B-3 or C-3.
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The centre of Risinghurst is Downside Road, home to The Ampleforth, the local public house built in 1938 by now defunct Ind Coope. Risinghurst's Grovelands Road Sports Ground is home to Headington Youth Football Club. www.headingtonyouthfc.co.uk In another part of Risinghurst is a harpsichord factory: Robert Goble & Son is a maker of harpsichords, clavichords and spinets. The company is at Greatstones, a large house further up the lane that leads off The Kilns.
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This included an organ, three types of spinets, a violin, and another bowed string instrument. There are also several illustrations of the instrument, although it is not known how accurate any of them are. The harpsichord and its accompanying statues may now be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as a clay model surviving from its inception. No part of the composite instrument is known to survive.
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Isidore of Seville was the first to use the word symphonia as the name of a two-headed drum, and from c. 1155 to 1377 the French form symphonie was the name of the organistrum or hurdy-gurdy. In late medieval England, symphony was used in both of these senses, whereas by the 16th century it was equated with the dulcimer. In German, Symphonie was a generic term for spinets and virginals from the late 16th century to the 18th century.
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Thomas Californian 253 (c.1971) These features and others were incorporated across the product line throughout the 1960s, including small, relatively inexpensive spinet models with 37-note manuals (the AR1) and a unique "arc" 13-note pedal board, another Thomas Organ innovation, although one which was too narrow to allow true heel-toe playing. Thomas however did lengthen the pedals to enable theoretically at least heel and toe playing. Especially remarkable was the fact that the spinets started around US$500.
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The oval spinet is a type of harpsichord invented in the late 17th century by Bartolomeo Cristofori, the Italian instrument maker who later achieved fame for inventing the piano. The oval spinet was unusual for its shape, the arrangement of its strings, and for its mechanism for changing registration.Except where indicated in the text, all material in this article is based on Rossi-Rognoni (2002), cited below. Facsimile of 1690 oval spinet by Tony Chinnery and Kerstin Schwarz The two oval spinets built by Cristofori survive today.
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With their more traditional configuration, greater capabilities, and better performance compared to spinets, console organs are especially suitable for use in small churches, public performance, and even organ instruction. The home musician or student who first learned to play on a console model often found that he or she could later make the transition to a pipe organ in a church setting with relative ease. College music departments made console organs available as practice instruments for students, and church musicians would not uncommonly have them at home.
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He enlisted in the Royal Fusiliers, where he reached the rank of captain. He had already begun collecting keyboard instruments in 1939, before hostilities began. Over the next twenty years he assembled a considerable collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century clavichords and harpsichords. His collection included instruments from all the main harpsichord-building areas of Europe: a number of English spinets; early harpsichords and virginals from Italy; Flemish instruments by the Ruckers; a late French instrument by Pascal Taskin; and a clavichord and harpsichord from North Germany, both by Johann Adolph Hass.
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The two spinets, though similar in design, are very different in their current state. The oval spinet of 1693, now in the Museum für Musikinstrumente of the University of Leipzig, has been restored. The instrument is physically attractive, but because the restoration process obliterated information about the earlier state of the instrument, this spinet has diminished historical value for understanding Cristofori's work. The other surviving oval spinet was discovered only in the year 2000, having sat unnoticed in storage for a great period of time in the vast collections of Stefano Bardini, an antique dealer around the turn of the 20th century.
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Raymond Russell, a British harpsichordist and organologist, bought his first historic keyboard instrument in 1939. Over the next twenty years he assembled a considerable collection of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century clavichords and harpsichords. His collection included instruments from all the main harpsichord-building areas of Europe: a number of English spinets; early harpsichords and virginals from Italy; Flemish instruments by the Ruckers; a late French instrument by Pascal Taskin; and a clavichord and harpsichord from North Germany, both by Johann Adolph Hass. Russell described many of the instruments in detail in his book The Harpsichord and Clavichord: an Introductory Study, published in 1959.
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The spinet was later developed into the spinettone ("big spinet") by Bartolomeo Cristofori (1655–1731), the inventor of the piano. The spinettone incorporated multiple choirs of strings, with a disposition of 1 × 8′, 1 × 4′, and used the same ingenious mechanism for changing stops that Cristofori had earlier used for his oval spinet. The spinettone was a local success among the musicians of the Medici court , and Cristofori eventually built a total of four of them.Source for this paragraph except as noted: Spinets are occasionally made today, sometimes from kits, and serve the same purpose they always have, of saving money and space.
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The inventory of Stehlin's shop lists another woodworker's bench, fifteen instruments in progress, a quantity of lumber, and instruments by fellow harpsichord makers Nicholas Dumont and Louis Denis. We also find “four bad spinets all dilapidated,” three harpsichord stands, and various tools. Sheridan Germann maintains that the 1750 and 1760 instruments were both decorated by the same artist; she also believes this artist decorated five other surviving French harpsichords, the last of which was built in 1771. She describes the style of the decorator thus: > The style of the Stehlin Painter (so called because he painted both of the > surviving Stehlin instruments) is, like the Hemsch Painter’s, very Rococo.
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Early Hammond console models had sharp edges, but starting with the B-2, these were rounded, as they were cheaper to manufacture. The M series of spinets also had waterfall keys (which has subsequently made them ideal for spares on B-3s and C-3s), but later spinet models had "diving board" style keys which resembled those found on a church organ. Modern Hammond-Suzuki models use waterfall keys. Hammond console organs come with a wooden pedalboard played with the feet, for bass notes. Most console Hammond pedalboards have 25 notes, with the bottom note a low C and the top note a middle C two octaves higher.
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For a time, Univers Zero were part of a musical movement called Rock in Opposition (RIO) which strove to create dense challenging music, a direct contrast to the disco and punk music being produced in the late 1970s. Obvious early influences were Bartók and Stravinsky, however the band also cited less well known composers such as Albert Huybrechts, who was also Belgian. Whereas their early albums were almost entirely acoustic, featuring oboes, spinets, harmoniums and Mellotrons, their 1980s albums tended to rely more on synthesizer and electric guitar, sounding much more electric. In 1977, they released their first eponymous album Univers Zero, later remixed and renamed as 1313.
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Marie Aubert died on 7 August 1700. Gigault soon remarried, but himself died just a few years later, on 7 August 1707. The inventories of Gigault's possessions, taken in 1662 and in 1700 (on the account of his marriage and his wife's death, respectively), reveal that already by 1662 he was no longer poor and could afford a well-furnished home with a collection of paintings and sculptures, and a large number of musical instruments: a chamber organ, two harpsichords (one with two manuals, the other with one), three spinets, two clavichords, a bass viol, two treble viols, a theorbo and a guitar.Pyle 1991, 40.
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During the remaining years of the 17th century, Cristofori invented two keyboard instruments before he began his work on the piano. These instruments are documented in an inventory, dated 1700, of the many instruments kept by Prince Ferdinando. Stewart Pollens conjectures that this inventory was prepared by a court musician named Giovanni Fuga, who may have referred to it as his own in a 1716 letter.The inventory is published in Gai 1969. The spinettone, Italian for "big spinet", was a large, multi-choired spinet (a harpsichord in which the strings are slanted to save space), with disposition 1 x 8', 1 x 4';van der Meer 2005, 275 most spinets have the simple disposition 1 x 8'.
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The oldest extant instrument by a member of the Denis family, dated 1648 by Jean Denis II, the family's most prominent member. The red chalk signature of Louis Denis on the underside of the soundboard of the 1658 harpsichord. Picture by instrument's restorer, Reinhard von Nagel The title page of the second edition of Jean Denis' II treatise, published in 1650 The Denis family were French harpsichord makers from the mid 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century, by which time the Blanchet family had superseded them as the main harpsichord building dynasty in Paris. Members of the Denis family headed the instrument makers' guild for several generations, but only four harpsichords by members of the family have survived to modern times, and three spinets.
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