Claviorganum
Encyclopedia
The claviorganum is an instrument
whose origin is uncertain. A number of "virgynalls with regals" are mentioned in the inventories
of Henry VIII
in 1542/3 and 1547 and Wilson Barry cites references to the claviorganum in England
dating back to the 1530s. The term claviorganum in its strictest sense refers to the combination of a harpsichord
(or other harpsichord type instrument) and an organ
, although later could also be used to refer to a combination of a piano
and organ. Michael Praetorius
describes the claviorganum in his Syntagma Musicum of 1619 as
perpendicular to the keyboard
, and pipes with tiny resonators.
The larger harpsichord instruments seem to have been quite popular in Britain in the eighteenth century. Out of twenty-four instruments found so far, eleven were either made in the UK or spent the greater portion of their playing life in Britain. These instruments mostly have a harpsichord-shaped organ case which sits neatly below the harpsichord and can be coupled to the lower of two harpsichord keyboards or played separately.
The most complete British instrument is the owned by the Earl of Wemyss
. The harpsichord is typical of the early and ornate work of Jacob Kirckman, with an organ case that matches the marquetry and elaborate figured veneer of the harpsichord. The harpsichord stop levers are laid out in the conventional fashion on either side of the name-board, with the organ stops being placed at either side of the keyboards with a coupling mechanism to the organ at the front of the harpsichord.
The organ case is also fitted with four foot-levers; three at the front of the organ and one at the side of the case. Two of these are for operating the bellows (one main and one auxiliary), the third shuts off the sliders of the two metal ranks achieving a woody sound, and the final lever operated a kind of swell mechanism opening a sprung panel in the side of the instrument. This allows for quite a lot of variation in timbre
between the organ and the harpsichord.
How typical the arrangement is of instruments across Europe and the ages is difficult to quantify, as little is still known about this instrument.
In 1590 Phillip III
of Spain was given a claviorgan by a German monarch, which also appears in an 1602 inventory of the court instruments. Other Royal instruments include a Willenbrock claviorgan made for Prince Georg of Hanover
, and a number of instruments which appear to have been made for Frederick Prince of Wales and now in the Royal Collection
.
It was primarily used by the aristocracy since the claviorgan was considerably more expensive than any other keyboard instrument barring a full-sized church organ. One English instrument which has been in the possession of the Earl of Wemyss
since its purchase in the middle of the eighteenth century still retains the receipts for the organ part alone recording two payments to ‘John Snetzler
, Organ Builder’ totalling £86.
combining an organ and a spinet.
However, a more famous example is the ‘Galleria armonico’ assembled by Michelle Todini in Rome in the seventeenth century, and which ended its days in the palace of the Verospi marquises, now the Palazzo del Credito Italiano. This consisted of two rooms, one of which contained seven keyboard instruments all of which were said to be controlled from the keyboard of a harpsichord. 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.
Another example of a claviorgan playing stringed instruments is described in a letter from Henry Oldenburg
in 1664.
With other harpsichord/clavichord type instruments, there are two normal ways of adding pedals; either with pedal pull-downs (usually only in the bass), or with a separate instrument, with a separate soundboard, below the main keyboard. In the latter case the pedal-instruments allowed for a much greater compass than with pull-downs.
However, with an organ chest to account for as well as the harpsichord or clavichord, may also be possible that the organ was operated from the pedal board, leaving the harpsichord/clavichord completely separate, although still allowing the two to be coupled together when desired. This would be similar to having one of the keyboards of a virginal claviorgan completely separate.
This style of instrument is seen in a lid painting of a virginal from 1619, which depicts a claviorgan as part of an ensemble. The continuo player has his right hand on the virginal keyboard and his left playing the organ.
is a more unusual type of claviorgan. Used in Westminster Abbey
for one of the Handel
commemoration services in 1784; the instrument consisting of a harpsichord at the front of the orchestra which was connected to an organ mounted on a screen behind the performers. Burney describes in brief the way the two instruments were connected;
It was made by Samuel Green
of Islington
for Canterbury Cathedral
. After the instrument was removed to Canterbury it was erected on the choir screen, and remained at Canterbury for over a century before it was replaced by the current Willis instrument.
Given the large specification of the Green organ, and the size of the orchestra that was employed for the performances at Westminster Abbey, it may be logical to suggest that the harpsichord’s only real use in the ensemble was as a remote console for the organ rather than as a timbre in its own right. Charles Burney does suggest that Handel had used a similar device before.
Musical instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted for the purpose of making musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can serve as a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. The history of musical instruments dates back to the...
whose origin is uncertain. A number of "virgynalls with regals" are mentioned in the inventories
Inventory of Henry VIII of England
The Inventory of Henry VIII of England compiled in 1547 is a list of the possessions of the crown, now in the British Library as Harley Ms. 1419....
of Henry VIII
Henry VIII of England
Henry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was Lord, and later King, of Ireland, as well as continuing the nominal claim by the English monarchs to the Kingdom of France...
in 1542/3 and 1547 and Wilson Barry cites references to the claviorganum in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
dating back to the 1530s. The term claviorganum in its strictest sense refers to the combination of a harpsichord
Harpsichord
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...
(or other harpsichord type instrument) and an organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, although later could also be used to refer to a combination of a piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
and organ. Michael Praetorius
Michael Praetorius
Michael Praetorius was a German composer, organist, and music theorist. He was one of the most versatile composers of his age, being particularly significant in the development of musical forms based on Protestant hymns, many of which reflect an effort to make better the relationship between...
describes the claviorganum in his Syntagma Musicum of 1619 as
" ... a clavicymbal, or some other symphony, in which a number of pipes is combined with the strings. Externally it looks exactly like a clavicymbal or symphony, apart from the bellows, which are sometimes set at the rear and sometimes placed inside the body"
Description
The spinet-regals are usually quite compact, especially compared to their larger harpsichord cousins. The spinet is often of the smaller Italian style in a square case, as opposed to the perhaps more familiar Bentside shape popular in Britain. The organ is usually a small regal, with the bellowsBellows
A bellows is a device for delivering pressurized air in a controlled quantity to a controlled location.Basically, a bellows is a deformable container which has an outlet nozzle. When the volume of the bellows is decreased, the air escapes through the outlet...
perpendicular to the keyboard
Keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...
, and pipes with tiny resonators.
The larger harpsichord instruments seem to have been quite popular in Britain in the eighteenth century. Out of twenty-four instruments found so far, eleven were either made in the UK or spent the greater portion of their playing life in Britain. These instruments mostly have a harpsichord-shaped organ case which sits neatly below the harpsichord and can be coupled to the lower of two harpsichord keyboards or played separately.
The most complete British instrument is the owned by the Earl of Wemyss
Earl of Wemyss
Earl of Wemyss and Earl of March are two titles in the Peerage of Scotland, created in 1633 and 1697 respectively, that have been held by a joint holder since 1826. The Scottish Wemyss family had possessed the lands of Wemyss in Fife since the 12th century. In 1625 John Wemyss was created a...
. The harpsichord is typical of the early and ornate work of Jacob Kirckman, with an organ case that matches the marquetry and elaborate figured veneer of the harpsichord. The harpsichord stop levers are laid out in the conventional fashion on either side of the name-board, with the organ stops being placed at either side of the keyboards with a coupling mechanism to the organ at the front of the harpsichord.
The organ case is also fitted with four foot-levers; three at the front of the organ and one at the side of the case. Two of these are for operating the bellows (one main and one auxiliary), the third shuts off the sliders of the two metal ranks achieving a woody sound, and the final lever operated a kind of swell mechanism opening a sprung panel in the side of the instrument. This allows for quite a lot of variation in timbre
Timbre
In music, timbre is the quality of a musical note or sound or tone that distinguishes different types of sound production, such as voices and musical instruments, such as string instruments, wind instruments, and percussion instruments. The physical characteristics of sound that determine the...
between the organ and the harpsichord.
How typical the arrangement is of instruments across Europe and the ages is difficult to quantify, as little is still known about this instrument.
Early history
Some of the earliest references to claviorgans are to be found in an inventory of the possessions of Henry VIII taken in 1547 which includes four instruments being combinations of ‘virgynalles’ and ‘regals’. In this early terminology ‘virgynall’ does not refer to a specific instrument but to any plucked string keyboard.In 1590 Phillip III
Philip III of Spain
Philip III , also known as Philip the Pious, was the King of Spain and King of Portugal and the Algarves, where he ruled as Philip II , from 1598 until his death...
of Spain was given a claviorgan by a German monarch, which also appears in an 1602 inventory of the court instruments. Other Royal instruments include a Willenbrock claviorgan made for Prince Georg of Hanover
Prince Georg of Hanover
Prince Georg of Hanover , Prince of Great Britain and Ireland, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg . Georg is the second eldest son of Prince George William of Hanover and his wife Princess Sophie of Greece and Denmark, an elder sister of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh...
, and a number of instruments which appear to have been made for Frederick Prince of Wales and now in the Royal Collection
Royal Collection
The Royal Collection is the art collection of the British Royal Family. It is property of the monarch as sovereign, but is held in trust for her successors and the nation. It contains over 7,000 paintings, 40,000 watercolours and drawings, and about 150,000 old master prints, as well as historical...
.
It was primarily used by the aristocracy since the claviorgan was considerably more expensive than any other keyboard instrument barring a full-sized church organ. One English instrument which has been in the possession of the Earl of Wemyss
Earl of Wemyss
Earl of Wemyss and Earl of March are two titles in the Peerage of Scotland, created in 1633 and 1697 respectively, that have been held by a joint holder since 1826. The Scottish Wemyss family had possessed the lands of Wemyss in Fife since the 12th century. In 1625 John Wemyss was created a...
since its purchase in the middle of the eighteenth century still retains the receipts for the organ part alone recording two payments to ‘John Snetzler
John Snetzler
John Snetzler was an organ builder of Swiss origin who worked mostly in England.He was born in Schaffhausen, in 1710 and died in Schaffhausen, 28 September 1785...
, Organ Builder’ totalling £86.
Show instrument
There are a couple of known claviorgans that were ‘show’ instruments. One surviving example is an automatic claviorgan by Matteus Rungell which is now in a museum in DresdenDresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
combining an organ and a spinet.
However, a more famous example is the ‘Galleria armonico’ assembled by Michelle Todini in Rome in the seventeenth century, and which ended its days in the palace of the Verospi marquises, now the Palazzo del Credito Italiano. This consisted of two rooms, one of which contained seven keyboard instruments all of which were said to be controlled from the keyboard of a harpsichord. This included an organ
Organ (music)
The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...
, three types of spinets, a violin
Violin
The violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
, and another bowed string instrument
String instrument
A string instrument is a musical instrument that produces sound by means of vibrating strings. In the Hornbostel-Sachs scheme of musical instrument classification, used in organology, they are called chordophones...
. 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
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
in New York as well as a clay model surviving from its inception. No part of the composite instrument is known to survive.
Another example of a claviorgan playing stringed instruments is described in a letter from Henry Oldenburg
Henry Oldenburg
Henry Oldenburg was a German theologian known as a diplomat and a natural philosopher. He was one of the foremost intelligencers of Europe of the seventeenth century, with a network of correspondents to rival those of Fabri de Peiresc, Marin Mersenne and Ismaël Boulliau...
in 1664.
Pedals
The instrument given to Philip III of Spain mentioned briefly above is one of very few surviving claviorgans known to have had pedals. Another earlier instrument from Linz, Austria is also described as having a pedalboard which couples to the keyboard. Little information is available as yet on either instrument, so this leads one to speculate how the pedals would have operated.With other harpsichord/clavichord type instruments, there are two normal ways of adding pedals; either with pedal pull-downs (usually only in the bass), or with a separate instrument, with a separate soundboard, below the main keyboard. In the latter case the pedal-instruments allowed for a much greater compass than with pull-downs.
However, with an organ chest to account for as well as the harpsichord or clavichord, may also be possible that the organ was operated from the pedal board, leaving the harpsichord/clavichord completely separate, although still allowing the two to be coupled together when desired. This would be similar to having one of the keyboards of a virginal claviorgan completely separate.
This style of instrument is seen in a lid painting of a virginal from 1619, which depicts a claviorgan as part of an ensemble. The continuo player has his right hand on the virginal keyboard and his left playing the organ.
The claviorgan as a remote console
The instrument described by the musician and historian Charles BurneyCharles Burney
Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian and father of authors Frances Burney and Sarah Burney.-Life and career:...
is a more unusual type of claviorgan. Used in Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
for one of the Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
commemoration services in 1784; the instrument consisting of a harpsichord at the front of the orchestra which was connected to an organ mounted on a screen behind the performers. Burney describes in brief the way the two instruments were connected;
“The keys of communication with the harpsichord, at which Mr. Bates, the conductor, was seated, extended nineteen feet from the body of the organ, and twenty feet seven inches below the perpendicular of the set of keys by which it is usually played … to convey them to so great a distance from the instrument, without rendering the touch impractically heavy, required uncommon ingenuity and mechanical resources.”
It was made by Samuel Green
Samuel Green (organ builder)
Samuel Green , was an organ-builder.Green learnt his art under the elder Byfield, Bridge, and Jordan, and afterwards entered into several years' partnership with the younger Byfield. Green built a large number of organs for the cathedrals, and for churches in London and the country, instruments...
of Islington
Islington
Islington is a neighbourhood in Greater London, England and forms the central district of the London Borough of Islington. It is a district of Inner London, spanning from Islington High Street to Highbury Fields, encompassing the area around the busy Upper Street...
for Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christian structures in England and forms part of a World Heritage Site....
. After the instrument was removed to Canterbury it was erected on the choir screen, and remained at Canterbury for over a century before it was replaced by the current Willis instrument.
Given the large specification of the Green organ, and the size of the orchestra that was employed for the performances at Westminster Abbey, it may be logical to suggest that the harpsichord’s only real use in the ensemble was as a remote console for the organ rather than as a timbre in its own right. Charles Burney does suggest that Handel had used a similar device before.
Sources
- New Grove Dictionary of Music, online edition [available (with subscription) at
- Wilson Barry (1990) ‘The Lodewyk Theewes Claviorganum and its Position in the History of Keyboard Instruments’, Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society, xvi (1990), pp. 5-41.
External links
- Extant claviorganum at The Metropolitan Museum of Art