ical Italian instrument except for the presence of a 

 set of strings tuned an octave above unison pitch, a 

 rare feature on Italian harpsichords. This harpsi- 

 chord is described as so eine Qiiart tieffer alss Chor- 

 Tfion (a fourth lower than choir pitch), clearly 

 indicating that single manual keyboard instruments 

 a fourth apart in pitch Mere in existence. .Since no 

 reason is given for the harpsichord being tuned a 

 fourth lower than the two \irginals, we may assume 

 that the author considered the matter commonplace 

 enough as to demand no further elaboration and that 

 instruments a fourth apart in pitch were not rare. 



Practorius does not state that the harpsichord in his 

 illustration was tuned to a low pitch standard, which 

 was actually used for certain purposes or in particular 

 localities. He discussed the numerous pitches in use 

 before and during his time, but the only one that he 

 mentioned as being a fourth below choir pitch he 

 considered obsolete and suitable only for plainsong. 

 If the harpsichord was not intended to be tuned to this 

 standard and used for this purpose, it must have been 

 tuned to choir pitch and treated as a transposing 

 instrimient. 



Querinus van Blankenburg,' writing in 1739, states: 



At that time [the beginning of the 17th century], men 

 had so little experience in transposition that in order to be 

 able to transpose a piece a fovu'th downwards they made a 

 special second keyboard in the harpsichord for this purpose. 

 This seems incredible, but the very remarkable proof is the 

 fact that the famous Ruckers from the beginning of the last 

 century for a period of more than thirty years made harpsi- 

 chords only in this way.* 



That the second manual of the two-manual harpsi- 

 chord originated as a device for transposition is well 

 known. In an article titled "Transposing Keyboards 

 on Extant Flemish Harpsichords," Sibyl Marcuse " 

 discusses surviving examples that show how the second 

 keyboard was arranged. The upper keyboard was 

 the principal one, vvith the lower keyboard sounding 

 a fourth below. The strings acted upon by a c key 

 on the upper manual were sounded by an / key on 

 the lower; so, in changing from the upper manual to 

 the lower, the player would have to move his hands 

 to the left the distance of a perfect fourth in order to 



^ Querinus van Blankenburg, Elemenla Muiica, The Hague, 

 1739. 



* Translation by Arthur Mendel in "'Devices for Transposi- 

 tion in the Organ before 1600," Ada Musicolo^ica, 1949, p. 33. 



' Sibyl Marcuse, "Transposing Keyboards on Extant Flemish 

 Harpsichords," Musical Quarterly, ]u\y 1952. 



Strike the same keys, thus producing the downward 

 transposition. The compass of the upper manual was 

 EjC to c ' ' ' . Since the lower keyboard was shifted 

 to the left, space was provided for five additional 

 keys at its treble end. The apparent treble range of 

 the lower keyboard was therefore extended to / ' ' ', 



although the lower/' ' ' and upper 1 



kevs worked 



on the same strings and produced the same pitch. 

 Room was also made for five extra bass keys at the 

 lower end of the upper manual. However, since short 

 octave tuning was entployed and it was desirable to 

 be able to use the same fingering in the bass on both 

 manuals, the tails of the CIE, DjF^ and EIG^ keys of 

 the upper manual had to be bent to the left in order to 

 work on the strings played by the F, G, and A keys 

 respectixely of the lower manual. The vacant space 

 to the left of the upper manual CjE was filled by a 

 block of wood. Hence the fi\'e extra bass strings not 

 used by the upper manual were those played by the 

 CJE, DjF^, EjG^, B, and rft keys of the lower key- 

 board. 



Of the 16 Italian harpsichords and \irginals studied 

 that ascend in the treble to/' ' ', 13 range to C/E in 

 the bass, thus ha\ing exactly the same compass as the 

 lower (transposing) keyboard of the Flemish two- 

 manual instruments. TweKe of the 14 Italian exam- 

 ples ha\'ing r ' ' ' as the highest key stop on C/E in 

 the bass and are identical in apparent compass to the 

 Ruckers upper manual. 



The correlation of compass and string length of the 

 Italian instruments, the statements of Praetorius, and 

 the similarity of the Italian keyboard ranges to those 

 of the Ruckers transposinsj harpsichords have been 

 considered. A plausible conclusion is that the Italian 

 instruments extending to f ' ' ' were transposing 

 instruments sounding a perfect fourth lower than the 

 pre\ailing pitch standard. Adopting the terminolgy 

 used for orchestral wind instruments, these could be 

 referred to as harpsichords in G. 



The evidence of the correlation between string 

 length and compass becomes much more convincing 

 if we assume that the Italian builders abandoned the 

 practice of making transposing harpsichords about the 

 same time that the Ruckers family stopped employing 

 the transposing lower manual. In the quotation 

 previously given, Querinus van Blankenburg tells us 

 that the Ruckers did not make transposing instruments 

 later than the 1630's. Of the 10 dated Italian instru- 

 ments with the keyboard extended to /''', only 

 three were made after the third decade of the 17th 



104 



BULLETIN 



'.5: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



