"Report on a XVIIth century Anonymous Italian harpsichord with complex bridges arrangement
Gianfranco Facchini
www.harpsichord.org.uk
Some seven years ago I was requested to give my opinion on a XVIIth century Italian harpsichord. The owner told me that the disposition of bridges was very different from harpsichords he had seen before, and that the former owner, a person living near Ancona, told him that the instrument was an heirloom his family had from a Neapolitan ancestor in 1846.
So, very curious, I took a drive to Ferrara to visit that particular harpsichord.
To begin with, a beautiful outer case decorated with gilded tufts, masks and fruit garland on a red-orange ground; case and lid mouldings silver plated and coated with layers of mecca to look like gold.
On the inner lid a fine oil painting representing a landscape facing on a gulf with galleons and ships riding at anchor. Also the instrument had top mouldings, name-board, scrolled cheeks, jack rail and mounting blocks painted, decorated and gilded. The stand, not original, consisted of three legs, probably from a console of the late XVIIIth century, screwed to the bottom board, (photo.1).
The harpsichord had a case and soundboard of cypress, three jack slides and an interesting device to change the stops, (photo. 2-3); jacks and tuning pins were lacking.
The original keyboard, compass C/E-c''', bearing the date 1675 on the first and last key, had naturals and front arcades topped with bone, stained cypress with a strip of ebony for sharps.
On the wrest plank, probably from an older harpsichord, a triple line of plugged tuning pin holes along the 8' bridge was displayed in a manner inconsistent with the current stringing disposition, (photo.4).
The outer case inner front board bore the inscription:
Reformatum a R.D.D.D.
Dominico Antonio Canonico Scoccia e compagni
=1798=
I will disregard things concerned with routine repairs to soundboard and case cracks to dwell instead upon the more interesting complex arrangement of bridges.
The cembalo had two 8' soundboard and wrest plank bridges; furthermore, on the soundboard, scars of a bridge and hitch pin holes clearly pointed out that once it had a 4' stop (photo.4).
The two soundboard bridges were running parallel at a distance of about fifteen millimetres; the high one near the bent side was notched, allowing strings to reach the second bridge pins.
The wrest plank 8' bridge near the jack slide and running on the same line one would expect to find a 4' bridge, was quite strange in shape and the moulding very different from soundboard bridges.
Also the second 8' bridge had a different moulding and not the supposed drilled holes to allow 4' strings to reach the tuning pins (photo.5).
The harpsichord had a long window in the bottom, and once we removed the board, we discovered that the soundboard bridges were fixed by L shaped iron pins to keep them in position till the glue was dry. Also the 4' bridge, no longer present, seemed to be fixed in the same way and the thin hitch pin rail was still there.
That being so, it was clear that the cembalo had the complex arrangement I suspected from the outset.
Now the emerging question was whether to restore it preserving the 1798 disposition, or to reinstate the more interesting original arrangement, that is, two separated 8' and one 4'. So, having to dismount the soundboard because of many cracks, one of them very bad, we decided for the second option.
The reworking accomplished by Canonico Scoccia and companions seemed to be achieved in a rather simple way: They made a bridge substitution, added new pins for extra 8' strings, carved by a fillister part of the jack rail to make the jacks jump properly and glued little wooden blocks on the key tails. (photo. 6-7).
We didn't know the vicissitudes of the cembalo before 1798, it is possible that at that time the soundboard and wrest plank 4' bridges were missing as well as the 4' jacks.
It goes without saying, that was a mere supposition; in 1798 all the jacks still existed and the evidence lies in the wooden blocks we mentioned.
Having to make new jacks one had to cut them at the right length and the new 8' nut needed longer jacks than the others. But the old ones were too short and the restorers decided on the simplest solution.
So one can state without doubt that all the work was done in 1798.
To conclude, among the existing Italian harpsichords only very few bear the scars of a complex arrangement of bridges, but it's now impossible to reinstate the original disposition. The Anonymous 1675 harpsichord here discussed emphasizes the taste of Italians for tone colour and provides a contribution to enrich the knowledge on harpsichord making in XVIIth century Italy.
Post scriptum:
Of this harpsichord, restored and in playing order, now in the Jorg Demus collection, Wien, we edited a technical drawing and a copy was made for Mr. Jesper Christensen.
For further inquiries E-mail: facchinif@libero.it
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