N E W 5 - O C T A V E H A R P S I C H O R D S I N
T H E N E A P O L I T A N S T Y L E
Specifications
These are a series of integral-construction harpsichords ‘faking’ the appearance of an inner instrument in an outer case. The musical part of the instruments should be in the style of Onofrio Guarracino who worked in Naples in the second half of the 17th century, but modified to give them a compass suitable for playing most of the 18th-century literature including the music of Scarlatti, Haydn and Mozart. The compass given to the instruments was therefore chosen to be F1 to g3 chromatic, five octaves and a note with altogether 63 notes. They should have the normal disposition of 2x8' (see photograph above), and they should be capable of transposing to either 415Hz or 440Hz.
The length of the string sounding pitch c2 is 277mm (f1 is 19 Neapolitan once or f2 is 9˝ Neapolitan once) with strings of yellow brass and two different types of red brass wire on two independent free-standing bridges. The scalings were designed to be Pythagorean, doubling in length with each octave drop in pitch right down to tenor c, 1˝ octaves above the lowest note. The plucking points – in conformity with those of other historical Neapolitan instruments – were chosen to be F1 = 8 once, f = 6 once and f3 = 2 once. The octave span has been chosen to be equal to 7˝ once. The three-octave span is therefore three times this or 22˝ once = 487mm, which is a comfortable span for the human hand and close to the 3-octave span both of Neapolitan and many other historical instruments.
The bridge, like the bridges in many Guarracino and other Neapolitan harpsichords, is to be placed 6 once from the bentside. Because of the integral construction of these instruments, although the bridge is 6 once from the ‘virtual’ bentside, it is 6˝ once from the actual bentside.
he instruments are to draw some aspects of their design on the best features of other Italian and Neapolitan builders, especially those of Bartolomeo Cristofori, and are to be decorated in the usual Neapolitan style. All parts of the instruments are to be completely hand made including the keyboard, jacks, tuning pins, bridge and hitch pins, lock, key, hinges, registers and register levers. The latter are to be like the gilt bronze ‘Parthenope’ register levers described elsewhere on this site, and the soundboard rosette is to be hand-made by Johnny in parchment and extremely thin layers of either pear or cypress.
The naturals are to be either in ebony or in box, and the sharps are to be elaborated with inlay or made of a decorative ebony and coloured-wood sandwich. The jacks are to be made from service wood with beech tongues and shim brass tongue springs in the traditional way.
The Soundboard Wood
Most but not all of the instruments made in Italy in the historical period have fir (abies - usually abies alba) and not spruce (picea) soundboards. Most copies of Italian harpsichords and virginals made today have spruce soundboards rather than the original fir. However, all of the harpsichords and virginals made in Naples that I have seen so far have soundboards made of fir. We therefore determined to use fir in these instruments rather than the air-dried spruce from the Forest of Paneveggio in the Italian Dolomites as we had used in our previous Neapolitan instruments.
The problem is that there are no commercial suppliers of soundboard-quality fir known to us in Italy!
Only one thing to do! Find some good big fir trees in the Apennines, have someone cut down a tree for us and quarter-saw the clean knot-free soundboard-quality wood, and take it home and let it air dry under the lean-to on the workshop. This we did! So we've now got a supply of nicely-seasoned fir soundboard wood without knots (and lots of fir planks for baseboards, framing, etc with enough knots to go around) to use in the new instruments.
The Other Woods and Materials
The wrestplank and the nuts and bridges are all in Italian walnut. Quilling is in white delrin. The sumptuous decoration is by Stefano Pessione from Rome or Silvia Morsiani in Imola. This particular instrument is supplied with a choice of stand and with a choice of either a simple or an elaborate music desk.
The basic instrument comes supplied complete with simple stand, simple music desk, tuning key, tuning fork, retouching paints, and spare strings and quills and these are all included in the basic price.
