Alfred James Hipkins

“ The violin family, the harp, piano, organ, and harmonium, are examples of instruments capable of being tuned. The accordance of the violin, viola, and violoncello, as is well known, is in fifths which are tuned by the player. [1] The harpist also tunes his harp. But the tuning of the piano, organ, and harmonium, is effected by tuners who acquire their art, in the piano especially, by long practice, and adopt tuning, particularly in this country, as an independent calling, having little to do with the mechanical processes of making the instrument. ”

“ When an organ in itself tuned to the right pitch can be shifted a tone higher or lower, it is a great advantage to both organist and singers. I have heard years ago of a Positive so made, but I only know of one complete organ, and that one I use daily, which together with its positive, two back manuals, pedals, and all its many and rare registers, may be shifted higher and back again as often as necessity requires. ”

“ In the present day it is not a question of Temperament, equal or unequal, so much as of position in the scale of pitch, of which, if the ear is not absolutely conscious, it is yet conscious to a certain extent. ”

“ The co-ordination of hand and ear, possessed by a skilled tuner, still prevails, and the difficulty of getting the wire to pass over the bridge, continuously and equally without the governed strain of the tuner's hand, is still to be overcome before a mechanical system can rival a tuner's dexterity.
In considering practical tuning we must at once dismiss the idea that the ear of a musician is capable of distinguishing small fractions of a complete vibration in a second. ”

“ STEINWAY AND SONS, an eminent firm of pianoforte makers in New York, distinguished by the merit of their instruments and by their commercial enterprise, which, in comparatively few years, have placed their firm in equal rank with those famous older makers in Europe whose achievements in the improvement and development of the instrument have become historical. ”

“ The desire for a power of increase and decrease on keyboard instruments like the harpsichord and organ, so as to emulate the bow instruments, and even the human voice, in that flow and ebb which are at the foundation of form no less than of expression, has led to the contrivance of mechanical swells as the only possible approach to it. ”

“ Now in the first mass the counter bass in C can be played on an organ as set, but the other demands transposition to D, with the semitones F♯ and C♯, which to those who have not practised it, is hard and impossible. So therefore, with an organ, as described, the organist may go on playing in C (E-sol-fa-ut) on the keyboard, although the pipes are in D (D-la-sol-re) . [5]
We may assume that in course of time the increasing skill of organists rendered mechanical transpositions unnecessary, since for the organ we hear no more about them ”

“ About 1765 Shudi introduced the Venetian swell, and patented it in 1769. This beautiful piece of joinery is a framing of louvres which open or close gradually by means of a pedal (the right foot one) and thus cause a swell, which may be as gradual as the performer pleases. Shudi bequeathed this patent to John Broadwood, who inherited it on the death of Shudi in 1773. When the patent expired, Kirkman and others adopted it, and it was fitted to many old harpsichords, and even to pianos, but was soon proved unnecessary in an instrument where power of nuance was the very first principle. ”

“ At the present time beginners in tuning find the Fourth a difficult interval when struck simultaneously with the note to which it makes the interval: there is a feeling of dissonance not at all perceptible in the Fifth. It is therefore not strange that for centuries we do not find it used for instruments capable of more or less sustained harmony. The introduction of a short groundwork for the piano, confined to the simple chromatic scale between
is traditionally attributed to Robert Wornum, early in the present century. ”

“ VIRGINAL or VIRGINALS (Fr. Clavecin rectangulaire) . Virdung (Musica getuscht und auszgezogen; Basel, 1511) is the oldest authority we can cite who describes this keyboard instrument. His woodcut of it shows a rectangular or oblong spinet, which agrees in form with what we are told of the spinetta of 1503, said by Banchieri (Conclusione nel suono dell' organo; Bologna, 1608) to have been the invention of the Venetian Spinetti. Banchieri derives the name 'spinetta' from this maker ”

“ For three years the father and the three sons, Charles, Henry, and William, worked in different New York piano factories. In March 1853 they agreed to unite and start in business on their own account, and the firm of 'Steinway & Sons' was established. In 1855 they exhibited a square piano in which the American iron frame principle of a single casting was combined with a cross or overstrung scale, forming the foundation of the so-called 'Steinway system,' which, as applied to grand pianos, attracted great attention in the London International Exhibition of 1862. ”

“ The Transpositeur being an independent false keyboard can be applied to any pianoforte by any maker. It has therefore the great merits of adaptability and convenience. It can be placed upon the proper keyboard of an instrument, and by touching a spring to the right hand of the player and a button which permits the keyboard to be shifted through all the semitones of an octave, the transposition desired is effected. ”

“ After the restoration of the Stuarts, we find in different publications for the harpsichord and virginal, the instruments clearly separated.
John Playford, in 'Musick's Handmaid,' distinguishes them, and in 1672, 'Introduction to the skill of Musick,' names Mr. Stephen Keen as a maker of 'Harpsycons and Virginals.' John Loosemore, Adam Leversidge, and Thomas White appear to have been at that time foremost English makers; they adopted the Italian coffer-shaped instrument, combining with it Flemish fashions in painting. ”

“ The soundboard, psaltery-wise, covers the interior. The compass of keyboard of both these instruments is three octaves and a note from the bass clef-note f to g′′′, the lowest f♯ being omitted; but Virdung goes on to say that the compass had already, in 1511, been extended by repeating the lowest octave, that is, descending to F below the bass clef. The clavicimbalum is like the virginal, but with different compass (the organ short octave) , apparently from B♮ in the bass clef to d′′′ ”

“ Rust affects a fork but very little: the effect being to slightly flatten it. Tuning-forks have been used to construct a keyboard instrument, but the paucity of harmonic upper partial tones causes a monotonous quality of tone. An account of the combination of tuning-forks into a Tonometer for the accurate measurement of pitch will be found under Scheibler, the inventor. ”

“ STODART. A family of eminent pianoforte-makers, whose business was founded in Wardour Street, Soho, about the year 1776, by Robert Stodart. It is said he had been in the Royal Horse Guards, to be a private in which corps involved at that time the payment of £100, an amount that must now be estimated by the then higher value of money. Having, little duty and much leisure, Stodart became a pupil of John Broadwood to learn pianoforte-making, and in the books of Broadwood's firm appears, during the year 1775, to have taken his share in tuning for customers. ”

“ William Pole, who regards cast steel music-wire as the strongest elastic material that exists. The earliest covered piano strings, about a hundred years ago, spun in long interstices of brass over steel, have in time become close spun in single, double, and even treble overlayings of copper, or mixed metal composed of spelter and copper, gaining in the largest strings a diameter of 0.21 of an inch, and considerable power of strain. The greatest tension of a string recorded by Messrs. ”

“ SNUFF-BOX, MUSICAL. A mechanical invention which has given pleasure to thousands from the peculiar—what for want of a better expression we may call Æolian—charm arising from the production of harmonics in the solid part of the steel comb which provides the necessary reinforcement to the sounds emitted by the teeth of the comb. The motive power is a pinned cylinder resembling the barrel of a mechanical organ, and made to shift on the same principle; the working power is a spring ”

“ The earliest notice of stops to a keyed stringed intrument appears in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VIII., April 1530, published by Sir N. Harris Nicholas in 1827 (Rimbault, History of the Pianoforte, 1860, p. 33) . The item mentions 'ii payer of Virginalls in one coffer with iiii stoppes.' The term 'Virginals' in England under the Tudors and up to the Commonwealth, had, like 'Clavier' in German, the general signification of any keyed stringed instrument. ”

“ Those who have the gift of absolute pitch are at once upset by it, while those who have not that gift and are the more numerous, find a latent cause of irritation which, somehow or other, is a stumblingblock to the player. ”

“ UPRIGHT GRAND PIANO. A transposition of the ordinary long grand piano to a vertical position, so that it might stand against a wall. The upright piano was derived from the upright harpsichord, and like it, its introduction was nearly contemporaneous with the horizontal instrument. The upright harpsichord (Fr. Clavecin Vertical) is figured in Virdung's 'Musica getutscht,' etc., a.d. ”

“ When they are nearly of the right pitch, (1) metal pipes are 'coned in' by putting on and pressing down the 'tuning horn,' to turn the edges in for flattening, or 'coned out' by inserting and pressing down the tuning horn to turn the edges out for sharpening ”

“ A slender length of gut, silk, or wire, stretched over raised supports called bridges, between which it is free to vibrate. When weighted to resist the drawing power or tension, the rapidity of its transverse vibrations depends upon the tension, the length, and the specific gravity of the material ”

“ The wind and fretted stringed instruments, although seemingly of fixed tones, are yet capable of modification by the player, and their exact scale relation cannot be defined without him. In Asiatic countries, as India, Persia, and Arabia, and sometimes in European, this play of interval is used as a melodic grace, and from the ancient Greeks to the present day, the quarter-tone has been a recognised means of expression. ”

“ It is as follows:
and is also the groundwork for tuning the harmonium.
The organ no longer remains with the groundwork of fifths and octaves; the modern tuners use fourths and fifths in the treble C—C, of the Principal; entirely disregarding the thirds. Like the harmonium the organ is tuned entirely by beats. Organ pipes are tuned by cutting them down shorter, or piecing them out longer, when much alteration has to be made. ”

“ The organs are Orgel (with 3 divisions of pipes) , Positive (a chamber organ) , Regale (a reed organ) , and Portative (pipe regal) , with, as we have said, short-octave compass like the clavicimbalum, the keyboards being reversed in the printing. The organ and portative end at g′′ instead of d′′′. Lastly are Ampos, Zymeln und Glocken (anvil and various bells, Virdung appearing to believe in the anvil myth) . He has trusted to his own or another's imagination in reproducing St. ”

“ Hart attributes the superior quality of the Italian to climate, an important part of the process of manufacture being, in Italy, carried on in the open air, which is naturally not always practicable in England. ”

“ The right-foot pedal is for the Swell. [See Swell (Harpsichord) .] Mace attributes the invention of the harpsichord pedal to John Hayward, a 'harpsichon' maker. Kirkman and Shudi did not place their fancy stops alike. Kirkman's arrangement (and Cuiliford's) , proceeding from the bass, was Harp, Lute, Octave; Shudi's was Lute, Octave, Harp. In all, the Lute, Octave, and first Unison move to the right; the Harp and second Unison to the left. ”

“ The Lute, a timbre or colour stop, doubtless arose from observation of the power which lute-players, like viol- and guitar-players, had of changing the quality of the tone by touching the strings closer to the bridge. Perhaps the earliest reference to an attempt to imitate these instruments on the harpsichord has been found by Count L. F. Valdrighi, of Modena, in a letter in the Este records dated March 3, 1595, by Giacomo Alsise, horn-maker of Padua, who says: 'I have let Messer Alessandro see and hear ... ”

“ It forms with the tension bars the metal framing of the instrument; the wooden framing being a bracing more or less complete of wooden beams, in connection with the wrestplank, which is also of wood, and sometimes covered with metal. [See Wrestplank.] The service of the stringplate is one of weight; it bears an important share in resisting the continual draught of the strings. ”

“ It shows its monochord origin by the strings being all of the same length. The soundboard is very narrow. The virginal is an instrument of the same oblong form, but has a triangular scale of stringing, by an error of the engraver turned the wrong way. ”

“ SHUDI, Joshua, harpsichord maker and pupil of Burkat Shudi (vol. iii. p. 488) , appears from his advertisement in the Gazetteer of Jan. 12, 1767, to have set up for himself about that time at the Golden Guitar, Silver Street, Golden Square, London. ”

“ Henry the Eighth played well, according to contemporary authority, on the virginal, and he had a virginal player attached to the Court, one John Heywood, who died at Mechlin about 1565. [1] The same Heywood was one of Edward the Sixth's three virginal players. ”

“ He therefore went for a year to an irregular master, and then turned to organ-building, which was free from the narrow limits of a guild. Circumstances however, allowed him in 1825 to marry and settle as a cabinet-maker at Seesen, near the Hartz mountains, where he had been already working ”