Originals 1749-1782 in various collections
copy by Alastair McAllister, Melbourne, 1989
Description
Keyboards: two recessed non-reversed manuals with shove coupler
Keyboard materials: ebony sharps, ivory naturals
Compass: 5 1/2 octaves CC-g3
Pitch: A415Hz, transposing by key shift to A440Hz
Tuning: equal tempered
Bridges: two (4′ and 8′)
Strings:
- (20 notes) brass CC-G
- (50 notes) iron G#-g3
Jacks: wooden, adjustable by screw for height, dampers attached
Plectra: celion
Stoplist: manual 1: 8′ and 4′ quill
manual 2: 8′ quill lute and nazard
Frame: timber
Case: walnut with black beam cross banding and boxwood stringing in Sheraton style
Lid: as for case
Fallboard: detatchable : as for case
Music desk: walnut, detachable
Stand: detachable tressle type with 4 tapered legs, fron, rear and connecting stretchers
Dimnesions(mm) : 2680l x 1072w x 303h ex lid
Repertoire: J.S.Bach, Handel, early Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven
Provenance: purchased from David Fox, previously Newcastle (NSW) Conservatorium
Condition category: I
Rectification required: none
Concert dates: none
Commenatary
Only around a quarter of the Swiss-German born, but London-based Burkat Shudi’s (1702-1773) fifty or so surviving double-manual harpsichords have a keyboard compass of 5 1/2 octaves, the widest ever reached by any keyboard instrument until matched by the fortepiano (Southwall square 1784, Broadwood grand 1791) some 40 years after Shudi’s first use of it in 1749. Mozart, with his sister Maria-Anna (“Nannerl”), played his first four-hand sonata (K.19d in C) on a Shudi double harpsichord in London in May and July 1765, the year in which King Frederick “the Great”purchased several such instruments for his palaces in Breslau and Potsdam (significantly, nearly 20 years after he had purchased a numner of Silbermann grand fortepianos, on one sie of which Bach extemporised the operning ricercare of the “Musical Offering”BWV 1079 in May 1747).
Haydn owned a 1775 extended compass Shudi double and virtually all his secular keyboard music, excepting the last half dozen or so of his sonatas (from 1784 onwards), is des???? exclsuively or pr???? as for harpsichords.
Beethoven’s first three “Kurfursten” sonatas are entitled ambiguously as “fur klavier” (1785), while the three (Op.2, Nos. 1-3 of 1795, dedicated to Haydn) specifies both fortepiano and harpsichord in the ttle.
The extra bass notes, which comprise only the upper half odf a sixteen foot octaves, provide a most desirable reinforcement of the bass, while avoiding the excessive down-bearing on the bridge band the “mid???”which results from encroachment on upper ‘eight feet’range, which occurs when a separatr sixteen foot register ???? operates over the full five octave compass, as in some contemporaneous “Hamburg school” harpsichords. However, the bass extension makes the instrument much longer (by 24 cm), wider (by 10 cm) and heavier (necessitating casters to move it) and h??? much more difficult to replicate them the also contemporaneous five octaves FF-f3 T??? (No.3 above). As the builder has sworn not to repeat it, the Collections “made to order”replica is likely to be unique as the only existing modern copy of what could be reagrded as the most highly evolved and adaptable of all classical harpsichords: capable of rendering all secular keyboard music writtem before 1800 ie. from R???? codex (c. 1325) to late Beethoven (c.1825).
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