What is a… Clavichord?
Julian Perkins defines and champions this under-rated keyboard instrument
Anybody whose neighbours complain about their keyboard practice could, as Handel did, turn to the clavichord.
Its seemingly soft tones have enchanted musicians from about the fifteenth century, and contemporary composers including Herbert Howells, Stephen Dodgson and Peter Maxwell Davies have written pieces specifically for this Cinderella of the keyboard.
The clavichord’s mechanism is disarmingly simple. Each key lever has a brass blade called a tangent at its end that pushes up against pairs of strings when the key is pressed down. This direct connection with the strings allows the player not only to make dynamic contrasts but also to sustain and control the sound.
Apart from the accordion, the clavichord is unique amongst keyboard instruments in allowing the player some vibrato. Eighteenth-century composers such as Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, for whom the clavichord was an ideal vehicle for the popular empfindsamer Stil (expressive style), even notated vibrato in their keyboard music.
Clavichords may be fretted or unfretted. In fretted instruments, one pair of strings serves more than one note, at least for part of the compass; in unfretted ones each note has its own pair of strings. Until the early eighteenth-century clavichords were usually fretted, while later ones were frequently unfretted. The range of the clavichord began at around four octaves in the early 15th century but increased to five octaves or more in the 18th century.
Comparing the rectangular clavichord to the harpsichord is akin to the story of the tortoise and the hare. While the harpsichord has always been the more public, dazzling instrument, it petered out towards the end of the eighteenth century in favour of the fortepiano, while the clavichord, being primarily a quiet personal instrument, continued to be used into the nineteenth century – especially in Scandinavia (Romantic composer Carl Nielsen may even have used one when composing).
Johann Sebastian Bach is reputed to have said that the clavichord was his favourite type of keyboard instrument, and his small-scaled French Suites seem particularly well-suited to it. What better reasons to record these works on the clavichord?
Julian Perkins’ album of J.S. Bach French Suites is out now on Resonus Classics and he will be performing at the Ryedale Festival on 30 July 2016.
