Images(35)

Spinet

Maker Charles Haward

Date1689

Place MadeLondon, England, Europe

Serial No.none

SignedOn nameboard: Carolus Haward Fecit 1689 Note names in ink along bottom of nameboard. On wrestplank in ink in front of tuning pins: 1710, note namesDescriptionWhile nearly 150 18th-century English spinets have survived, 17th-century examples are less common. The spinets of Haward and his contemporaries are all rather small, with short strings intended to be tuned to the prevailing English "quire"pitch, about one and a half semitones above modern pitch.

The most notable characteristic of Haward's style, immediately evident in this instrument, is the S-shaped bend side. This feature, present in all of Haward's instruments including a harpsichord made in 1683 and in a few instruments by other English makers, gradually passed out of use in England in the early eighteenth century.

Early English keyboard instruments typically are handsome pieces of furniture. The 1689 Haward is no exception, and the curly figure of its walnut case is especially attractive. The interior is veneered in red cedar (imported from the British colony of Bermuda or Virginia). The instrument rests on a stand, certainly old and perhaps of the period, in appropriate 17th-century style with twist-turned legs.

Compass: 4+ octaves, apparently BB to c3, but in a common short-octave arrangement the BB key was tuned to GG, C# to AA, and Eb to BBb or BB. The missing accidentals in the bass, especially GG# and C#, were not often needed in the music of the period. In this spinet, Haward divided the Eb key: the front half plays Eb, the back half BBb or BB. Solid ivory accidentals.
DimensionsString length: c2: 289 mm
ProvenancePurchased in 2004 from Tony Bingham, London, England.
Published ReferencesBoalch, Donald H. Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440-1840. Third edition, edited by Charles Mould (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), pp. 378-379.

Koster, John. "The Diary of Samuel Pepys and the NMM’s Recently Acquired Spinet by Charles Haward, London, 1689," National Music Museum Newsletter 31, No. 4 (November 2004), pp. 4-5.

Koster, John. "History and Construction of the Harpsichord," The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 2-30.

Martin, Darryl. “The Native Tradition in Transition: English Harpsichords circa 1680-1725,” in John Koster, ed., Aspects of Harpsichord Making in the British Isles (The Historical Harpsichord, vol. 5; Hillsdale, N.Y.: Pendragon Press, 2009), p. 16.

Credit LineTony and Bonnie Vinatieri Family Trust, 2004

Object number10773

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