Images(4)

Harpsichord

Maker Nicolas Dufour

Date1683

Place MadeParis, France, Europe

Serial No.none

SignedPrinted paper label on front edge of wrest plank: NICOLAS DUFOUR A PARIS 1683. REPARÉ PAR H.E GRINDE EN 1796. A NICE.
The first part of the signature is presumably copied from the original maker’s inscription. Honoré Grinde (1754-1843) (sometimes spelled Grinda) was an organ builder in Nice.
DescriptionSeventeenth-century French harpsichords, less common than those made in the eighteenth century, were generally more lightly constructed, with especially delicate keyboards and actions. NMM 5943 is of particular interest in having only a single keyboard: most French harpsichords, whether from the seventeenth century or the eighteenth, have two manuals. Another interesting feature of NMM 5943 is its S-shaped bentside, also found in a few other seventeenth-century French instruments.

Nicolas Dufour is known only from the large printed paper label applied to the front of the wrest plank when work was done on the instrument in 1796.

Presumably the first half of this was copied from the original maker’s inscription, which perhaps had become faint or was obliterated when the instrument was repaired by Honoré Grinda (as his name was usually spelled) in 1796. There is archival evidence of Claude Dufour, a harpsichord maker in Lyons, but none has yet been found of Nicolas Dufour in Paris. A harpsichord by "le sieur Dufour de Paris," however, was listed among the belongings of a prominent Parisian organist, Gabriel Garnier, in 1721. That NMM 5943 was indeed made in Paris is suggested by the painting on its soundboard, attributed to an anonymous artist who decorated several other instruments by known Parisian harpsichord makers in the 1660s and 1670s.

The keyboard of NMM 5943 is in the typical seventeenth-century French style with ebony naturals, solid bone sharps, carved trefoil key fronts, and, originally, a compass of fifty notes, apparent BB (tuned to GG) to c3, later enlarged to AA-d3. There are two sets of 8' strings.

The cheek and bentside are walnut, a favored wood in seventeenth-century French cabinetry, and the exterior surfaces of these walls were presumably left unpainted. The instrument’s plain softwood spine would have been unseen, facing the wall of the room. The present painted decoration on the outside of the instrument is a twentieth-century "enhancement," as are the lid and the painted cabriole-legged stand. Bands of flowers beautifully painted on paper applied to the interior walls around the soundboard, however, are original, as are the painted decoration of the soundboard and wrestplank, as well as the geometrical rose made of layers of carefully cut and punched parchment.
DimensionsLength: 2107 mm
Width: 761 mm (at the lower edge), 767 mm over the wrestplank.
Height: 246 mm to 251 mm (case walls 231 mm to 233 mm without the bottom board)
Three-octave measure: 464 mm at natural key fronts; 472 mm at the registers.
String length: c2: 352 mm
ProvenancePurchased in 1996 from Wolfgang Ruf, Rastatt, Germany.
Published ReferencesAnselm, Alain and Marie-Christine. "Petit prelude a l'etude des clavecins francais du XVIIe siecle," Musique, Images, Instruments (Revue francaise d'organologie et d'iconographie musicale), No. 2 (1996), p. 228.

Boalch, Donald H. Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440-1840. Third edition, edited by Charles Mould (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1995), p. 300.

Germann, Sheridan. "Monsieur Doublet and His Confreres: The Harpsichord Decorators of Paris," pt. 2, Early Music, Vol. 9, No. 2 (April 1981), p. 192.

Koster, John. "Rare French Harpsichord Enters Museum's Collections," Shrine to Music Museum Newsletter, Vol. 23, No. 4 (August 1996), pp. 1-3.

-------. "Traditional Iberian Harpsichord Making in its European Context," Galpin Society Journal 61 (2008), pp. 10, 58, 67.

-------. “The Harpsichord in Seventeenth-Century France,” in Christian Ahrens and Gregor Klinke, eds., Cembalo, Clavecin, Harpsichord: Regionale Traditionen des Cembalobaus - Symposium im Rahmen der 35. Tage Alter Musik in Herne 2010 (Munich and Salzburg: Musikverlag Katzbichler, 2011), pp. 10-42, including figs. 6-9.

Krickeberg, Dieter and Horst Rase, "Beitrage zur Kenntnis des mittel- und norddeutschen Cembalobaus um 1700," in Studia Organologica: Festschrift fur John Henry van der Meer, edited by Friedemann (Tutzing: Hans Schneider, 1987), p. 301.

Credit LineRawlins Fund, 1996

Object number05943

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