We're in Kew Palace where this remarkable
harpsichord lives. It was made in 1740 for
Frederick, Prince of Wales, the son of
George Augustus, who became George II.
It's rather appropriate it should be here because
when he first came to England, when he was 21,
he lived in another part of Kew Palace which
is no longer here. The maker of the instrument
is Burkat Shudi, who came from Switzerland.
He came to this country when he was only
16 as a trained cabinet-maker. And he then
worked with a shadowy but very important
figure called Herman Tabel. But Shudi is
possibly the most patronised by royalty of
all the 18th century builders. So he's a very
significant maker and they were the most
elaborate and most complex harpsichords
you could buy in the 18th century.
This instrument started life as a claviorgan.
A claviorgan is in fact a harpsichord on
an organ, placed on top of an organ. The
two can be played separately or together.
And underneath would have been a case,
the same profile as the harpsichord, and
in it would have been laid the organ pipes,
many of them horizontally. As it is now, it is a classic
two manual, that is two-keyboard, 18th century
harpsichord. You will see along here the
stop knobs with which you can turn the
registers on and off. The look of this
instrument and the other early instruments
of Shudi define the look of the English
harpsichord and even the early English piano
for the rest of the 18th century.
Here you can see the soundboard, the
essential element of the instrument on which
sit the bridges and over which the strings run.
The larger bridge carries two sets of strings
at unison pitch, which we might call normal pitch,
and the smaller bridge carries the 4 foot
strings an octave higher. These can be played
separately or in combination. The actual
sound producing element is under here.
You've got 3 rows of jacks. The jack is
simply a little latch-like structure, a
pivotted tongue, and in that pivotted tongue
is the bird quill, which actually plucks the string.
There are 3 rows there and under this rail,
another row, which plucks the strings very near
the ends, which gives the nasal effect,
which is called the lute stop.
The harpsichord was really intrinsic in
18th century musical society.
Noble households would definitely have had
collections of harpsichords. And even more
humble domestic settings would probably have
had a spinnet, which is a smaller version,
a little bit like the upright piano compared
the grand piano of today.
If you went to the opera and you heard your
favourite aria, of course the only way to hear
it again, before the age of CDs and recordings,
was to actually go home and play it yourself.
I've chosen the 'Air and variations' from the
Suite of E major by Handel to demonstrate
this wonderful instrument. It really shows
everything it can do. It starts off with a
melodic passage which is the Air itself,
the song if you like.
For the first variation I use the pedal mechanism
on the harpsichord to activate the lute stop.
The lute is a very distinctive sound on this instrument.
Very reedy, quite nasal, and it allows the
instrument to sing in a different way all together.
In the inventory from Windsor of 1820
there is a wonderful reference to this
harpsichord and it actually says, 'Shudi
Harpsichord by Handel'. And it seems quite
clear that the word 'played' has somehow
been dropped from the inventory.
So in all likelihood Mr Handel himself
played on this instrument.
The distinctive thing about the harpsichord
sound is that it is a plucked sound.
This action of course is very different from the
piano which came later on.
For the piano, you have a hammer that hits
the string. So this can make dynamic shading,
hence pianoforte - soft and loud.
With the harpsichord, we have to use certain
tricks to make phrasing happen within the
musical phrase. So, if I play 2 notes
they come out at the same dynamic level,
neither one louder nor the other.
But if I play the first one shorter and the
second one longer, the second note comes
out louder. This is known as the agogic accent.