BAVINGTON CLAVICHORDS
- Between 1996 and 2020 I made some 20-odd clavichords of the following types. Click on the links for a fuller description of each instrument.
- Saxon clavichord
- A large unfretted clavichord in oak after C. G. Hoffmann. Compass FF–f³.
- Iberian clavichord
- A fretted clavichord in pine, based on an anonymous Portuguese or Spanish instrument, compass
C–f³. The first one had the original fretting with free Es and Bs; for the later ones, I adapted the design to provide free Es and As, so that A and B♭ can be sounded together.
- ‘Silbermann’ clavichord
- An unfretted clavichord after Johann Heinrich Silbermann, compass FF–f³. Later examples had an extended compass to g³.
- Travel-clavichord
- This was a greatly modified version of a small instrument in the Vienna museum of old instruments. I designed it to be as light and portable as possible. It combined single stringing with overwound strings in the unfretted bass with double stringing and diatonic fretting in the treble. I was fond of this instrument, which turned out to have considerable sustain, aiding expressive playing. Compass C–d³; one example went up to e³.
- Seventeenth-Century clavichord
- These were based on an anonymous diatonically fretted clavichord, No. 10 in the Leipzig Musical Instrument Museum. Compass
C/E–c³ with short-and-broken octave in the bass. I made one example with split keys for D#/E♭.
- ‘Bavdechtel’ clavichord
- This was my version of the one surviving clavichord by J. J. Bodechtel. I added a note (BB) in the bass, so the compass was BB–f³, with diatonic fretting.
- Lima clavichord
- This was an attempt to make a clavichord suitable for the music of Antonio de Cabezón and his contemporaries. The model was a clavichord in Lima, Peru, representing a type which we believe was common in sixteenth-century Spain, but of which examples have not survived. Compass C/E–c³, with multiple fretting.
- ‘Mersenne’ clavichord
- A reconstruction of the clavichord described and depicted in Marin Mersenne’s great work Harmonie Universelle (1636–7). Compass C&ndashc³, diatonically fretted.
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