The lowest octave is here already "bundfrei" or fret-free. The strings are no longer of equal length, and there are three bridges, divisions of the one bridge, in different positions on the sound board. Mersenne's "manicorde" (Harmonie Universelle, Paris, 1636, p. '15), shown in an engrav ing in that work, has the strings still nearly of equal length, but the sound-board bridge is divided into five. The fretted clavichords made in Germany in the last years of the 17th century have the curved sound-board bridge, like a spinet. In the clavi chord the tangents always formed the second bridge, deciding the pitch, besides acting as the sound exciters (fig. 5). The common damper to all the strings was a "list" of cloth, interwoven behind the tangents. As the tangents quitted the strings the cloth im mediately stopped all vibration. As regards compass Handel's clavichord now in the museum at Maidstone (an Italian instru ment dated 1726, and not fretted), has a compass of 34 octaves (F to A).
The clavichord must have gone out of favour in Great Britain and the Netherlands early in the 16th century—the more brilliant and elegant spinet being preferred to it. Like the other keyboard instruments it had no German name, and can hardly have been of German origin, but it remained longest in use in Germany— until even the beginning of the 19th century.
The next instrument described by Virdung is the virginal (vir ginalis, proper for a girl), a parallelogram in shape, having the same projecting keyboard and compass of keys as the clavi chordium. Here we trace derivation from the psaltery, in that the sound-board covers the entire inner surface of the instrument rub) and Bund (from binden, to bind) having been taken over from the lute or viol. The French and Italians employ "touche" and "tasto" (touch). Praetorius who wrote a hundred years later than Virdung, says two, three and four tangents were thus em ployed in stopping.
Clavichords were made with double fretting up to about the year I7oo—that is to say, to the epoch of J. S. Bach, who, taking advantage of its abolition and the consequent use of independent pairs of strings for each note, was enabled to tune in all keys equally, which had been impossible so long as the fretting was maintained. The modern scales having become established, Bach and the disposition of the strings is triangular. The virginal in Virdung's drawing has an impossible position with reference to the keyboard, which renders its reproduction as an illustration useless. But in the next drawing, the clavicimbalum, this is recti fied, and the drawing, reversed on account of the keyboard, can be accepted as roughly representing the instrument so called (fig. 6). There would be no difference between the clavitimbalum and the virginal were it not for a peculiarity of keyboard compass, which emphatically refers itself to the Italian "spinetta," a name unnoticed by Virdung or by his countryman Arnold Schlick, who, in the same year 1511, published his Spiegel der Orgelmacher (Organ-builders' Mirror), and named the clavichordium and clavicimbalum as familiar instruments. In the first place, the key board, beginning apparently with B natural, instead of F, makes the clavicimbalum smaller than the virginal, the strings in this arrangement being shorter; in the next place it is almost certain that the Italian spinet compass, beginning apparently upon a semi tone, is identical with a "short measure" or "short octave" organ compass, a very old keyboard arrangement, by which the first three notes while appearing to be B, C and C sharp were tuned to G, C and A. The origin of this may be deduced from the psaltery
and many representations of the regal, and its object appears to have been to obtain dominant basses for cadences, harmonious closes having early been sought for as giving pleasure to the ear.
Authority for this practice is to be found in Mersenne, who, in 1636, expressly describes it as occurring in his own spinet (espi nette). We read (Harinonie Universelle, Paris, 1636, liv. 3, p. I07)— "Its longest string is little more than a foot in length be tween the two bridges. It has only thirty-one keys [marches] in its keyboard, and as many strings over its sound-board, so that there are five keys hidden [he now refers to the illustration] on account of the perspective—that is to say, three diatonic and two chromatic, of which the first is cut into two; but these sharps serve to go down to the third and fourth below the first step, C so/ [tenor clef C], in order to go as far as the third octave, for the eighteen principal steps make but an eighteenth, that is to say, a fourth more than two octaves." Mersenne's statement sufficiently proves, first, the use in spinets as well as in organs of what we now call "short measure," and, secondly, the object of divided sharps at the lower end of the keyboard to gain lower notes.
As regards the kind of plectra earliest used we have no evidence. The little crow-quill points project from centred tongues in up rights of wood known as "jacks" (fig. 7), which also carry the dampers, and rising by the depression of the keys in front, the quills set the strings vibrating as they pluck them in passing. J. C. Scaliger in Poetices libri septem (1561, p. 51. c. I.) states that the clavicimbalum and harpichordum of his boyhood were called spinets on account of those quill points (ab illis mucroni bus), and attributes the introduction of the name "spinetta" to t hem from spina, a thorn, the meaning be ing extended to any small pointed object such as a quill. We will leave "harpichor dum" for the present, but the early iden tity of "clavicimbalum" and "spinetta" is certainly proved. Scaliger's etymology re mained unquestioned until Signor Ponsic chi of Florence discovered another, but less acceptable derivation. He found in a rare book entitled Conclusione nel suono dell' organo, di D. Adriano Banchieri (Bo logna, 16o8), the following passage, which translated reads: "Spinetta was thus named from the inventor of that oblong form, who was one Maestro Giovanni Spinetti, a Venetian ; and I have seen one of those instruments, in the possession of Francesco Stivori, organist of the magnifi cent community of Montagnana, within which was this inscription—Joannes spi netvs Venetvs fecit, A.D. 1503." Scaliger's and Banchieri's statements may be corn bined, as there is no discrepancy of dates, or we may rely upon whichever seems to us to have the greater authority, always bearing in mind that neither invalidates the other. In France the word "epinette" still stands for both "spinet" and "chicken-house" which seems to strengthen the first-named theory. A spinet dated 1490 was shown at Bologna in 1888; another old spinet in the Conservatoire, Paris, is a pentagonal instrument made by Francesco di Portalupis at Verona, 1523.