Tuning a Clavichord is a Pain in the @^$&!

A while back, a friend loaned us his clavichord (not to be confused with a harpsichord!) as he had bought one, but had run out of room in his apartment and needed someone who was interested in having an instrument take up room in their house! My wife jumped at the opportunity to be able to practice on the clavichord, which is a notoriously finicky instrument due to action of the keys on the strings.

The action is such that a single continuous level from the depressed key pushes up a metal "hammer" which then strikes the string. It makes a very soft sound, as there is no mechanical advantage compared to later styles of keyboard instruments... but it means that the player has much more control over the way the hammer touches the strings, as you retain direct contact throughout the process. This means that you can affect the sound of the instrument AFTER the note sounds (such as vibrato), but it does also mean that the sound and touch need to be quite carefully managed as it is also quite easy to choke the sound if you are not skilled.

In the hands of a skilled player, it is a beautiful instrument with an incredibly intimate sound. Perfect for the still of night... but it is a pain in the bum to tune, as it is SOOOOO quiet!

Now, every note is double strung, which means that there are two unison strings for each note. That means that it differs from the single stringed harpsichords (which are easier to tune) and the forte-pianos and modern pianos which have a range depending on the pitch of single to triple strung notes.

This double stringing means that you need to stop one of the unison strings (with the felt wedge) whilst you tune the other string to the correct temperament (more on this in a moment), and when that string is tempered properly, you remove the wedge and tune the unison! Then rinse and repeat until your brain explodes or you run out notes to tune!

Now, I will do a brief explainer about the concept of temperament and pitch which is something that even most modern "Classical" musicians do not understand as it is a concept that has died out and is no longer trained with the advent of equal-temperament tuning in the modern day.

Now, pitch is the reference pitch for the A... in historical times, this has been different from country to country and throughout eras and has ranged from A=392Hz up to A=466 Hz. In the modern times, this has settled to around A=440Hz or sometimes higher to A=443Hz.

This reference pitch is different to temperament. Temperament refers to the problem of how to divide an octave into semitones. The modern practice is to divide each semitone equally, and thus there is NO distinction between keys or actual notes, so all keys sound equally "good" or in my thinking, equally "bad". Historically, there has been a different approach and different systems of dividing the octave (temperaments) were divided to favour certain keys (so that they sound more "perfect" according to the pure thirds) at the cost of making other keys sound much worse. This was generally thought to be an acceptable trade-off as compositions tended to not venture too far from their home keys, and it also introduced the idea of the "affect" of keys where each key was associated with a certain mood or character depending on how "perfect" it sounded with respect to the purity of the thirds.

So, the balance would be between the purity of the thirds OR the fifths, with the requirement that you needed to "close the loop" (the cycle of fifths would need to return back to the same note), which is impossible if you have perfect fifths or perfect thirds. So, by making certain combinations perfect, you would have to make others much LESS perfect (or quite frankly, horrible to listen to!).... or you could chose the modern version which meant that all the thirds and fifths are equally imperfect.

This is a beautifully made instrument, as you can see from the inlays on the keys.... with quite some attention to aesthetic form as well as pure functional form. However, due to the sideways stringing of the instrument (common for clavichords), it means that the actual tuning pegs were quite a long way away from the playing keys.... which would get quite problematic when you started to go towards the bass end of the keyboard. So, you would be playing the keys with your outstretched left hand, and turning the tuning peg with your outstretched right hand with the requirement that you would be aiming for precision on the order of about 10 degrees of rotation whilst maintaining downward pressure to keep the peg in the hole.

Needless to say, this got a bit tiring after a while....

Still, it was quite a nice feeling when I had reached the end... it is a somewhat calming experience to do the whole thing by ear... even if it is quite draining on the concentration, and a bit heavy on the arms (outstretched for the better part of an hour...).

This was an initial tuning for today to bring the reference pitch from around A=410Hz to A=415Hz... I had a decent semblance of a temperament as well, but due to the fact that the strings were moving a significant amount higher in pitch, I don't expect that the tuning will hold overnight. The strings will stretch and the wood of the instrument will need to settle into the new tensions being applied to it... so, it will be another couple of days of daily tuning before the reference pitch AND the temperament will take hold.

_{Upgoats by ryivhnn
Account banner by jimramones}

_{The classical music community (Subscribe at Steempeak and Peakd) at #classical-music and Discord. Follow our community accounts @classical-music and @classical-radio. Community Logo by ivan.atman}