claviorgan

Other "Clabiorganos" or "claui organos" are documented in Spain by the year 1500, and the instrument seems to have spread from there. A number of "virgynalls with regals" are mentioned in the inventories of Henry VIII in 1542/3 and 1547 and Wilson Barry cites references to the claviorganum in England dating back to the 1530s. The term claviorgan in its strictest sense refers to the combination of a harpsichord (or other harpsichord type instrument) and an organ, although later could also be used to refer to a combination of a piano and organ. Michael Praetorius describes the claviorgan in his Syntagma Musicum of 1619 as: a clavicymbal, or some other symphony, in which a number of pipes is combined with the strings. Externally it looks exactly like a clavicymbal or symphony, apart from the bellows, which are sometimes set at the rear and sometimes placed inside the body

• Illustration — Detail of the Hauslaib Claviorgan, at the Museu de la Música de Barcelona (MDMB 821) The spinet-regals are usually quite compact, especially compared to their larger harpsichord cousins. The spinet is often of the smaller Italian style in a square case, as opposed to the perhaps more familiar Bentside shape popular in Britain. The organ is usually a small regal, with the bellows perpendicular to the keyboard, and pipes with tiny resonators. The instrument seems to have been very popular in Britain in the eighteenth century: both the larger harpsichord-organ combinations, and the organised-square pianos. Indeed, there are more than 20 surviving examples built in the UK (mostly in London) of which the large portion date between 1700 and 1800. The most complete British organised-harpsichord is that constructed for the Earl of Wemyss. The harpsichord is typical of the early and ornate work of Jacob Kirckman, with an organ case that matches the marquetry and elaborate figured veneer of the harpsichord. The harpsichord stop levers are laid out in the conventional fashion on either side of the name-board, with the organ stops being placed at either side of the keyboards with a coupling mechanism to the organ at the front of the harpsichord. The organ case is also fitted with four foot-levers; three at the front of the organ and one at the side of the case. Two of these are for operating the bellows (one main and one auxiliary), the third shuts off the sliders of the two metal ranks achieving a woody sound, and the final lever operated a kind of swell mechanism opening a sprung panel in the side of the instrument. This allows for quite a lot of variation in timbre between the organ and the harpsichord. How typical the arrangement is of instruments across Europe and the ages is difficult to quantify, as little is still known about this instrument.