Grove's dictionary of music and musicians

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632 SPINET SPINET
Spineita, Clavicordo ;
Span. Clavicordio ; Eng.
Spinet, Virginal). A keyed instrument, with
plectra or jacks, used in the 16th, 17th, and
18th centuries ; according to Bumey {Eecs's
Oycl. 1819, Harpsichord)' a small harpsichord
or virginal with one string to each note.' The
following definitions are from Florio's New
World of Words, 1611 : ' Spinetta, a kind of
little spina . . . also a, paire of VirginaUes '
;
'
Spinelto, a thicket of brambles or briars ' (see
'Rimhanlt's History of the Pianoforte, 1860). "We
first meet with the derivation of spinet from
spina, ' a thorn,' in Scaliger's Poetiees (1484-
1550; lib. i. cap. Ixiii.). Referring to the plectra
or jacks of keyed instruments, he says that, in his
recollection, points of crowquill had been added
to them, so that what was named, when he was
a boy, olavicymbal ' ' and ' harpichord ' (sic),
was now, from these little points, named 'spinet.'
[See Jack.] He does not say what substance
crowquill superseded, but we know that the old
cithers and other wire-strung instruments were
twanged with ivory, tortoiseshell, or hard wood.
(See vol. ii. p. 328.) Another origin for the
name has been discovered, to which we believe
that Signer Ponsicchi (II Pianoforte, Florence,
1876) was the first to call attention. In a very
rare book, Oonclusioni nel smmo delV organo, di
D. Adriano Banchieri, Bolognese (Bologna,
1608), is this passage :
Spinetta riceve tal nome dall' inventore di tal forma
longa quadrata, il quale M un maestro Giovanni Spinetti,
Venetiano, ed uno di tali stromenti h6 veduto io alle
mani di Francesco Stivori, organista della magnitica
comunita di Montagnana, dentrovi questa inscrizione
JOANNES SPINETUS VENETUS FECIT. A.D. 1503.
According to this, the spinet received its name
from Spinetti, a Venetian, the inventor of the
oblong form, and Banchieri had himself seen
one in the possession of Stivori, bearing the
above inscription. M. Becker of Geneva (Pcvue
el Gazette musicale, in the Musical World, June
15, 1878) regards this statement as totally
invalidating the passage from Scaliger ; but
not necessarily so, since the year 1503 is synchronous
with the youth of Scaliger. The
invention of the crowquill points is not claimed
for Spinetti, butthe form of the case—the oblong
or table shape of the square piano and older
clavichord, to which Spinetti adapted the
plectrum instrument ; it having previously been
in a trapeze-shaped case, like the psaltery, from
which, by the addition of a keyboard, the instrument
was derived. [See Virginal ; and
also for the different construction and origin of
the oblong clavichord.] Putting both statements
together, we find the oblong form of the
Italian spinet, and the crowquill plectra, in
simultaneous use about the year 1500. Before
that date no record has been found. The oldest
German writers, Virdung and Arnold Sehliok,,
whose essays appeared in 1511, do not mention
the spinet, but Virdung describes and gives a
;
woodcut of the Virginal, which in Italy would
'
have been called at that time spinetta, ' because
it was an instrument -with plectra in an oblong
case. Spinetti's adaptation of the case had
tlierefore travelled to Germany, and, as we shall
presently see, to Flanders and Brabant, very
early in the 16th century ; whence M. Becker
conjectures that 1503 represents a late date for
Spinetti, and that we should put his invention
back to the second half of the 15th century, on
account of the time required for it to travel,
and be accepted as n, normal form in cities so
remote from Venice. Considerable light has
been thrown upon the hitherto profoundly
obscure invention of the keyboard instrument
subsequently known as the spinet, by that
enidite searcher and scholar, M. Edmond Vander
Straeten, in La Musique auz Pays-Pas, vol. vii.
(Les rmmciens nierla-ndais en Espagne, 1"
'
partie), Brussels, 1885. He quotes, p. 246,
from a testamentary inventory of musical instraments
which had belonged to Queen Isabella,
at the Alcazar of Segovia, dated 1503 : Dos
Clavicinbanos viejos' that is to say, two old
clavecins (spinets). One of her chamberlains,
Sancho de Paredes (p. 248), owned in 1500 'Dos
Clabiorganos '- —two claviorgans or organised
clavecins. In a previous inventory, dated
1480 (and earlier), the same chamberlain appears
to have possessed a manicorde or clavichord
with tangents. But M. Vander Straeten is
enabled to give a positive date, 1387 (p. 40, et
seg.), when John the First, King of Aragon,
had heard and desired to possess an instrument
called 'exaquir,' which was certainly a keyboard
stringed-instrument. He describes it
later on as resembling an organ but sounding
with strings. The name 'exaquir' may be
'
identified with I'eschuaqueil d'Angleterre,'
which occurs in a poem entitled La ' Prise
d'Alexandrie,' written by Guillaume de Machault
in the 14th century. M. Vander Straeten
inquires if this appellation can be resolved
by ' ^chiquier ' (chequers) from the black and
white arrangement of the keys ? The name
echiquier occurs in the romance ' Chevalier du
cygne ' and in the Chanson ' sur la journee de
Guinegate,' a 15th-century poem, in which the
poet asks to be sounded
Orgius, liarpes, naquaires, challeinelles,
Bons echiquiers, guisternes, doucemelles.
The inquirer is referred to the continuance of
M. Vander Straeten's notes on this interesting
question,* in the work above mentioned. It is
here sufficient to be enabled to prove that a
kind of organ sounding with strings was existing
in 1387—and that clavecins were catalogued
in 1503, that could be regarded as old ;
also
that these dates synchronise with Ambros's
earliest mention of the olavicymbalum, in a
MS. of 1404.
M. Vander Straeten (La Musique awx
Pays-Bos, vol. i.) has discovered the following