[Dissertation] The History of Mechanically Bowed Keyboard Instruments with a Description of Extant Examples

495 Pages·1996·19.361 MB·English

by  Carolyn Wood Simons

THE HISTORY OF
MECHANICALLY BOWED KEYBOARD INSTRUMENTS
WITH A DESCRIPTION OF
EXTANT EXAMPLES
by
Carolyn Wood Simons
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Music
in the Graduate College of
the University of Iowa
December 1996
Thesis supervisor: Professor Emeritus Edward L. Kottick
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
UMI Number: 9715196
Copyright 1996 by
Simons, Carolyn Wood
All rights reserved.
UMI Microform 9715196
Copyright 1997, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized
copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
300 North Zeeb Road
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Copyright by
CAROLYN WOOD SIMONS
1996
All Rights Reserved
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
PH.D. THESIS
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Carolyn Wood Simons
has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis
requirement for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Music at
the December 1996 graduation.
Thesis committee:
Thesis supervisor
Member
Member
Member
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
To the Giver of every good gift, who gave me my husband and my dad.
ii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
May the gracious Lord look compassionately down on us as our coarse voices and
wagging tongues intone the canticles of praise and prayer of the holy patriarchs, prophets
and apostles in this our transitory life; and in the eternal life now approaching, when we
rejoice and sing together with all the divine singers and angels and archangels before the
throne of the Lord, may He help us to hold with them an everlasting concert, celebrating
with alternating choruses the joyous marriage of Our Holy Groom, Jesus Christ, extolling
God the Lord and the indivisible Trinity with our joyous shout of praise ... and thus
praise and glorify the Kingdom and the Power and the Salvation and the Might of Christ
our God for ever and ever.
Michael Praetorius, Syntagma Musicum, II
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the many people who contributed to this work in a number of
ways: those who sent information, those who offered technical help, and those who made
it personally possible for me to complete the project. I am particularly indebted to the
Fulbright Commission for the grant for a year's study in Germany, and to Ulrich Littmann,
Executive Director of the Fulbright-Kommission in Bonn, Germany, and Reiner Rohr,
Director of American Students, for their generosity and kindness, making the year
rewarding and satisfying.
I thank my friend and mentor, Dr. Edward L. Kottick, for his selfless dedication to
his students, for his example of high academic and professional standards, and for being a
caring, attentive, and demanding professor and advisor, inspiring and leading me to work
better than ever before. I am also indebted to Dr. John Henry van der Meer, for
graciously sharing his vast knowledge of the subject of bowed keyboards and giving me
invaluable advice and help, as well as being a charming host and friend. I appreciate the
kindness and enthusiasm of Dr. Dieter Krickeberg, who went out of his way to assist me
at the Germanisches National Museum, making the streichklavier accessible on several
occasions, providing the museum's documentation and helping look for additional
information, and who served as my academic overseer for the Fulbright-Kommission. I
am also grateful to GNM restorers of historical instruments, Klaus Marthis and Kathrin
iv
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Schulze, for their observations and help as I inspected the instrument; and to Martin
Kimbauer, who offered advice on the scope of the project, and made important contacts
for my application for the Fulbright grant.
Other museums were equally opened to my research, and my appreciation goes to
Dr. Hubert Henkel, curator of the music instrument collection of the Deutsches Museum,
Munich, for his patience and help with a lengthy examination of the piano-quatuor and for
sending me important museum documents; to Magister Peter Donhauser of the Vienna
Technisches Museum and his assistant, Ingrid Prucha, for disassembling parts of the
Hofinann-Czemy streichklavier for my photographs and helping me understand its
operation, and Gerhard Hnatek, formerly of the museum, for graciously sending me
museum documents and copies of the patent information; to Dr. Winfried Schrammek,
director of the University of Leipzig Musikinstrumentensammlung, for preparing the
piano-quatuor for my visit and allowing me to study it, and to the curator of the
collection, Willand Hecht, for assisting me and politely fielding many questions; to
museum assistant Christian Rieche of the Halle Haus museum for giving me information
on the piano-violon; to Pascale Vandervellen of the Brussels Music Museum for his
friendly and immediate responses to my querries; to Dr. Christian Vaterlein, curator in the
WQrttemburgisches Landesmuseum, Stuttgart for inviting me to examine the piano-
quatuor undergoing restoration, and to the restorer, Stefan Schneider, for his generous
hospitality and beneficial insights as he worked with me.
Three builders deserve special recognition for their dedication to this study.
William Morton shared details on his geigenwerk and also sent valuable information from
v
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
other sources. Kurt Reichmaim and his wife, Heinke, invited me to stay in their home,
took me to his workshop and the museum in Lifiberg where I studied and played the
geigenwerk, and gave me a tape recording of the geigenwerk in concert. Akio Obuchi
showed the same sort of interest in assisting the study, and courteously sent me complete
information on his instrument.
I am grateful for the more than 200 responses I received to letters sent to curators,
instrument builders, collectors, and musical instrument enthusiasts throughout the United
States and Europe. Many sent comments or suggestions guiding me to other people or to
sources, and often included photocopies of articles or book excerpts. Although I cannot
thank them all individually here, some contributors were especially helpful: Eszter
Fontana, Leipzig; Patrizio Barbieri, Rome; Marco Tiella, Rovereto, Italy; Frances Palmer,
London; Cristina Bordas Ibanez, Madrid; Beryl Kenyon de Pascual, Madrid; Prof. Dr.
Ulrich Feigner, University of Tubingen, Germany; Dr. Herbert Heyde, Andrew Mellon
Fellow, formerly of Leipzig; Dr. Franz Krautwurst of Erlangen, Germany; Uta Henning,
Ludwigsburg, Germany; Dr. Peter Andreas Kjeldsberg, Ringve Museum, Trondheim,
Norway; Dr. Laurence Libin, Metropolitan Museum of Art; Dr. Frederick Crane, The
University of Iowa; and Bart Hopkins, Experimental Music Institute, Nicasio, California.
Others I would like to thank for their encouragement and willingness to help, are Dr.
Gerhard Stradner, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna; Dr. Isabel Freire de Andrade,
Lisbon; Dr. Marianne Brocker, Germany; Dr. Howard Mayer Brown, University of
Chicago; and Dr. Andreas Beurmann, Hamburg.
vi
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
My thanks to the museums and libraries for permission to use their materials and
my photographs, and to Dover publishing company for permission to use the figures and
photographs from the "Truchado" article by F. J. de Hen in Edwin Ripin's book Keyboard
Instruments. Credit for photographs taken by others goes to Dr. Edward Kottick, for his
photograph of William Morton’s geigenwerk, to Kurt Reichmann for the studio
photograph of his geigenwerk in his workshop, and to Akio Obuchi, for the photograph of
his geigenwerk, for which he graciously sent me a silk-screen, camera-ready original. In
addition, I thank my friend Nancy Bastian, who graciously loaned me a Nikormat camera
for a year which I used to take pictures of the museum instruments.
Technical support came in diverse areas. I thank my committee for their time and
help in carefully examining and responding to both the content and form of the completed
work. Credit is due to those who helped me translate old materials, difficult to both read
and understand: Dr. John Nothnagle, Kathrin Meyer, Tim Parrot, Shirley Stroud, Jennifer
Timblin, and William Morton. Dr. Irene Alyn, Chair of the Department of Nursing at
Cedarville College, graciously allowed me to use department facilities for preparing the
manuscript. I thank Cedarville College for helping to defray printing costs, and Carl
Brandon, Head of the Library Media Resource Center, for his assistance.
I am grateful for the personal encouragement from all those who prayed for me.
My appreciation and love to my family is immeasurable: to my Father- and Mother-in-
law, John and Betty Simons, for their constant care and encouragement; to my parents,
Kenneth and Della May Wood, whose love has been demonstrated all my life as they have
faithfully supported all my endeavors, and without whose financial help the year in
vii
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.