LIST OF SWEDISH CLAVICHORD MAKERS (before 1900)

Sweden has had a rich clavichord culture of which documents, pictures and instruments bear witness from the late Middle Ages to around 1870. The oldest text source dates from 1515 when the vicar in Vallentuna, a parish just north of Stockholm, bequeathed his clauicordium to his fellow-clergyman in the neighbouring parish Skånela. The earliest evidence of clavichord building is a royal letter of 12th November 1651 in which Queen Christina commissioned organ builder Frantz Boll to be “the organ and instrument builder to Her Royal Majesty the Queen” with responsibility for the clavichords, harpsichords and some other instruments used at court. Since then, clavichord builders have generally been connected to the organ culture, both because the clavichord had a pedagogical function in organ building and because organists used it as an instrument for practice at home. The latest evidence of clavichord building during the instrument’s heyday is therefore unsurprisingly found among representatives of the so-called Linköping organ building school – chiefly Pehr Schiörlin and his journeyman Lorentz Petter Lorin – and the carpenter Adam Bergstedt in Björkö in the province of Småland whose production, which ceased in 1835, probably had connections to the Linköping school.

Around the middle of the 18th century a specifically Swedish clavichord model was developed which was unique in both purpose and construction. The ideas which gave rise to it originated within the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (founded in 1739), which advanced its views among the keyboard instrument makers of the capital. The first craftsman to fully put its theories into practice - especially with regard to scaling - was Johan Broman, but it was his journeyman Pehr Lindholm who perfected the construction. This Swedish clavichord model was created to stay in tune and not crack, despite the extreme seasonal changes of temperature and humidity. At the same time it had to serve well as a musical instrument, producing a full rich sound with a light, distinct tone. It therefore had certain special features: a large soundboard for the long strings of – from the bass upwards – wound brass, plain brass and plain iron; the strings were not damped between the bridge and the tuning pins but allowed to resonate; there was a set of 4’ strings for the lowest bass; it had a large compass for its time. Hence this clavichord had musical qualities that for a long time were preferred to those of modern hammer instruments, and its new production in Stockholm did not stop until the mid 1820s.

The following list gives all the clavichord makers known at present, both those by whom there are preserved instruments, and those who are only found in written sources with no instruments left to posterity.

Swedish alphabetisation has been used in this list, with the letters Å, Ä, Ö placed at the end after Z.