Clavicylinder

The clavicylinder is a musical instrument designed by Ernst Chladni in 1799 and first built by Louis Concone in Turin in 1811 . In doing so, Chladni implemented his wish to be able to play the euphon , which he invented in 1790, with a keyboard, instead of making glass chimes vibrate directly with the fingers through friction.

The instrument consists of a cylinder made of zinc or glass , which is set in rotation by a foot drive with a pedal . With a keyboard tuned metal rods are moved towards the cylinder in such a way that they vibrate due to the friction and produce sounds.

The resulting sound cannot be used musically, which is why these instruments have rarely been built. However, there were a relatively large number of successor instruments based on this principle, such as Dietz's Melodion (1806) or the Terpodion (1810).

literature

• About Mr. Uthe's Xyharmonicon, and some related instruments. In: General musical newspaper. Vol. 12, No. 25, 1810, Col. 385-390 .
• Ernst FF Chladni : Contributions to practical acoustics and the teaching of instrument making, containing the theory and instructions for building the clavicylinder and related instruments. Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig 1821, ( digitized version ).
• Clavicylinder. In: Pierer's Universal Lexicon of the Past and Present or Newest Encyclopedic Dictionary of Sciences, Arts and Crafts . Volume 4: China - German Crown. 4th, revised and greatly increased edition. Pierer, Altenburg 1858, pp. 198–199 , (digitized from Zeno.org ).
• Birgit Heise: Some Keyed Friction Instruments: The Clavicylinder, Melodion and Terpodion. In: The Galpin Society Journal, Vol. 58, May 2005, pp. 160-167, 226