Hitchcock (harpsichord maker)

Spinet by Thomas Hitchcock in the Museum of Art and Industry Hamburg (1729)

Spinet by Thomas Hitchcock in Packwood House , England

The Hitchcock family of British instrument makers includes Thomas Hitchcock the Elder († before 1700 ) and his son Thomas Hitchcock the Younger (* approx. 1685 ; † after 1733 ) as well as John Hitchcock († 1774 ), the son of Thomas the Younger. Harpsichords and spinets were made in her workshop .

plant

Little is known about family life. All three piano makers were members of Haberdasher's Company , one of the Livery Companies in London, which has existed since 1448 and left it to devote themselves to instrument making . Thomas Hitchcock the Elder built the first known English bentside spinet around 1660 . The family left around fifty spinets, some of which were made by Thomas the Younger with a double keyboard . The individual instruments cannot be assigned with certainty to a person, but the numbering used by the family suggests that around 2000 copies were made. Preserved instruments can now be found in museums, such as the Brooklyn Museum in New York , the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Museum of Art and Industry Hamburg (Beurmann collection) and the Telemann Museum in Hamburg .

literature

• Edward L. Kottick: A history of the harpsichord, p. 357, 377 . Indiana University Press, 2003, ISBN 978-0-253-34166-2 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
• John Caldwell: English keyboard music before the nineteenth century, p.209, 210 . Courier Dover Publications, 1985, ISBN 978-0-486-24851-6 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
• Julie Anne Sadie: Companion to Baroque Music, p. 293 . University of California Press, Berkeley 1998, ISBN 978-0-520-21414-9 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
• Murray Campbell, Clive A. Greated, Arnold Myers: Musical instruments: history, technology, and performance of instruments of western music, p. 319 . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 978-0-19-816504-0 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).

Web links

Commons : Thomas Hitchcock  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Hitchcock spinet from 1725 in the Brooklyn Museum
• Hitchcock spinet from 1742 in Fenton House , London, on the Bridgeman Art Library site
• Harpsichord (c.1725) and spinet (c. 1710) after Thomas Hitchcock, at the instrument maker The Music Room Workshop (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Kottick: A history of the harpsichord S. 357, 377
2. ^ Julie Anne Sadie: Companion to Baroque Music , p. 293
3. ↑ Kottick: A history of the harpsichord. Pp. 357, 378.
4. ^ John Caldwell: English keyboard music before the nineteenth century. P. 209.
5. ↑ Kottick: A history of the harpsichord. Pp. 378, 357.
6. ↑ Illustration and description on the Brooklyn Museum website. Retrieved June 3, 2011 . 
7. ^ Murray Campbell, Clive A. Greated, Arnold Myers: Musical instruments: history, technology, and performance of instruments of western music. P. 319.
8. ^ Werner Meyer: Keyboard instruments in collections and their builders. Hamburg 2008, p. 16. (PDF file)