The Kirkman family (variants: Kirckman, Kirchmann) were Englishharpsichord and later piano makers of Alsatian origin, active from the 1770s until the late 1800s.
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to the west and Scotland to the north-northwest. The Irish Sea lies west of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south. The country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain, which lies in the North Atlantic, and includes over 100 smaller islands, such as the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight.
A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. This activates a row of levers that turn a trigger mechanism that plucks one or more strings with a small plectrum.
The piano is an acoustic, stringed musical instrument invented in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristofori around the year 1700, in which the strings are struck by hammers. It is played using a keyboard, which is a row of keys that the performer presses down or strikes with the fingers and thumbs of both hands to cause the hammers to strike the strings.
Jacob Kirkman (4 March 1710 - 9 June 1792) was born in Bischwiller, Alsace and moved to England in the early 1730s. He worked for Hermann Tabel, and married his widow in 1738. He became a British subject in 1755. He died in Greenwich and is buried in St Alfege Church in Greenwich.
Bischwiller is a commune in the Bas-Rhin department in Grand Est in northeastern France just west of the Moder River.
Alsace is a cultural and historical region in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland.
Greenwich is an area of southeast London, England, located 5.5 miles (8.9 km) east-southeast of Charing Cross. It is located within the Royal Borough of Greenwich, to which it lends its name.
Abraham Kirkman (1737 - 16 April 1794), also born in Bischwiller, was Jacob Kirkman's nephew. In 1772 they formed a partnership. He died in Hammersmith.
Hammersmith is a district of west London, England, located 4.3 miles (6.9 km) west-southwest of Charing Cross. It is the administrative centre of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, and identified in the London Plan as one of 35 major centres in Greater London.
Joseph Kirkman I was the son of Abraham Kirkman, and followed his father in his craft, eventually going into partnership with him.
Joseph Kirkman II (c.1790 – 1877) was the son of Joseph Kirkman I and like him became an instrument maker, helping his father with the last harpsichord they made in 1809 (though the latest surviving today is dated 1800).
Kirkman harpsichords
Kirkman harpsichord in Williamsburg
Charles Burney wrote a good deal about Jacob Kirkman, and Fanny Burney described him as 'the first harpsichord maker of the times'; he and Burkat Shudi dominated the production of English harpsichords in the second half of the 18th century, and many of their instruments survive today, though more than twice as many Kirkmans remain, leading Frank Hubbard to describe them as being 'almost mass-produced'.
Charles Burney FRS was an English music historian, composer and musician. He was the father of the writers Frances Burney and Sarah Burney, the explorer James Burney, and Charles Burney, classicist and book donor to the British Museum.
Burkat Shudi was an English harpsichord maker of Swiss origin.
Frank Twombly Hubbard was an American harpsichord maker, a pioneer in the revival of historical methods of harpsichord building.
Like Shudi, Kirkman built three models of harpsichord: single manual instruments with disposition 8' 8' or 8' 8' 4' and double manual instruments with disposition 8' 8' 4' and lute stop. The inner construction of Kirkman harpsichords was based on the Ruckers-type 17th-century Flemish harpsichord, though a distinctive outward appearance had been developed by English makers by the 1720s, featuring veneering inside and outside, detailed inlay and marquetry in the keywell. Key dip was stopped at the by a rail at the far end, which has led to English harpsichords having a reputation for the worst touch of any school of harpsichord building.
The Ruckers family were harpsichord and virginal makers from the Southern Netherlands based in Antwerp in the 16th and 17th century. Their influence stretched well into the 18th century, and to the harpsichord revival of the 20th.
Flanders is the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium and one of the communities, regions and language areas of Belgium. However, there are several overlapping definitions, including ones related to culture, language, politics and history, and sometimes involving neighbouring countries. The demonym associated with Flanders is Fleming, while the corresponding adjective is Flemish. The official capital of Flanders is Brussels, although the Brussels Capital Region has an independent regional government, and the government of Flanders only oversees the community aspects of Flanders life in Brussels such as (Flemish) culture and education.
This article lists the most significant events and works of the year 1720 in music.
1781 harpsichord constructed by Abraham and Jacob Kirkman
Further innovations were made in later years; the buff stop was introduced c.1760, and was sometimes activated by a pedal on single manual instruments. The machine stop, dating from after 1765, was a mechanism worked by a hand stop and a foot pedal which caused various changes in registration, rather like the arrangements on an organ. The 'nag's head swell' was a segment of the top lid shaped like an elongated horse's head, which opened along the bentside when a foot pedal was pressed; this was later superseded by Schudi's Venetian swell, which worked similarly but was more like a modern organ swell mechanism (and named after its similarity in appearance to a Venetian blind). Extensions in range were also made, as high as c'''', with reversed colour sharps and naturals from g''' upwards; this was perhaps due to musical demands or rivalry with Shudi, who had extended his harpsichords down to CC. Jacob Kirkman made an experimental enharmonic harpsichord for Robert Smith of Trinity College, Cambridge, around 1757.
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through the organ pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have multiple ranks of pipes of differing timbre, pitch, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
The horse is one of two extant subspecies of Equus ferus. It is an odd-toed ungulate mammal belonging to the taxonomic family Equidae. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 million years from a small multi-toed creature, Eohippus, into the large, single-toed animal of today. Humans began domesticating horses around 4000 BC, and their domestication is believed to have been widespread by 3000 BC. Horses in the subspecies caballus are domesticated, although some domesticated populations live in the wild as feral horses. These feral populations are not true wild horses, as this term is used to describe horses that have never been domesticated, such as the endangered Przewalski's horse, a separate subspecies, and the only remaining true wild horse. There is an extensive, specialized vocabulary used to describe equine-related concepts, covering everything from anatomy to life stages, size, colors, markings, breeds, locomotion, and behavior.
In modern musical notation and tuning, an enharmonic equivalent is a note, interval, or key signature that is equivalent to some other note, interval, or key signature but "spelled", or named differently. Thus, the enharmonic spelling of a written note, interval, or chord is an alternative way to write that note, interval, or chord. For example, in twelve-tone equal temperament, the notes C♯ and D♭ are enharmonic notes. Namely, they are the same key on a keyboard, and thus they are identical in pitch, although they have different names and different roles in harmony and chord progressions. Arbitrary amounts of accidentals can produce further enharmonic equivalents, such as B, although these are much rarer and have less practical use.
It was Frank Hubbard's opinion that English harpsichords such as Kirkman and Burkat Shudi's 'are too good. The tone [...] almost interferes with the music', though he didn't think the native repertoire was significant enough to warrant making copies. Others have pointed out that an English harpsichord player of around 1770 might well have had an exceptionally wide musical taste incorporating Scarlatti, Rameau, Handel, C. P. E. Bach, J. C. Bach, Mozart, Arne, Purcell, and Sammartini.
The Kirkmans began building fortepianos as they became more popular in the 2nd half of the 18th century; apparently Jacob Kirkman had encountered a piano as early as 1770 but the earliest he is known to have made is a square piano dated 1775. The Kirkman firm continued to make grand and upright pianos throughout the 19th century and were taken over by Collard in 1896.
Sources
Donald Howard Boalch, Peter Williams, Charles Mould: 'Kirkman [Kirckman, Kirchmann]', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2007-05-21), http://www.grovemusic.com/
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
Related Research Articles
A fortepiano[ˌfɔrteˈpjaːno] is an early piano. In principle, the word "fortepiano" can designate any piano dating from the invention of the instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori around 1700 up to the early 19th century. Most typically, however, it is used to refer to the late-18th to early-19th century instruments for which Haydn, Mozart, and the younger Beethoven wrote their piano music. Starting in Beethoven's time, the fortepiano began a period of steady evolution, culminating in the late 19th century with the modern grand. The earlier fortepiano became obsolete and was absent from the musical scene for many decades. In the 20th century the fortepiano was revived, following the rise of interest in historically informed performance. Fortepianos are built for this purpose today in specialist workshops.
The tangent piano is a very rare keyboard instrument that resembles a harpsichord and early pianos in design. It normally features five octaves of keys and the strings are acted upon by narrow wooden or metal slips when the keys are depressed.
John Broadwood & Sons is an English piano manufacturer, founded in 1728 by Burkat Shudi and continued after his death in 1773 by John Broadwood.
John Broadwood was the Scottish founder of the piano manufacturer Broadwood and Sons.
Johannes Zumpe was a leading maker of early English square pianos, a form of rectangular piano with a compass of about five octaves. The pianos sounded like mellow harpsichords, and had a damper stop in the left cheek of the case. Zumpe is known as the creator of English square pianos.
The pedal piano is a kind of piano that includes a pedalboard, enabling bass register notes to be played with the feet, as is standard on the organ.
Pascal-Joseph Taskin was a Belgium-born French harpsichord and piano maker.
The claviorgan is a combination of a stringed instrument and an organ. Its origin is uncertain but its history can be traced back to the fifteenth century.
Hieronymus Albrecht Hass was a German harpsichord and clavichord maker. He was the father of Johann Adolph Hass, who also made harpsichords and clavichords.
Johann Adolph Rudolph Hass, usually known as Johann Adolph Hass, was a German maker of clavichords, harpsichords and possibly organs. He was the son of Hieronymus Albrecht Hass, also a maker of keyboard instruments.
The Couchet family were Flemish harpsichord and virginal makers in Antwerp, closely associated with, and descendants of, the Ruckers family.
The harpsichord was an important keyboard instrument in Europe from the 15th through the 18th centuries, and as revived in the 20th, is widely played today. This article gives a history of the harpsichord; for information on the construction of this instrument, its variant forms, and the music composed for it, see harpsichord.
Major George Henry Benton Fletcher was a collector of early keyboard instruments including virginals, clavichords, harpsichords, spinets and early pianos. His collection is currently housed and kept in playing condition by the National Trust in Fenton House, a beautiful late 17th century merchant's house in, Hampstead, north London.
(Franz Hermann) Martin Skowroneck was a German harpsichord builder, one of the pioneers of the modern movement of harpsichord construction on historical principles.
Moritz Georg Moshack was a builder of Danish clavichords. Three of his instruments are known to exist: a fret-free clavichord dating to 1768 at the Norsk Folkemuseum, Oslo, Norway; a single manual harpsichord dating to 1770 at the Falsters Minder Museum, Nykøbing, Falster, Denmark; and the fret-free Clavichord dating to 1770 at the Musikhistorisk Museum in Copenhagen, Denmark.
The Antunes family were Portuguese harpsichord- and early piano builders in the 18th and 19th centuries.
