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Frank Twombly Hubbard (May 15, 1920 – February 25, 1976) was an American harpsichord maker, a pioneer in the revival of historical methods of harpsichord building. Student days [ edit ]
Harpsichord building in England only achieved great distinction in the 18th century with the work of two immigrant makers, Jacob Kirckman (from Alsace) and Burkat Shudi (from Switzerland). The harpsichords by these builders have been described by the famous builder-scholar Frank Hubbard as "possibly the culmination of the harpsichord maker's ...
Of the Hass family instruments, Frank Hubbard wrote that 'only one has what could be regarded as a normal disposition.' Their surviving harpsichords show an attempt to develop the instrument in a number of ways: one from 1721 is 2.58 m long, and one from 1723 has the unusual disposition 8' 8' 8' 4'. Hass occasionally used a 16' set of strings ...
It was Frank Hubbard's opinion that the harpsichords of Shudi and Kirkman represent 'the culmination of the harpsichord maker's art [...] for sheer magnificence of tone, reedy trebles and sonorous basses, no other harpsichords ever matched them', though he was later put off building copies because so little significant music was written for them.
According to Frank Hubbard, harpsichords and organs of the 16th and 17th centuries "almost always" had short octaves. [2] Edward Kottick notes that the short octave persisted for a long time, suggests that a kind of mutual inertia between composers and instrument builders may have been responsible: Our forebears were much more practical than we ...
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 ...
Harpsichord historian Frank Hubbard wrote in 1967, "the earliest [bentside] spinet known to me was made by Hieronymus de Zentis in 1631. It is quite possible that Zentis was the inventor of the type so widely copied in other countries."
Starting in the middle of the 20th century, ideas about harpsichord making underwent a major change, when builders such as Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, and Martin Skowroneck sought to re-establish the building traditions of the Baroque period. Harpsichords of this type of historically informed building practice dominate the current scene.