It is with pleasure that we inform the Public that a few days since was ship’d for Newport a very Curious Spinnet being the first ever made in America, the performance of the ingenious Mr. John Harris of Boston (son of the late Mr. Jos. Harris of London, Harpsichord and Spinnet Maker deceased) and in every respect does honor to that Artist who now carries on the Business at his house a few doors Northward of Dr. Clarkes, North End of Boston.
This first American spinet is said to be still in existence in a house in Newport on the corner of Thames and Gidley streets. It has one set of jacks and strings. The hammers have crow-quills which press on brass strings. It has ancient neighbors. In Bristol, R. I., is a triangular spinet four feet long, which is more than a century older than the town which is now its home. It bears this maker’s mark,—“Johann Hitchcock fecit London 1520.” If this date is correct, it is the oldest spinet known, the one of Italian manufacture in the British Museum being dated 1521.
At the rooms of the Essex Institute in Salem, Mass., is an old spinet made by Dr. Samuel Blyth in that town. Henry M. Brooks, Esq., author of Olden Time Music, has in his possession a bill for one of these American spinets that shows that the price in 1786 was £18. In the Memorial Hall at Deerfield, Mass., may be seen another dilapidated one, made by Stephanus & Keene. This belonged once to Mrs. Sukey Barker, of Hingham.
In the Newport Mercury of May 17, 1773, is advertised, “To be sold a Spinnet of a proper size for a little miss, and a most agreeable tone—plays extremely easy on the keys. Inquire of the Printer.” Advertisement of the sale of spinets and of instruction on the spinet do not disappear from the newspapers in this country even after formidable rivals and successors, the harpsichord and forte-piano, had begun to be imported in comparatively large numbers.
The tone of a spinet has been characterized concisely by Holmes in his poem, The Opening of the Piano,—the “spinet with its thin metallic thrills.” I know of nothing more truly the “relic of things that have passed away,” more completely the voice of the past, than the tinkling thrill of a spinet. It is like seeing a ghost to touch the keys, and bring forth once more that obsolete sound. There is no sound born in the nineteenth century that at all resembles it. Like “loggerheads” in the coals and “lug-poles” in the chimney, like church lotteries and tithingmen, the spinet—even its very voice—is extinct.
Since in the News-Letter first quoted in this chapter virginals are named, I think the musical instrument of Queen Elizabeth must have been tolerably familiar to Bostonians. Judge Sewall, who “had a passion for music,” writes in 1690 of fetching his wife’s “virginalls.” I cannot conceive what tunes Madam Sewall played on her virginals, no tawdry ballads and roundelays, no minuets and corams; she may have known half a dozen long-metre psalm tunes such as the Judge set for so many years in meeting.
“Forte-pianers” were imported to America, as were other musical instruments. It is said the first one brought to New England was in 1785 by John Brown for his daughter Sarah, afterwards Mrs. Herreshoff. It is still possessed by Miss Herreshoff, of Bristol, R. I. The first brought to “the Cape” was a Clementi of the date 1790, and found for many years a home in Falmouth. It is in perfect preservation, a dainty little inlaid box lying upon a slender low table, with tiny shelves for the music books, and a tiny little painted rack to hold the music sheets, and a pedal fit for the foot of a doll. It is now owned by Miss Frances Morse, of Worcester, Mass. An old Broadwood piano, once owned by the venerable Dr. Sweetser, may be seen at the rooms of the Worcester Society of Antiquity; and still another, a Clementi, at the Essex Institute in Salem.
By the beginning of this century piano-playing became a more common accomplishment, especially in the large towns, though General Oliver said that in 1810, among the six thousand families in Boston, there were not fifty pianos. Rev. Manasseh Cutler writes in 1801, from Washington, of a young friend:—
She has been educated at the best schools in Baltimore and Alexandria. She does not converse much, but is very modest and agreeable. She plays with great skill on the Forte Piano which she always accompanies with the most delightful voice, and is frequently joined in the vocal part by her mother. Mr. King has an excellent Forte-Piano which is connected with an organ placed under it, which she plays and fills with her feet, while her fingers are employed upon the Forte-Piano. On Sunday evenings she constantly plays Psalm music. Miss Anna plays Denmark remarkably well. But the most of the psalm tunes our gentlemen prefer are the old ones such as Old Hundred, Canterbury, which you would be delighted to hear on the Forte-Piano assisted by the Organ. Miss Anna gave us some good music this evening, particularly the Wayworn Traveller, Ma Chere Amie, The Tea, The Twins of Latma (somewhat similar to Indian Chief) Eliza, Lucy or Selims Complaint. These are among my favourites.
In February, 1800, Eliza Southgate Bowne wrote thus in Boston:—