Introduction

Not one of the surviving historical pedal clavichords is in its original playing condition, making it necessary to build a copy of one of them in order to learn about how it might have worked when it was new. Focusing on the Bach family and Clavier technique made the Johann David Gerstenberg (1716–96) pedal clavichord in the Leipzig collection the only logical choice. Of the surviving instruments, documented in chapter 1, his is the only one with two manuals and an independent pedal, making it possible to play Bach’s trio sonatas on it. Also, the Gerstenberg is representative of the tradition around Leipzig: he was a clavichord and organbuilder in Geringswalde, in Saxony. The instrument probably dates from 1766 and is also very similar in design to the single-manual clavichord by Christian Gottfried Friederici (1714–77) of Gera in the Leipzig collection, built in 1765. The Friederici family produced some of C. P. E. Bach’s favorite clavichords. He owned one at the time of his death, on which he had composed most of his Hamburg keyboard works. C. P. E. Bach wrote to Forkel that the Friederici clavichords had a great advantage over the Barthold Fritz and Johann Adolph Hass clavichords because the action was better, and because they did not have the four-foot octave strings in the bass, which he “couldn’t stand.” This instrument was built by Christian Gottfried’s brother Christian Ernst Friederici (1709–80), who was also an organbuilder. The brothers worked together closely, and it must be assumed that their instrument building styles were similar. So by sheer good luck both the Gerstenberg and the Friederici clavichords survive in the same collection, and it is possible to state with some certainty that C. P. E. Bach would have approved of the Gerstenberg clavichord because it is so similar in design to the Friederici.