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Title
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Clavicytherium (Upright Piano)
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Alternative Title
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Upright Piano
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Creator
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Clemm, John(?) (aka Johann Gottlob Klemm, 1690-1762)
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Publisher
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Bethlehem Digital History Project
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Date
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c.1745-1760
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Type
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Still image
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Format
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image/jpeg
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Description
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A rare example of an early piano design, this instrument has few alterations and is in excellent condition. Made of North American hardwoods, ebony, brass, leather. Scholars believe it is one of two surviving instruments made by Johann Gottlob Klemm (1690-1762)(Anglicized as John Clemm), the first
professional keyboard instrument maker in British colonial America. According to the wood analysis, this instrument was made in America. It is both one of the earliest forms of piano, and one of the earliest piano-type instruments in America.
During a smallpox epidemic in 1746, this instrument was brought to the Whitfield House in Nazareth, Pennsylvania to aid in comforting the patients from the girls' school who were being attended to there. The principal, John Christopher Pyrlaeus, thought that music would raise the spirits of those students affected by the smallpox epidemic. It reportedly has been in the building—now the Moravian Historical Society—since that time. It is not known whether the instrument was made in Germany and brought to America by the Moravians, or whether it was made in the American colonies. Fewer than ten of these instruments can be found today in the United States.
Unknown maker and date. From the collection of the Moravian Historical Society, Nazareth, Pennsylvania.
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Subject
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Clavicytherium
Piano--History--18th century
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Identifier
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MHS 0731
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Place
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Nazareth, Pennsylvania
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Rights Holder
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Moravian Historical Society, Nazareth, Pennsylvania
