![A historical wooden clavicytherium with a black background behind them, from Anon, South German [c1480]](/media/Research - Clavicytherium, Anon, South German [c1480].jpg "A historical wooden clavicytherium with a black background behind them, from Anon, South German [c1480]")
Rediscovering the RCM Clavicytherium: New Perspectives for Research and Performance
The clavicytherium at the RCM Museum has been considered since the 19th century as the earliest surviving stringed keyboard instrument. After many unsuccessful attempts, a recent dendrochronology analysis has finally managed to scientifically confirm the date of the wood, confirming a date of manufacture of circa 1470.
Documentary fragments glued inside the case – probably a later repair – suggest that the anonymous instrument was made in Ulm (Baden Württenberg) or that it travelled there by the early 1500s. A large number of modern copies have been made, particularly since the 1970s and the RCM also owns one made in 1973 by Derek Adlam and Richard Burnett.
Thanks to the RCM Research Development Fund, the RCM Museum is dedicating a two-day research event to start an interdisciplinary conversation on the instrument in dialogue with perspectives from performance, repertoire, material, artistic, cultural and social history, as well as digital humanities. On 23 and 24 June 2025, the RCM Museum will gather musicians, makers, musicologists and historians in order to explore the clavicytherium’s context of use and repertoire, its connections in the past as well as its potential for new historically informed performances and the generation of new music.
The first day will host a closed-doors experts’ table, while the second day will be open to the public in hybrid format (both in person and online) and will include a paper session in the morning and a masterclass discussion with musicians in the afternoon to reconsider what performance-based research can suggest about repertoire, performance technique, context of use of the instrument, and hopefully leading to new recordings. The event will end with a concert featuring the 1973 copy of the clavicytherium in the RCM collection and RCM students.
Rediscovering the RCM Clavicytherium is led by Professor Gabriele Rossi Rognoni, Chair of Music and Material Culture and Curator of the RCM Museum, and Arianna Rigamonti, Research Coordinator of the RCM Museum and PhD student in Music and Material Culture at the RCM.
