Pompadour precursor?

Liberace’s Conover ‘Pompadour’ piano with its vertical soundboard [ FT408:34] has a precursor in a strange instrument called the Clavicytherium, made in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. This was a harpsichord with vertical soundboard and strings, enabling it to project sound more effectively: as Edward Kottick puts it, “Close proximity to the soundboard provides the player with an overwhelming sense of sonic immersion” ( A History of the Harpsichord, 2002, p.294). This arrangement also, of course, saved space. The Clavicytherium – it sounds rather like a cryptid – is the sort of object you might have expected to turn up in ethereal folk or prog music from the early Seventies, but I don’t think it ever did.

Richard George

St Albans, Hertfordshire