The Zuckermann

Model: Flemish with one manual (Ruckers?)

Registers: 2×8′ + 4′ + mute

Keyboard extension: GG-g”’ (five octaves)

Transpositor: 415 / 440

Mecanism: keyboard in bone (accidentals in ebony); plastic jacks, fitted with a screw at the base to facilitate regulation; conic pegs

Decoration: green paint in the body; no rosette

Size: 220×100

I did rented it once in the Netherlands and was a good idea: it is not always possible to study at school (even if it’s a big school), apart from the fact that it is difficult to avoid the temptation  of having an instrument at home.

Jorge gave me AD Koomans’s contact, from whom he also rented an instrument, and it was as easy as a trip to Hoorn where to choose from what was available: at the end I took this Zuckermann kit (although built by Koomans himself).

It is probably the instrument in which I have made the most progress so far, but I cannot forget my “fights” with him. Until I was tired enough. Even after a whole regulation, I did not feel capable of loving its noisy and insecure keyboard…

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who said...

"[Beethoven] went in his usual (I might say, ill-bred) manner to the instrument as if half-pushed, picket up the violoncello part of Steibelt's quintet in passing, placed it (intentionally?) upon the stand upside down and with one finger drummed out a theme of the first few measures. Insulted and angered, he improvised in such a manner that Steibelt left the room before he finished, would never again meet him and, indeed, made it a condition that Beethoven should not be invited before accepting an offer."

F.W. Wegeler & F. Ries, Biographische Notizen über Ludwig van Beethoven (Koblenz, 1838)

"[...] the king [Charles II of Spain] eagerly asked me if I had heard Matheuchi sing, when he would come, and if he was impertinent or not, and as if there were no army in the world, nor Milanese state, completely forgot such matters, but this is not surprising given that all his ministers, or most of them, have had the same experience [...]"

Letter of Carlos Felipe Spinola y Colonna to the duke of Medinaceli (1698)

"I was in St Alban's Abbey and I was intrigued: they were building a new organ and I went up to - I suppose it must have been - the verger and I said, 'Is the organ baroque?' And he said, 'No, it's in perfectly good order.'"

John Tavener, The Music of Silence, A Composer's Testament (Faber ISBN 0571200885)

"The Second Harpsichordist will go only to the last rehearsal, sending the Third One to the previous, who won't read more high Clef than Soprano, trying to play without using the Thumbs, don't follow the Numbers, play always the Sixth, don't meet up with the Master, and close all the second Parts of Arias with major thirds, etc. etc. etc."

Benedetto Marcello, Il teatro alla moda (1720)