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after Johann Heinrich Silbermann (Strasbourg c. 1767) |
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| Johann Heinrich Silbermann (Strasbourg 1727-1799)
was the youngest son of Andreas Silbermann and a member of the Silbermann
family, but had to make string keyboard instruments the centre of his activity.
In 1782 Johann Nikolaus Forkel, the first biographer of Johann Sebastian
Bach wrote "His instruments are too well known in the world of music to
make it necessary…to say anything in their praise."
We can see from the unusually high number of (at least) eight identical instruments which have survived how popular the spinets of Johann Heinrich were even in his lifetime. The spinet of Silbermann is a so-called bentside spinet, a model that was first developed by the Italian Girolamo Zenti. The NEUPERT copy of a Silbermann instrument made around 1767 (belonging now to the collection of the University of Erlangen) is true to the original even to the smallest detail, from the Sibermann rose with its three entwined letters S, to the hinges shaped like a stylised lily. Concerning the sound of the Silbermann spinet, the guide of the Historisches Museum Basel writes: "From the long strings - the spine has a length of nearly two meters - and the large area of the soundboard a sound of surprising fullness results, always fascinating our ears."
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