Claviorgan

[3] A number of "virgynalls with regals" are mentioned in the inventories of Henry VIII in 1542/3 and 1547 and Wilson Barry [4] cites references to the claviorganum in England dating back to the 1530s.

Michael Praetorius describes the claviorgan in his Syntagma Musicum of 1619 as: a clavicymbal, or some other symphony, in which a number of pipes is combined with the strings.

Externally it looks exactly like a clavicymbal or symphony, apart from the bellows, which are sometimes set at the rear and sometimes placed inside the body[5] The spinet-regals are usually quite compact, especially compared to their larger harpsichord cousins.

The spinet is often of the smaller Italian style in a square case, as opposed to the perhaps more familiar Bentside shape popular in Britain.

[8] Other early references to claviorgans are to be found in an inventory of the possessions of Henry VIII taken in 1547 which includes four instruments being combinations of "virgynalles" and "regals".

However, a more famous example is the ‘Galleria armonico’ assembled by Michelle Todini in Rome in the seventeenth century, and which ended its days in the palace of the Verospi marquises, now the Palazzo del Credito Italiano.

The harpsichord and its accompanying statues may now be found in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York as well as a clay model surviving from its inception.