A double-manual harpsichord by Jean Mari De De Ban, 1770, Paris, with a typical genouillère added by Joachim Swanen in about 1785.

Like most instruments with a genouillère, the double-manual harpsichord by De De Ban has an external system of rocker bars attached to the spine side of the instrument.  The bars transfers the motion of the internal register cranks and roller bars operated by the knee pommels (seen here from underneath the instrument in the right-hand photograph) through the rocker bars to the registers (seen at the top of the left-hand photograph).  The Franco-Flemish harpsichord is probably unique in not having any external register cranks on the spine side of the instrument: instead the motion of the internal rollers bars must somehow have been transferred from the knee levers to the registers by some kind of system that was contained entirely inside the keywell of the instrument.

The knee pommels would, however, probably have been similar to those seen here in the photograph in the right.

Return to the section on the eighteenth-century history of the Franco-Flemish harpsichord

Return to the section on the description of the Franco-Flemish harpsichord