Taskin, Pascal

TASKIN, Pascal, celebrated instrumentmaker, and head of a family of musicians, born 1723, at Theux in the province of Liége, migrated early to Paris, and was apprenticed to Etienne Blanchet, the best French clavecin-maker of the period. Succeeding eventually to the business, he improved the tone of his spinets and harpsichords, by substituting slips of leather for the crowquills then in use in the jacks (1768). [See vol. ii. p. 27 a.] In 1772 Louis XV. offered him the post of...