Clavicimbalum

Clavicimbalum Lat. word designating quilled keyboard instrs. in their early days. Earliest form of the word so far known is Eberhart Cersne's clavicymbolum of 1404. A vocabulary of 1429 glosses “clavicimbel, clavicembalum, instrumentum musicum.” In Zwickau payment was made in 1438 to a “spilman der da slug uff dem klavizimbel.” In France “un instrument a jouer nommé clavycimbale” is mentioned in 1447; the term appears logically as “clavier cymbolon,” also in France, in 1485, and as “clave…