Hieronymus Albrecht Hass

Hieronymus Albrecht Hass (variants Haas, Hasse, Hase, Hasch) (1 Dec 1689 - 19 June 1752) (dates of baptism and burial) was a German harpsichord and clavichord maker. He is the father of Johann Adolph Hass, who also made harpsichords and clavichords.

He received Hamburg citizenship on 2 October 1711, and was born and died there. In 1713 he was described as "Instrumentenmacher" and "Clavirmacher" on his son's birth certificate. The latest known instruments by him are two unfretted clavichords, dated 1744; a "Clavicimbel" for Duke Friedrich Carl von Plön was delivered the same year.

The first recorded reference to his family was in 1758, when Adlung described 'Hasse in Hamburg' as the maker of a "cembal d’amour". Later, in 1773, English music historian Charles Burney noted 'Hasse, father and son, both dead' as German organ builders, and that 'their Flügel and Claviere are much sought after'.

Raymond Russell wrote of Hass and his son that the 'extent and quality of their surviving work must place them first in German instrument making'. Of their instruments, Frank Hubbard wrote that 'only one has what could be regarded as a normal disposition'. Their surviving harpsichords show an attempt to develop the instrument in a number of ways: one from 1721 is 2.58 m long and one from 1723 has the unusual disposition 8' 8' 8' 4'. Hass occasionally used a 16' set of strings (an octave below standard 8' pitch) and a 2' set (2 octaves higher than 8' pitch) for part of the keyboard.

Hass was the maker of the largest known harpsichord to have been made before the 20th century: built in 1740, it has three manuals with couplers, five sets of strings (16' 8' 8' 4' 2'), six rows of jacks, a lute stop and harp stop for the 16'. This instrument is now apparently owned by Rafael Puyana has since been copied by Robert Goble & Son and used by Trevor Pinnock in Poulenc's "Concert champêtre".

ources

*Raymond Russell: The Harpsichord and Clavichord (London, 1959, 2/1973)
*Frank Hubbard: Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making (Cambridge, MA, 1965, 2/1967)
*Donald Howard Boalch/Peter Williams, Alexander Pilipczuk: 'Hass [Haas, Hasse, Hase, Hasch] ', Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed 2007-06-08), http://www.grovemusic.com

Persondata
NAME=Hass, Hieronymus Albrecht
ALTERNATIVE NAMES=Hasch; Haas; Hasse; Hase
SHORT DESCRIPTION=Harpsichord maker
DATE OF BIRTH=1689-12-01
PLACE OF BIRTH=Hamburg, Germany
DATE OF DEATH=1752-06-19
PLACE OF DEATH=Hamburg, Germany