Abstract
THE fame of Jean Marius as a keyboard-instrument-maker is principally due to his well-known clavecin brisé portatif (see illus.1), presented for the first time in 1699, and his projects for clavecins à maillets.1 The latter, which comprised the first piano actions devised in France, were apparently first thought up by Marius some 15 years after Cristofori's invention of his cimbalo col piano e forte in about 1700. Short illustrated descriptions of the clavecins à maillets invented by Marius were published in 1735, 15 years after his death, in the third volume of Machines et Inventions approuvées par l’Académie Royale des Sciences. These documents, which have frequently been quoted by piano historians, include plates showing five piano actions and a combined harpsichord-piano action.2 Other documentary sources, the Registres des procés-verbaux de l’Académie Royale des Sciences and the so-called Dossier Marius preserved in the Archives de l’Académie des Sciences in Paris, give more information about Marius's experimentation with the piano not included in the 1735 descriptions.3
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