Burkat Shudi
harpsichord maker
Burkat Shudi (variants: Burkhart, Burkhardt, Schudi, Tschudi, Tshudi; 13 March 1702 – 19 August 1773) was an English harpsichord maker of Swiss origin.
Biography
He was born in Schwanden in the Canton of Glarus, and arrived in England in 1718, where he started work as a joiner. He married Catherine Wild, whose parents came from the same town as him, in 1728. John Broadwood worked for him from 1761, and in 1769 became his partner after marrying his daughter Barbara. Johannes Zumpe also worked for him.
He retired in 1771, being succeeded by his son, who was also called Burkat (c. 1738–1803), following whose death the firm was taken over entirely by Broadwood, who had by then become a piano maker. There are twenty-three harpsichords by Shudi and 27 by Shudi and Broadwood in existence today. Three harpsichords exist by his nephew Joshua, who worked for him unsatisfactorily for a while, and one signed 'Bernard Shudi', about whom nothing is known.
Shudi's harpsichords
His harpsichords drew on the Flemish tradition, dominated by Ruckers, whose harpsichords had become extremely prized in the 18th century; he himself owned and hired out two Ruckers harpsichords. The usual specifications for his single-manual harpsichords was 8' 8' or 8' 8' 4' and for his double-manual harpsichords 8' 8' 4' and lute stop.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 2, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q116598. VIAF identifies the subject as 15580191. The Library of Congress control number is no98084667. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1702, 1773, 1718 and 1728.
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This entry incorporates text from “Burkat Shudi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.