Harpsichord

A harpsichord is the general term for a family of European keyboard instruments, including the large instrument nowadays called a harpsichord, but also the smaller virginals, the muselar virginals and the spinet. All these instruments generate sound by plucking a string rather than striking one, as in a piano or clavichord. The harpsichord family is thought to have originated when a keyboard was affixed to the end of a psaltery, providing a mechanical means to pluck the strings.

Variants

While the terms used to denote various members of the family have been quite standardized today, in the harpsichord's heyday, this was not the case.

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Harpsichord

In modern usage, a harpsichord can either mean all the members of the family, or more specifically, the grand-piano-shaped member, with a vaguely triangular case accommodating long bass strings at the left and short treble strings at the right; characteristically, the profile is more elongated than that of a modern piano, with a sharper curve to the bentside.

Related Topics:
Grand-piano - Bass - Treble - Bentside

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A harpsichord can have from one to three, and occasionally even more, strings per note. Often one is at 4-foot pitch, an octave higher than the normal 8-foot pitch.

Related Topics:
Note - 4-foot - 8-foot

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Single manuals, or keyboards, are common, especially in Italian harpsichords, though other countries occasionally produced double manuals and there are a few examples of three manual German instruments.

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Virginals

The virginal or virginals is a smaller and simpler rectangular form of the harpsichord (that looks somewhat like a clavichord), with only one string per note running parallel to the keyboard on the long side of the case. The origin of the word is obscure, but it is usually linked to the fact that the instrument was frequently played by young women. Note that the word "virginal" in Elizabethan times was often used to designate any kind of harpsichord; thus the masterworks of William Byrd and his contemporaries were often played on full-size, Italian-style harpsichords and not just on the virginals as we call it today. Virginals are described either as spinet virginals (the usual type) or muselar virginals.

Related Topics:
Elizabethan times - William Byrd

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Spinet virginals

In spinet virginals, the keyboard is placed on the left, and the strings are plucked at one end as in other members of the harpsichord family. This is the more common arrangement, and an instrument described simply as a "virginal" is likely to be a spinet virginal.

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Muselar virginals

In muselar virginals, or muselars, the keyboard is placed to the right so that the strings are plucked in the middle of their sounding length. This gives a warm and rich sound, but at a price: the action for the left hand is inevitably placed in the middle of the instrument's sounding board, with the result that any mechanical noise from this action is amplified. An 18th century commentator said that muselars "grunt in the bass like young pigs". In the 16th and 17th centuries, muselars were nonetheless popular, but they fell out of use in the 18th.

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In addition to mechanical noise, the central plucking point in the bass makes repetition difficult, because the motion of the still-sounding string interferes with the ability of the plectrum to connect again. Thus the muselar was better suited to chord-and-melody music without complex left-hand parts.

Related Topics:
Noise - Chord - Melody - Music

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Spinet

Finally, a harpsichord with the strings set at an angle to the keyboard (usually of about 30 degrees) is called a spinet. In such an instrument, the strings are too close to fit the jacks between them in the normal way; instead, the strings are arranged in pairs, the jacks are placed in the large gaps between pairs, and they face in opposite directions, plucking the strings adjacent to the gap.

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Clavicytherium

A clavicytherium is a harpsichord that is vertically strung. Few were ever made. The same space-saving principle was later embodied in the upright piano.

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Variations

Unsurprisingly, for an instrument that was produced in large numbers for over three centuries, there is a great deal of variation between harpsichords.

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In addition to the varied forms that the instrument can take and the different dispositions, or registrations, that can be fitted to a harpsichord as mentioned above, the range can vary greatly.

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Generally, earlier harpsichords have smaller ranges and later ones larger, though there are frequent exceptions.

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In general, the largest harpsichords have a range of just over five octaves and the smallest have under four. Usually, the shortest keyboards were given extended range using the method of the "short octave".

Related Topics:
Octave - Short octave

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