Harpsichord Keyboard Instruments

Harpsichord Keyboard Instruments

The harpsichord is that family of keyboard instruments which are plucked, not struck, by the key mechanism. It has served as the major string keyboard instrument for substantially longer than its descendant the piano, and still at the end of the millennium is much in use, both in early music performance and in various new applications.There are perhaps three distinctions which help categorize the instruments. There are national schools (chiefly Flemish, Italian, French, German, and English), time frame (conveniently thought of by century - 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th), and instrument type (harpsichord, spinette, virginal, but with several rich and strange variations, such as the lautenwerk or the clavicyntherium).

Top: Arts: Music: Instruments: Keyboard: Harpsichord

See Also:

Sounds of Harpsichords - Audio samples of different styles of instruments. Comparisons to other period instruments with similar sound.
British Harpsichord Society - Free membership. Includes membership information and links.
Elisabetta Lanzoni - Harpsichord Painter - Pictures of harpsichords decorated by the Artist.
Harpsichords and Related Topics - Open forum for topics related to harpsichords, clavichords, fortepianos and virginals. Archives and links.
History of the Harpsichord - Information about the instrument in eighteenth century France and the Flemish influence, written by Janet Pierce.
The Instrument Workshop - Parts and supplies for early keyboard instruments and other non-bowed stringed instruments.
Baroque Music: Harpsichord - The baroque harpsichord and its music.
Harpsichord Tuning, Repair, and Temperaments - Tutorial on how to apply various different temperaments.
Hot Harpsichord Information Centre - Questions and answers by American harpsichordist Barbara Cadranel.
An Italian Virginal - Report of the design and construction of an Italian virginal.
Four-Wheel Drive Harpsichords - To boldly go where no harpsichord has gone before. Humorous site.
Surviving French Harpsichords - Instruments built or rebuilt in France in the 17th and 18th Centuries, known to have survived into the 20th.

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