Did You Know? Keys to the Millennium

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Did You Know...What a harpsichord is, exactly?

A harpsichord is NOT a Harp! (You'd be surprised how many people confuse them!) Why are the names so similar? Vincenzo Galilei, the father of the famous astronomer, summed it up neatly in 1581: "[the harpsichord] had its origin in the harp, and is really nothing but a horizontal harp with keys added." Yes, both the Harpsichord and the Harp are plucked-string instruments, but the harp is plucked by the hand, while the harpsichord is plucked by a mechanical action.

Did You Know... How old the harpsichord is?
The earliest known reference dates from 1397. The heyday of the harpsichord was in the 17th and 18th centuries. Toward the end of the 18th century it was superceded in popularity by the piano (which was invented later- around 1700), and dropped out of sight until the 20th century, when a revival of interest began.

Did You Know... What this terminology is all about? What's the difference is between a harpsichord, clavichord, spinet, spinettino, virginal, piano and organ?
Hold on here- one at a time! And let's do this with some nice pictures:

First, the Harpsichord! We've already established that a harpsichord is NOT a harp. It may look like a piano, but it doesn't work the same way at all! That's because the strings on a harpsichord are plucked, whereas the piano uses hammers to hit the string. Practically speaking, this means that with a piano you can make dynamic gradations (getting louder and softer) depending on how you hit the keys. Since the pluck of a harpsichord is fixed, the player can't control dynamic fluctuations from the keyboard.
Harpsichords come with one or two (and very occasionally, three) keyboards, or manuals. The different keyboards strike different sets of strings, giving a variety of tone color. Generally harpsichords don't have pedals- the one shown at left is quite the exception. (Pedals are generally used to change 'registration,' or tone color). This one was made in America in 1909.

Harpsichords come in different sizes- here's where some of those other names come in!

Spinets are strung with the strings perpendicular to the keys (see how they run left-to-right on this spinet made by Benedetto Floriani in 1562.) These may be small instruments, but they often have a whopping loud sound!

A small spinet is a spinettino. They were very convenient as travelling instruments. They still are- they'll easily fit in the overhead bin...
The spinettino is strung with shorter strings and sounds an octave higher than a harpsichord.
This spinettino was made by Annibale Rossi in 1577.

The virginal is a harpsichord that is rectangular in shape. Virginals were commonly played around the time of Queen Elizabeth I, and people used to think that the name of the instrument was taken from its popularity with the young 'virgins' who played it. As it turns out, musicologists have shown that the name comes from 'virga', the Latin term for 'key.' The young virgins tale is definitely more colorful, though.

If your neighbors don't like to listen to your practicing, there's a great solution: get a clavichord. Clavichords are so soft that they can't be heard over the din of your air conditioner. People have been known to hold their breath at clavichord concerts so they can hear the performance.
The clavichord is actually closer to the piano in construction since it uses small metal 'tangents' to strike the strings, rather than pluck them, as with the harpsichord. An interesting feature of the clavichord is the vibrato you can achieve by gently bobbing a key up and down. J.S. Bach owned a clavichord, and his son C.P.E. Bach became famous for writing clavichord music.

This is a really unusual instrument- an upright harpsichord. It is the same as a normal harpsichord, but is strung vertically. Great if you're pressed for space in your apartment!
Harpsichords have a wonderful tradition of decoration. The French liked cabriole legs (such as in the picture at left) and often painted the outside of the instrument, the inside of the lid, and even the soundboard with all sorts of things- garlands, flowers, birds, bees, monkeys, shrimp, landscape scenes, and chinoiserie. Many of these extraordinary instruments were destroyed during the French Revolution- they very clearly represented the musical and furniture tastes of the upper classes. But many have survived and are found in museums worldwide. Here in America you can see some terrific examples of antique harpsichords at museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and The Shrine to Music, in Vermillion, South Dakota.

Did You Know... How a Harpsichord is constructed?To start with, here's a diagram, taken from the book, If It's Not a Piano, What Is It?, that details the parts of the harpsichord. In a harpsichord with 3 sets of strings, the two longer sets (called 8-foot) have a separate bridge from the shorter set (called the 4-foot). The keys on a harpsichord are constructed rather like a seesaw- when you push the key down, the other end (inside the instrument) goes up. Resting on top of this end of the key is a piece of wood called the jack. The jack contains a fine piece of plastic (in the old days they used crow or raven quill), which, when the key is activated, plucks the string.

Let's dispel some MYTHS about the harpsichord--

Myth #1: The harpsichord is a delicate instrument. It is not as robust as the piano.

Truth: In the 18th century they made folding harpsichords that could be carried in the wagon along rutted roads with milord’s and milady’s other possessions. A truly delicate instrument most definitely could not survive such treatment! Many think that because the piano has an iron frame it must be stronger than the harpsichord, but that creates an inaccurate picture of the two instruments.

Myth #2: The harpsichord does not hold its tune very well.

Truth: If you are going to play a violin or viola, you always tune it before beginning to play. Like violins and violas harpsichords respond to changes of humidity because they are constructed entirely of wood. Pianos, on the other hand, have a considerable amount of metal in them and are not as affected by humidity. You still tune a piano before a public performance, however. Harpsichords are easier as well as faster to tune than pianos, so keeping them in tune is not the chore it might seem to be. In addition, a well built instrument holds its tune surprisingly well unless the player has extra sensitive ears or is playing for an audience.

Myth #3: The harpsichord sounds like a fingernail scratching down a blackboard or, as Sir Thomas Beecham infamously said, "Two skeletons copulating on a tin roof."

Truth: When you apply piano technology to the harpsichord, you incorporate more metal into its construction, assuming that such technique strengthens the instrument. Instead, it creates a metallic sound that makes some people cringe when hearing it. A classically built instrument has the warm sound of wood; it does NOT tinkle or sound like a fingernail on a blackboard.

Myth #4: The harpsichord is less expressive than the piano.

Truth: Making gradations of sound from loud to soft and back again is characteristic of the piano and romantic music, but it is NOT the only way to be expressive. The harpsichord with its exceptional clarity of sound expresses itself with transparency and distinctions of duration and tone color. It just means for the listener that he must listen in more ways than one.

Myth #5: The harpsichord cannot be heard when it plays with an orchestra.

Truth: Of course not. The piano is a percussion instrument like the drum or xylophone because the hammer hits the strings when the key is depressed. The drum can always be heard even when the entire orchestra is playing. On the other hand, the harpsichord is a string instrument because it makes its sound by plucking the string. If one viola stuck out when the orchestra was playing, people would object and the conductor would have conniptions. You can hear the viola once you learn to hear its distinctive sound. The same is true for the harpsichord.

Myth #6: If you can play the piano, you can play the harpsichord.

Truth: You can depress the keys but you will still be playing a piano. The technique of playing each instrument is very different. Playing the harpsichord like a piano results in the ugliness of 'thunking' (when the key is struck hard enough to make the jack ‘thunk’ against the jack rail) and shows little or none of the beauty of true harpsichord playing.

Myth #7: The harpsichord is just the resurrection of an old instrument, good only for music of the past.

Truth: The harpsichord has a considerable body of modern music--classical as well as popular--which is growing in quantity, quality and style.

Myth #8: Bach or Handel or Rameau can also be played on the piano, since both instruments are keyboards.

Truth: Well, yes and no. The notes will be the same but the expressive means and the blending or clarity of the notes will be different due to the fact that the two instruments are so dissimilar. The best way to learn to hear these differences is to listen to two recordings of the same work, one on the piano and one on the harpsichord.

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10 FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS about the harpsichord:

Question #1: Why doesn't the harpsichord have pedals?

Answer: A few harpsichords do have pedals but they perform a totally different function than on the piano. There are a few pedal harpsichords to be found late in the Baroque period and again in modern times. On the piano the pedal lifts all the dampers off the strings so that the strings can continue resonating and thus blend. The harpsichord, however, has a damper on each jack (the plucking mechanism) so that when the finger releases the key the resonance of the string is dampened. When pedals do exist on harpsichords their function is to change registers with the feet, rather than to manually change registers the traditional way, that is, with hand knobs at the end of the keyboard or small protrusions on the right cheek board. Pedals may look similar but the function on each instrument is completely different.

Question #2: Why do some harpsichords have two keyboards?

Answer: The harpsichord can make several different kinds of sounds, depending on which 'stops' are used. Two keyboards means the player can change combinations of stops by changing which keyboard they are playing on. They can also vary the sound by playing one hand on one keyboard and the other hand on the other. The organ has a variety of stops which the performer can choose from, so in this respect the harpsichord is more like the organ (although the organ often has more choices than the harpsichord.)

Question #3: Why do harpsichords have fewer keys than the piano?

Answer: Generally speaking, instruments develop in tandem with the music that is written for them. Throughout the early history of the harpsichord and harpsichord repertoire, a range of roughly four octaves was standard. As composers began to expand this range at the top and bottom of the keyboard, the number of keys increased to meet this demand. When the instrument reached its present size--roughly five octaves--it played all the notes the composers used. With the advent of the fortepiano, musical style changed and gradually the number of notes composers used increased still further. Today’s piano did not reach its full development until the last quarter of the 19th century, one hundred years after the original musical style of the harpsichord fell out of fashion.

Question #4: Then why, when the harpsichord and the piano have keyboards and strings and often a similar shape, are they really so very different?

Answer: The piano is a percussion instrument because the sound is produced by striking the strings, whereas the harpsichord is a string instrument because the sound is produced by plucking the strings. The two instruments sound and behave in very different ways even though there are similarities in shape and keyboard. On the other hand, the guitar and the harpsichord bear no visible similarities, yet they are part of the same family of 'plucked string' instruments.

Question #5 Okay, it’s clear now that the harpsichord is a very different instrument from the piano, but as an ordinary person who has only known the piano, how can I tell if I am hearing good harpsichord?

Answer #5: There are three areas in which you can tell if what you are hearing is good or not--the music itself, the instrument, and the playing. Let's take one at a time.

1. The music: because of its exceptional clarity of tone, harpsichord music often has lots of moving notes. If you hear a thin sound ("plinkety-plunk"), it’s not good writing for the harpsichord.

2. The instrument: if you hear the metallic or tinkling sound of metal, it probably is not a good instrument. A good harpsichord has the warm sound of wood.

3. The playing: there are two simple tests everyone can apply when listening to the harpsichord. If there is any movement except in the fingers, it is not harpsichord playing. If you hear a ‘thunk’ it means the player has struck the key hard enough to cause the jack to ‘thunk’ against the jack rail. 'Thunking' is an indication of playing the instrument like a piano and has nothing to do with the age of the harpsichord.

Question #6:. Okay, now I think I understand that the piano and the harpsichord are two very different instruments and the older instrument is good for baroque music, but why use an old instrument for modern music? We don’t use older forms of instruments for anything except recreations of the music of their time, so why should the harpsichord also be a modern instrument?

Answer #6: That’s a very compelling argument but it ignores some factors. In general, instruments from earlier times do not work well for modern music. For one thing, earlier instruments generally did not have a large enough volume to be heard except in very limited spaces. Many earlier instruments also do not have the creamier tone of more modern instruments We now use more updated versions of those instruments. The harpsichord, however, has a basic tone that is similar to that of the guitar and a clarity of tone superb for certain kinds of music and/or arrangements. which no other instrument can create. As a result the harpsichord fills a musical void. (By the way, few people realize that the organ, although not in its modern form, is much, much older than the harpsichord. It dates back to Biblical times.)

Question #7: I hear people talking about French harpsichords, English ones, German ones, Italian ones, Flemish ones. What’s going on?

Answer #7: When the harpsichord was developed, travel and communication between countries took time. Harpsichord builders did relocate from one country to another, taking their knowledge and instrument building skills with them, but gradually differences arose in the amount of curve in the bentside, in the proportions of the strings (a highly technical subject understandable by mathematicians and physicists), in the wood used for the case, in the style of decoration. These differences over time became matters of local pride and one kind of harpsichord excelled for one kind of use and another kind for a different use. Like everything else in this world, each variation on the theme has its strengths and its weaknesses.

Question #8: What is a transposing harpsichord?

Answer # 8: In the 17th and 18th centuries, there were no international standards in instrument building and pitch. For example, a flute or oboe might be built to be pitched at A=415 (meaning that when the player played an "A" it vibrated at 415 cycles per second), or it could be built to be pitched at A=440, or anywhere in between. Beginning in Beethoven’s time musicians began to raise the number of vibrations of A--in other words, to raise its pitch--to make music sound more brilliant. Today, modern players have settled on A=440 vibrations (and sometimes even more), a half note higher than at the end of the eighteenth century (which explains why the sopranos singing in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony sometimes sound as if they are screeching--they have to sing half a tone higher than Beethoven wrote!). When a harpsichordist plays with modern players, he or she must tune the instrument to A=440. However, modern musicians who play replica instruments (i.e., replica violins, oboes, flutes, etc.) usually use A=415. That presents a problem to a harpsichordist who wishes to play with both modern (A=440) instruments and replica (A=415) instruments. The solution is to use a harpsichord with a 'transposing keyboard' (because retuning the instrument between A=440 and A=415 would damage it.) The transposition of a harpsichord keyboard is accomplished by shifting the keyboard either to the right or left, and it is an ingenious modern solution to the problem of playing with a variety of instruments. The harpsichord sounds its best and warmest at 415 but again, at that pitch it can only be used in concert with replica instruments (i.e., early violins, oboes, flutes, etc.) When playing with modern instruments, the harpsichord usually is tuned to A 440.

Question #9: I now know a lot more, but I still do not understand why, when both piano and harpsichord have a similar shape and keys and strings, if you can play the piano, you cannot necessarily play the harpsichord.

Answer #9: On the piano when you strike the key harder, the hammer hits the strings harder and produces more sound. When the player depresses the harpsichord key, there is only the resistance of air until the plectrum plucks the string and then there is only air resistance again. Thus, striking the key harder, as in piano playing, only makes the jack ‘thunk’ against the jack rail (which prevents the jack from flying out into the room if the player hits the key too hard) but cannot produce more tone. Finally, the difference in the damping of the strings between the two instruments means that means of expression are different. Consequently, although a piano player can make the strings vibrate, they are only creating a sound like a poor piano rather than the subtle, warm sound of the harpsichord.

Question #10: How old is the harpsichord?

Answer #10: The earliest instrument we still have dates to the late sixteenth century; the earliest reference we have to the instrument dates to 1397.

All information contained in these Myths and Questions has been checked with professionals for accuracy.

	First, the Harpsichord! We've already established that a harpsichord is NOT a harp. It may look like a piano, but it doesn't work the same way at all! That's because the strings on a harpsichord are plucked, whereas the piano uses hammers to hit the string. Practically speaking, this means that with a piano you can make dynamic gradations (getting louder and softer) depending on how you hit the keys. Since the pluck of a harpsichord is fixed, the player can't control dynamic fluctuations from the keyboard. Harpsichords come with one or two (and very occasionally, three) keyboards, or manuals. The different keyboards strike different sets of strings, giving a variety of tone color. Generally harpsichords don't have pedals- the one shown at left is quite the exception. (Pedals are generally used to change 'registration,' or tone color). This one was made in America in 1909.
Harpsichords come in different sizes- here's where some of those other names come in!
Spinets are strung with the strings perpendicular to the keys (see how they run left-to-right on this spinet made by Benedetto Floriani in 1562.) These may be small instruments, but they often have a whopping loud sound!
	A small spinet is a spinettino. They were very convenient as travelling instruments. They still are- they'll easily fit in the overhead bin... The spinettino is strung with shorter strings and sounds an octave higher than a harpsichord. This spinettino was made by Annibale Rossi in 1577.