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Like a pipe organ, a harpsichord may have more than one keyboard manual [b] and even a pedal board. Harpsichords may also have stop levers which add or remove additional octaves. Some harpsichords may have a buff stop, which brings a strip of buff leather or other material in contact with the strings, muting their sound to simulate the sound of ...
The New Grove musical dictionary summarizes the earliest historical traces of the harpsichord: "The earliest known reference to a harpsichord dates from 1397, when a jurist in Padua wrote that a certain Hermann Poll claimed to have invented an instrument called the 'clavicembalum'; [1] and the earliest known representation of a harpsichord is a sculpture (see below) in an altarpiece of 1425 ...
The harpsichord stop levers are laid out in the conventional fashion on either side of the name-board, with the organ stops being placed at either side of the keyboards with a coupling mechanism to the organ at the front of the harpsichord. [7] The organ case is also fitted with four foot-levers; three at the front of the organ and one at the ...
What primarily distinguishes the spinet is the angle of its strings: whereas in a full-size harpsichord, the strings are at a 90-degree angle to the keyboard (that is, they are parallel to the player's gaze); and in virginals they are parallel to the keyboard, in a spinet the strings are at an angle of about 30 degrees to the keyboard, going ...
Harpsichord building was often considered a lesser side job for organ builders, while some few were specialized in either harpsichord or clavichord building. [ 1 ] Note that in the German speaking world the harpsichord was only one of several instruments referred to as clavier, and keyboard instruments seem to have been used more ...
An organ pipe, or a harpsichord string, designated as eight-foot pitch (8′) is sounded at standard, ordinary pitch. [1] For example, the A above middle C in eight-foot pitch would be sounded at 440 Hz (or at some similar value, depending on how concert pitch was set at the time and place the organ or harpsichord was made).
The short octave was a method of assigning notes to keys in early keyboard instruments (harpsichord, clavichord, organ), for the purpose of giving the instrument an extended range in the bass range. The rationale behind this system was that the low notes F ♯ and G ♯ are seldom needed in early music.
Indeed, nearly all the keyboard music of the renaissance sounds equally well on harpsichord, virginals, clavichord or organ, and it is doubtful if any composer had a particular instrument in mind when writing keyboard scores. A list of composers for writing for the virginals (among other instruments) may be found under virginalist.