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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 a plucked lute. [ 1 ] The term denotes the whole family of similar plucked-keyboard instruments, including the smaller virginals , muselar , and spinet .
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).
A heavy-framed mid-century harpsichord by the Sperrhake firm. Such instruments were harshly criticized during the 1960s by Zuckermann, who described their sound as feeble and their appearance as tubby, a betrayal of the tradition of beauty seen in historical instruments.
In harpsichords, often there are two sets of strings of equal length. These "choirs" usually differ in their plucking points. One choir has a "normal" plucking point, producing a canonical harpsichord sound; the other has a plucking point close to the bridge, producing a reedier "nasal" sound rich in upper harmonics.
The disposition of a harpsichord is the set of choirs of strings it contains. This article describes various dispositions and gives the standard notation for describing them. If a harpsichord contains just one set of strings at normal concert pitch, its disposition is called 1 x 8'. Here, the 8' means eight foot pitch, which designates normal ...
Like the harpsichord, the virginals has its origins in the psaltery, to which a keyboard was applied, probably in the 15th century. The first mention of the word is in Paulus Paulirinus of Prague's (1413–1471) Tractatus de musica , of around 1460, where he writes: "The virginal is an instrument in the shape of a clavichord, having metal ...
“In My Life” also made harpsichord trendy, despite the fact that George Martin’s instrumental bridge was actually played on piano and then sped up to achieve a harpsichord-like sound. 4. Sgt.
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 ...