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HPSCHD is composed of 7 solo pieces for harpsichord and 52 computer-generated tapes. The harpsichord solos were created from randomly processed pieces by Mozart , Beethoven , Chopin , Schumann , Gottschalk , Busoni , Schoenberg , Cage and Hiller, rewritten using a FORTRAN computer program designed by Ed Kobrin based on the I Ching hexagrams.
The ideal harpsichord sound: First, the harpsichord must stay out of the way; you must be able to hear what the player is doing, what his thoughts are. The second is to contribute something to the music; that is, to add some beauty of sound which might not be immediately imaginable to you if you were looking at the notes on a page.
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 ...
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.
The harpsichord used quills to pluck strings, and it had a delicate sound. Due to the design of the harpsichord, the attack or weight with which the performer played the keyboard did not change the volume or tone. Between about 1750 and the late 1700s, the harpsichord gradually fell out of use.
The sound of the Kirkman and Shudi instruments is described by the authors of Grove Dictionary as "enormously rich and powerful"; "whereas that of a French harpsichord may be compared to the sound of a woodwind ensemble, the tone of these developed English instruments, with their brilliant trebles and imposing basses, may be compared to that of ...
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 ...
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 ...