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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.
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 .
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.
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.
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 ...
The title 'voluntary' was often used by English composers during the late Renaissance, Baroque, and Classical periods. Originally, the term was used for a piece of organ music that was free in style, and was intended to sound improvised (the word voluntary in general means "proceeding from the will or from one's own choice or consent"). [1]
It was given no title by its copyist and the ownership of the manuscript before the eighteenth century is unclear. At the time The Fitzwilliam Virginal Book was put together most collections of keyboard music were compiled by performers and teachers: other examples include Will Forster's Virginal Book, Clement Matchett's Virginal Book, and Anne Cromwell's Virginal Book.