Directory of Harpsichord Resources

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The harpsichord is that family of keyboard instruments which are plucked, not struck, by the key mechanism. It has served as the major string keyboard instrument for substantially longer than its descendant the piano, and still at the end of the millennium is much in use, both in early music performance and in various new applications. There are perhaps three distinctions which help categorize the instruments. There are national schools (chiefly Flemish, Italian, French, German, and English), time frame (conveniently thought of by century - 16th, 17th, 18th, and 20th), and instrument type (harpsichord, spinette, virginal, but with several rich and strange variations, such as the lautenwerk or the clavicyntherium).

Subcategories

• Builders
• Performers

Resources in This Category

• An Italian Virginal

  http://www.earlykeyboards.eu/blue/virginal/
  Report of the design and construction of an Italian virginal.

• Baroque Music: Harpsichord

  http://www.baroque-music.com/frames/info/hc.shtml#hc
  The baroque harpsichord and its music.

• British Harpsichord Society

  http://www.harpsichord.org.uk/
  Free membership. Includes membership information and links.

• Elisabetta Lanzoni - Harpsichord Painter

  http://www.elisabettalanzoni.com/
  Pictures of harpsichords decorated by the Artist.

• Four-Wheel Drive Harpsichords

  http://www.tinyradio.com/4WDSTRIKEHPD.htm
  To boldly go where no harpsichord has gone before. Humorous site.

• Harpsichords and Related Topics

  http://www.albany.edu/hpschd-l/
  Open forum for topics related to harpsichords, clavichords, fortepianos and virginals. Archives and links.

• Sounds of Harpsichords

  http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bpl/hpsi.html
  Audio samples of different styles of instruments. Comparisons to other period instruments with similar sound.

• The Instrument Workshop

  http://www.fortepiano.com/
  Parts and supplies for early keyboard instruments and other non-bowed stringed instruments.

Related Categories

• Home > Arts > Music > Instruments > Keyboard > Early
• Home > Arts > Music > Styles > E > Early Music > Instruments

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