One of the oldest keyboard instruments, the clavichord has its origins in the late-fourteenth century, and was used throughout Western Europe during the Renaissance. It maintained its popularity in German lands into the first quarter of the nineteenth century, when, like its cousin the harpsichord, it was decisively superseded by the piano. Pitch and Timbre The ...
The playing mechanism of the clavichord was quite different from that of the harpsichord family. It was a simpler lever system, working like a seesaw. As the player’s fingers landed on the key, its other end rose and struck the string from below. In sound production, the clavichord was thus similar to the dulcimer and the piano. But ...
replacing recorders in orchestras. Oboes of several types and bassoons were by now dominating military bands, with horns ousting tenor oboes in the 1720s. In domestic music, the clavichord and harpsichord remained popular, but the virginals was on its way out. A new instrument, the pianoforte, had been developed in 1709, but as yet had ...
The clavinet is essentially an electric version of the clavichord. Designed in the 1960s by Ernst Zacharias of the German company, Hohner, the clavinet evolved from the Cembalet, an instrument Zacharias had developed some years earlier as an electronic counterpart to the harpsichord. Construction Hohner produced several models of clavinet over the years, including the legendary D6. ...
in operation can be increased and decreased by means of pedals without interrupting the playing, thus securing gradual changes in volume that could only otherwise be demonstrated by the clavichord and the piano. Works of Art Well before the decline in their fortunes in the late-eighteenth century, harpsichords had been living a double life, so to speak – ...
• The dulcimer: struck by small wooden beaters, and popular in Hungarian and Romanian folk music. • The cimbalom: a concert version of the dulcimer used for orchestral purposes. Clavichord The clavichord affirms its place as the earliest of the string keyboard instruments in its very name, taken from the Latin for, simply, key and string. Chronologically ...
two manuals, two knee levers to control vibrato and six pedals directing volume. Players today can be seen controlling vibrato by lateral movements of the keys, not unlike clavichord technique. Styles & Forms | Modern Era | Classical Instruments | Orchestral Percussion | Modern Era | Classical ...
keyboard instruments that had ruled the roost from the height of the Renaissance to the end of the Baroque (around 1450 to 1750), were beset by increasingly frustrating limitations. The clavichord, with its touch-sensitive keyboard, was capable of extraordinary nuance and tonal variety, but its sound was too small to project across a large room, let alone ...
Broadwood style of piano was developed by the Scottish cabinet-maker John Broadwood (1732–1812), who married the daughter of the Swiss-born instrument-maker Burkat Schudi. Within the shape, descended from the clavichord, of what had become known as a ‘square piano’, Broadwood developed a new foot-pedal mechanism and a divided bridge that was a departure from the harpsichord type of a ...
Virginal Book is made up of nearly 300 pieces by the leading composers for this instrument, including Bull and Byrd. Styles & Forms | Renaissance | Classical Instruments | Clavichord | Renaissance | Classical ...
other plucked instruments as the lute, cittarone or guitar. However, little or no stylistic distinction was made by Renaissance composers between the virginals, the spinet, the clavichord, the fully fledged harpsichord and the organ. In addition to the composers mentioned above, important composers of the English virginals school were Peter Philips (1560–1628), Giles Farnaby (1563–1640), ...
In the harpsichord family, the name ‘jack’ is given to that part of the action that carries the plectrum upwards, causing it to pluck the string. In the clavichord, the plectrum is replaced by a tangent, which remains in contact with the string for as long as the key is depressed. In the piano, the sound-producer ...
youth desirous of learning and for the pastime of those already skilled in this study’. He intended the pieces to be played on any keyboard instrument (clavier) – harpsichord, clavichord or organ. Book Two was compiled with the help of Anna Magdalena between 1739 and 1742, and in 1744 Bach’s pupil and son-in-law-to-be, Johann Christoph Altnickol (1719–59), made ...
for the middle-class public, which had become the main arbiter of taste. The pianoforte was a new keyboard instrument, louder and more percussive than either the harpsichord or clavichord it had quickly replaced. Mozart wrote his mature piano concertos during his first years in Vienna, more or less inventing the genre. Combining the ritornello practice of the Baroque ...
and other instrumental families, came genres associated with specific solo instruments or ensembles: for the organ, the toccata and fugue and the chorale prelude; for the harpsichord or clavichord, the suite and the sonata; for the chamber ensemble of two violins and continuo, the trio sonata; for the orchestra of strings, continuo and occasional other instruments ...
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