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• Instruments
• Classical
• Renaissance

Almost invariably with just one keyboard and a single set of strings and jacks, the spinet was essentially a smaller version of the harpsichord. Its name meant ‘little thorn’ (referring to the quill) and the mechanism for plucking the string and the resulting sound were both like those of the harpsichord. However, while the harpsichord’s strings were attached immediately ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

The spinet is known by many names and has several definitions. Perhaps the most misleading is the American usage of the term to denote a small upright piano. The most confusing is the use of the word to describe a square piano, and a more ancient confusion arises from its use as a synonym for the virginals or, indeed ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

On the face of it, barrels and music would seem unlikely bedfellows. Their alliance, however, goes back at least to the ninth century, when the first detailed description of a barrel organ appeared in an Arab treatise. Mechanics of the Barrel Organ The mechanical principle underlying all such instruments, from the automated organ and piano to ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

In one form or another, the harpsichord ruled the domestic keyboard roost throughout Europe – and later in America – from the late-sixteenth to the early-nineteenth centuries. Apart from the organ, it was the grandest and most versatile of all keyboard instruments until the advent of the mature fortepiano in the mid- to late-eighteenth century. Rise and Fall of ...

• Instruments
• Classical
• Renaissance

lifted for performance in the manner of a modern concert grand piano, sometimes over the entire body of the instrument. Styles & Forms | Renaissance | Classical Instruments | Spinet & Virginal | Renaissance | Classical ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

as the earliest of the string keyboard instruments in its very name, taken from the Latin for, simply, key and string. Chronologically older than the virginal and spinet – it is first mentioned in the 1400s – the clavichord differs from both since its strings were not plucked, and from the piano because they were not hit ...

• Instruments
• Keyboards

exception of such 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), ...

• Styles & Forms
• Classical
• Renaissance

instruments. Keyboard Music Until the late-Baroque period, music for keyboard was usually intended for whatever instrument was available – generally an organ for church music and a harpsichord, spinet or virginal for dance music. Manuscript collections containing keyboard music survive from the fifteenth century, but these tend to consist of arrangements of vocal works. Keyboard music really emerged ...