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The Harpsichord and Clavichord, An Encyclopedia includes articles on this family of instruments, including famous players, composers, instruments builders, the construction of the instruments, and related terminology. It is the first complete reference on this important family of keyboard instruments. The contributors include major scholars of music and musical instrument history from around the world. It completes the three-volume Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments.
Covers every aspect of the harpsichord and its music, including composers, genres, national styles, tuning, and the art of harpsichord building.
Talking Harpsichords is an attempt to bring more into focus the world of the harpsichord. Importantly, it is also an expression of appreciation to all those who have helped this traveller achieve the making of some good instruments. In addition, the writer believes that we are, each one of us, and from time to time, entitled to be amused: so may it be.
The harpsichord was the standard keyboard instrument for three centuries before the invention of the piano. It enjoyed a revival in the second half of the twentieth century, but because of the interruption in its history as a more regularly used instrument, many details about its construction are lacking. In The Harpsichord Stringing Handbook, Thomas Donahue integrates available historical evidence and modern physical principles—from both musicological and scientific literature—to provide practical quantitative information about the stringing of this instrument. The Harpsichord Stringing Handbook covers the composition and properties of iron and brass wire, the interrelationship of frequency to string length, safety factors involved with stringing, the scaling of string lengths, the calculation of diameters, and the determination of the transition from iron to brass in mixed-strung instruments. Supplemental topics include the elasticity and plasticity of wire, inharmonicity, tension and stress, and the interpolation of string lengths. Additional material includes data on selected historical harpsichords, absolute diameters of historical gauge numbering systems, a generated list of tensile strength values for historical wire, and sizes and tensile strengths of currently available wire. This book offers specific guidance for instrument makers, restorers, curators, technicians, musicians, kit builders, wire manufacturers, and acousticians, filling in critical details that historical treatises and surviving instruments may not clearly address.
A History of the Harpsichord brings together for the first time more than 200 photographs, illustrations, and drawings of harpsichords in public museums and private collections throughout Europe the United States. Edward L. Kottick draws on his extensive technical knowledge and experience as a harpsichord builder to detail the changing design, structure, and acoustics of the instrument over seven centuries.Based on painstaking research, the book considers the place of the instrument in society and vividly describes the market forces that brought about changes in its form, decoration, and cultural importance. An accompanying CDincludes performances on several of the historical instruments described and illustrated in the volume, including a 1580 spinett virginal by Martin van der Biest and instruments built by Ruckers and Pleyel. The volume devotes attention to American harpsichord design as well as to present and future uses of the instrument.Also of interestThe History of the PianoforteA Documentary in SoundEva Badura-Skoda0-253-33582-5 HB £37.95
Kottick presents technical information in an accessible, but entertaining, way: the forms and styles of harpsichords, advice on purchasing decisions, maintenance techniques (such as voicing, regulating, and changing strings, tongues, plectra, springs, and dampers), aids in troubleshooting common problems, and detailed instructions on tuning and temperament. As builder of some thirty keyboard instruments, Kottick is well qualified to speak on the subject.
Richard Burnett traces the development of the piano from its origins to the present day, using instruments from his internationally known collection, at the Finchcocks Museum in Kent, England, as the inspiration and navigational means for his story.
Volume IV of The Historical Harpsichord contains two monographs of major importance, Harpsichord Decoration: A Conspectus by Sheridan Germann, and A Fable Deconstructed: The 1770 Taskin at Yale by Richard Rephann. Sheridan Germann, an acclaimed scholar and practitioner in the field of harpsichord decoration, offers the first comprehensive illustrated conspectus of thesubject. In Part I Ms. Germann tells us that the styles of the decoration of harpsichords (and spinets, virginals and clavichords) tended to follow contemporary furniture fashions, but usually lagged conservatively behind the prevailing fashions. Because, unlike most furniture, the instruments are often dated, they provide rare documentation of how long these styles remained in common use. This survey follows chronologically the five major regional traditions of keyboard instrument decoration-Italian, Flemish, French, German and English-but with emphasis on the international changes in taste on which each region produced its own variations.In Part II, Richard Rephann of the Yale Musical Instrument Collection describes his research into the uniquely experimental construction of the 1770 Pascal Taskin harpsichord. This essay forms a pendant to William Dowd's in Vol. I that treats the surviving instruments of the Blanchet-Taskin workshop up to 1770. The romantic provenance of the 1770 Taskin, concocted by the antique trade to enhance the instrument's market value, is revealed as a fable.