So how did the harpsichord as we are familiar with it come to be? Well, as mentioned, it began with the psalter, indeed a specific type of psalter called a canon, to which a keyboard was added. The problem now was to work out a mechanism whereby the keys on the keyboard could operate devices to pluck the strings, and though the first attempt, called, rather dully, a monochord, was not able to make music - and was more used for tuning and finding musical pitch - the first real keyboard instrument ancestor of the harpsichord was known as the clavichord. There are different types of harpsichords - the Clavicytherium, spinet, virginal - but the differences between them are largely technical and not really of any interest unless you’re studying to play the instrument or really get to grips with its mechanics, neither of which is the object here. So, for all intents and purposes, and for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to use the term harpsichord interchangeably.
The first ones were quite small, having grown, as it were, from the hand-held psalter, they measured maybe three feet across, but by the fifteenth century harpsichords measuring five to six feet were being built. Incidentally, our man Guido of Arezzo was involved in the development of the monochord, adding a moving bridge underneath the string, which gave it better intonation, but still failed to make it regarded as any sort of instrument capable of making music. With the addition of more strings and tangents - metal wedges that struck the strings - the monochord metamorphosed over the next century into the true predecessor of the harpsichord, the clavichord.
Playing one of these was not easy, by all accounts. For anyone who has gone through the trying process of learning the piano - a real piano, not a synth or MIDI one - one of the hardest things to do (other than play two different parts of the instrument independently with either hand, something I never managed, hence my giving up grumpily and using the many voices installed on my synthesiser) is to press the keys with the correct pressure. Some music requires only soft notes, others hard, strident ones, and I imagine getting this balance right may be one of the reasons so many people begin, but quickly abandon, trying to learn the instrument. However those people should count themselves lucky they never had to learn to play a clavichord, where the keys had to be pressed with the correct pressure in order to get the proper
note, every time, as there were two tangents for each wire.
In 1503 Giovanni Spinnetti invented a new take on the clavichord, which he modestly called the spinet. However this has widely been regarded as something of a step back, rather than one forward. With much of its area taken up by the soundboard, and having longer strings, the spinet was much louder than its predecessor, but was unable to produce the dynamic sounds possible with a clavichord, and this is why. The increased length of the strings meant that they had to be plucked, rather than struck, and so the pressing of a key caused upward movement of the jack - the piece of wood that contained the quill which plucked the string, and which had a spring on the end - which then allowed the end of the quill to pluck the string. When the key moves back up, the sound is dulled by a piece of cloth attached to the end of the jack. In England, Spinnetti’s invention was called the virginal, possibly, though I haven’t confirmed, due to its main players being young women.
The harpsichord, then, was basically a larger spinet (or virginal; some English people persisted in calling them the latter) but with more strings, but it was loud and quite harsh-sounding. Within the context of an orchestra - into which it was introduced in the seventeenth century - it was tolerable, but as a solo instrument it grated on the ears, and many experiments were attempted to try to dampen its acerbic sound. Of these, only four were deemed of worth. The forte stop lifted the dampers, the soft stop pressed the dampers onto the strings to stop the vibrations, the buff stop used soft cloth or leather between the jacks and the strings, and the shifting stop shifted the whole keyboard in an early form of transposition. The bus stop was where buses took on and let off passengers, the short stop is a position in baseball I believe, and the full stop is at the end of this sentence, and every other.
And yet, despite the harsh sound of the instrument, manufacturers endeavoured to make the harpsichord even bigger, with sixteen-foot specimens coming out, but because the size of these necessitated the strings being thinner, the sound became less musical and the size went back to around eight feet. More strings per note were added, and, around 1600, a second keyboard (known at the time as a manual), which meant the player could use two or three strings at once, or separately, and combined with pedals for the instrument helped to make the harpsichord easier on the ear.
But the limitations of the harpsichord irked composers, who felt stilted and restricted when using it, and needed something that would allow them to express themselves better, which is why around the late nineteenth century interest in the harpsichord diminished as the bright new thing on the horizon, the piano, beckoned the artistic and the musical.
Some of the greatest innovations concerning the harpsichord came out of Flanders in the early seventeenth century, mostly from the famous manufacturing firm of the Rucker Family, who not only made functional and durable instruments, but beautifully ornamented and finished ones, too, real works of art. They were heavier than the ones made in Italy, and sounded better, Italian ones were generally considered too light, both in terms of their construction and their sound, and believed only really suitable to accompany a singer. Rucker’s models could easily grace any orchestra, or produce solo instrumental works, and became very popular. They were elegant, smart and looked well in a lady’s drawing room.
So popular were they that in eighteenth-century France, a process called
grand ravalement became very widespread, where restorers would take apart surviving Ruckers, pimp them up and sell them as genuine models from the Flanders factories. In England, the greatest harpsichord makers were Jacob Kirkman and Burkat Shudi. Based on the inner construction of the Rucker models, Kirkman’s harpsichords had veneering and wood marquetry, and certainly made a statement for and about anyone purchasing one. To some degree, even if you couldn’t play the thing it would look great in your living room, and would be a conversation piece. To nobody’s surprise, when the piano began to become popular in the late eighteenth century Kirkman went on to produce them, leaving the harpsichord to history.
Shudi was quite the innovator, and surely the more successful of the two, as his customers included such giants as Handel and Haydn, the emperor Frederick the Great and the painter Gainsborough. Mozart took one for a spin but didn’t buy it, and the empress Maria Theresa and the Prince of Wales could always be sure of a frequent flyer discount at his shop. He also exported to Russia and Naples, where in the latter state his instrument caused quite a stir among the natives, who were probably fed up buying Guaranteed Italian products that fell apart as soon as you got them home.
