Harpsichord Clavichord Fortepiano

The third edition of Donald H. Boalch's Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord, 1440-1840 is a complete revision of the second edition published in 1974. The volume is now divided into two parts. Part I contains biographical details of all known makers, including some 500 not listed previously, and updated entries for more than 400 makers appearing in the second edition. Enlarged (and in some cases extended) descriptions of more than 2,000 surviving instruments by the makers are consigned to Part II, and the whole is complemented by a number of tables, a geographical and chronological conspectus of makers, and a new Index of Technical Terms in seven languages by Dr Andreas H. Roth.

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.

This book looks at the history of the three types of stringed keyboard instrument that dominated Western music from the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century.The Virginal, which provided the musical accompaniment to the reign of Elizabeth 1st, was part of the family that also included the harpsichord, which was the concert keyboard for over two hundred years, and its smaller cousin the spinet, which could be found in ladies' chambers across Europe. But not every polite lady owned a spinet - for some this instrument, with its plucked strings, was altogether too harsh -and the clavichord, which used flexible quills to stroke the strings, was much a much gentler option. In the latter part of the eighteenth century a new type of keyboard began to sweep all of these instruments into history: the fortepiano, the forerunner of the piano. This instrument used hammers to strike the strings, giving the possibility, for the first time, of real dynamic contrast.

Although eighteenth-century Viennese keyboard music, especially by such composers as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, is among the most popular ever written, there has been surprisingly little serious research into the instruments for which it was composed. This book fills that gap. Based on evidence from primary source material, much of it previously undiscovered or neglected, Maunder traces the history and development of the various keyboard instruments available in Vienna throughout the eighteenth century--harpsichords, clavichords, and pianos--and their use by composers and performers.

This is a richly illustrated history of the clavichord, the forerunner of the modern piano.