Press a key, a quill plucks—volume never changes
On a harpsichord, how hard you strike the key barely matters. The jack rises, a quill or plastic plectrum plucks, and the note blooms at a fixed loudness. That mechanical honesty ruled Renaissance and Baroque continuo until Cristofori’s hammered piano, around 1700, made dynamics a player’s choice—and nearly erased the plucked keyboard for a century.
A key rocks on a pivot, lifting one or more wooden jacks that hold a plectrum. Historically the tip was bird quill or leather; many modern instruments use Delrin or Celcon plastic. After the pluck, a swiveling tongue lets the descending plectrum slip past without sounding again, and a felt damper kills the string. The family name covers virginals, muselar, and spinet as well as the full-sized instrument.
Invention is usually placed in the late fourteenth century, with early examples small and high-pitched. Sixteenth-century Italian makers settled on light cases, thin walls, and low-tension brass in two choirs on one manual. From the late sixteenth century the Flemish Ruckers workshop built heavier instruments with steel treble tension and the first two-manual designs for transposition. French “expressive doubles” by the Blanchet family and Pascal Taskin let each keyboard control separate choirs; English Kirkman and Shudi instruments prized power; German builders such as Hieronymus Albrecht Hass added sixteen-foot and two-foot ranks.
Choirs—stops named in organ feet—vary both loudness and colour. Eight-foot pitch sounds at written pitch; four-foot sounds an octave higher; sixteen-foot an octave lower. Plucking nearer the nut brightens the tone. Couplers, including the French shove coupler, let manuals share jacks. By the late eighteenth century the fortepiano’s touch-sensitive hammers had largely ousted the harpsichord except for opera recitative accompaniment. Mid-twentieth-century rebuilders Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, and Martin Skowroneck restored Baroque construction methods that now dominate the revival.
Source: Harpsichord
