A harpsichord , the piano's predecessor, is played by the use of a keyboard, with levers that a player presses to produce a sound. When the player presses one or more keys, a mechanism is triggered, which picks one or more strings with a small pen. The precursor of the harpsichord, around 1300, was most likely a handheld struminstrument called the psaltery, to which a keyboard was later added. The harpsichord was popular during the Renaissance and Baroque eras. Its popularity declined with the development of the piano in 1700. 

History harpsichord

1300

The precursor of the harpsichord was the psaltery. When played with a pick in one hand, and the strings muted by the other hand, it can handle fast organic parts. The psalterium is occasionally played flat on a round, but it is then easily confused with the chopping board, which was played with hammers like a xylophone. By the end of the 13th century, a keyboard was added to the psalterium, perpendicular to the sounding board in a way similar to the portative organs of the time. It remained a small handy instrument and had the Latin name clavicytherium. This is probably the instrument referred to as an exaquir in 1387, “an instrument like an organ that sounds through strings”. This carvings are located in Kefermarkt, Austria.

1400

What we know today as a harpsichord seems to have evolved in Flanders at the beginning of the 14th century. The earliest had the thick suitcases typical of later Flemish instruments, but were small by later standards and had no jack-rail. Surviving their complex picking mechanisms in a series of drawings by Henri Arnaut in Burgundy. Some of them plucked the strings with a spring such as the psalter, some with metal picks, and at least one struck the strings with a metal staple in the chopping board way. 

Loading full article...