Instruments - Part 31

Harpsichord, Clavichord

The harpsichord is a keyboard instrument that was played in the Renaissance and Baroque periods before the piano was invented.  Above, the harpsichord has a keyboard like a piano, though the harpsichord's keyboard usually covers 4 to 5 octaves, which is less than the piano's 7+ octaves.

Above, a guy sitting next to a harpsichord.  So, what's the main difference between a harpsichord and a piano?  In a piano, when you strike a key, it makes a felt-covered hammer strike a string to produce the sound, and the harder you strike the key, the louder the sound will be.

In a harpsichord, when you strike a key, the action plucks the string (like a harp).  No matter now hard or softly you strike the key, when the string is plucked, the loudness of the note is the same, so the player has no control over loudness.  That's why, when the piano was invented, it quickly replaced the harpsichord, because it let players vary the loudness to play expressively.  The very name of the piano was originally pianoforte, which is Italian for "soft-loud".

This 1640 painting by Andrea Sacchi is called Marc'Antonio Pasqualini Crowned by Apollo.  In the painting, Pasqualini is playing a clavicytherium, which is a type of harpsichord where the strings are upright instead of horizontal.

Pasqualini was the leading castrato opera singer of his time.  Castrati were singers who had been castrated before puberty so they would retain their soprano voices yet have the lung power of an adult male.  Yes, they used to actually do that to some boys!  It is believed that Pasqualini had an ongoing homosexual relationship with his patron, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, who was a relative of the pope.

Another type of small harpsichord was called a spinet, not to be confused with a spinet piano, shown above in an abandoned house.

The clavichord, above, is another keyboard instrument from the Renaissance and Baroque periods.  In a clavichord, when you strike a key, it does not pluck the string; it strikes the string with a small piece of metal called a tangent.  Note that the strings go sideways, so the instrument is quite small.

Although it allowed the player control over loudness depending on how hard the key was struck, even at its loudest it was quite soft.  It has been said that the clavichord is the only instrument that can be played with a cat sleeping on it, without waking the cat.

The inside lid of this clavichord is decorated with a copy of part of Caravaggio's painting Amor Vincit Omnia (Love Conquers All), showing love as a winged Cupid.  In Caravaggio's original, more of Cupid is visible, and he's naked.

We end with a 2001 painting by Turkish artist Taner Ceylan called Ball.  It shows some presumably wealthy guys going at it in what looks like a ballroom (dare I say they're balling?) while being serenaded by a string trio and served brandy by a servant.

In the right corner is a clavichord or harpsichord.  How can I tell?  Because (1) the colors of the white notes and black notes are reversed, which was sometimes done in harpsichords and clavichords, but not in pianos, and (2) it looks too small to be a harpsichord (and definitely too small to be a piano), so it's probably a clavichord.

As for the guys doing it on the floor, well, amor vincit omnia.

We'll see more of Taner Ceylan's art in a future post.