Introducing the Harpsichord — Transcript

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1. 0:12So this is a harpsichord. This is the
2. 0:14big brother of the harpsichord family.
3. 0:17Um it's got the for want of a better
4. 0:19word grand piano shape. Um this has a
5. 0:21very elegant double
6. 0:23curve on it because this is a copy of a
7. 0:25German instrument from 1710.
8. 0:28So I've got three rows of jacks
9. 0:31here.
10. 0:32We've got two that are plucking parallel
11. 0:35strings and then we have these which
12. 0:38pluck the much shorter strings.
13. 0:40Um the four-foot strings there.
14. 0:48We have two keyboards on this particular
15. 0:50instrument um and that is so we can have
16. 0:53a bit of tonal contrast between loud and
17. 0:55soft, well, sort of
18. 0:58not very loud and and a little bit
19. 0:59softer. Um but it does give you a much
20. 1:02different
21. 1:03effect between things so we can have a
22. 1:05nice good crunchy chord down here.
23. 1:09And a softer
24. 1:12on the upper manual which just uses less
25. 1:14of the quills plucking the string and
26. 1:16just one set of strings as opposed to
27. 1:17two down on the bottom.
28. 1:22The harpsichord was the perfect
29. 1:23instrument for accompaniment. You found
30. 1:26them in the church, you found them in
31. 1:27the court, you found them in domestic
32. 1:29environments if you had the space and
33. 1:31the time and the money. This instrument
34. 1:32is really the sort of um top end of the
35. 1:35harpsichord buyers market in the 18th
36. 1:37century. German instruments are
37. 1:39different from French instruments,
38. 1:41Flemish instruments, and English
39. 1:43instruments. They all have different
40. 1:45flavors of types of sound because each
41. 1:47national identity wanted a certain
42. 1:50characteristic and these German
43. 1:51instruments are characterized by a very
44. 1:53singing tone.
45. 2:02Perfect for those beautiful lines in
46. 2:04Bach.
47. 2:10Et cetera. Um
48. 2:11but they also have um a quite an Italian
49. 2:14characteristic, which is a rather sort
50. 2:15of percussive lower end to the sound.
51. 2:22They also have great clarity. French
52. 2:24instruments tend to be very rich and
53. 2:25refined and noble. Um Flemish
54. 2:28instruments, which were the ones that
55. 2:29were regarded by most of Europe as the
56. 2:31perfect all-round harpsichords, tend to
57. 2:34have a nice mixture of all of these, but
58. 2:36I've always been attracted to German
59. 2:37harpsichords, which is why I've got two
60. 2:39of them.
61. 2:54I can't remember.