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A harpsichord is the general term for a family of European keyboard instruments, including the large instrument nowadays called a harpsichord, but also the smaller virginals, the muselar virginals and the spinet. All these instruments generate sound by plucking a string rather than striking one, as in a piano or clavichord. The harpsichord family is thought to have originated when a keyboard was affixed to the end of a psaltery, providing a mechanical means to pluck the strings.

1 How harpsichords work

The action is fairly similar between all harpsichords:

The keylever is a simple pivot which rocks on a pin passing through a hole drilled through it.
The jack is a thin rectangular piece of wood which sits upright on the end of the keylever, held in place by the guides - upper and lower - which are two long pieces of wood with holes through which the jacks can pass.

In the jack, a plectrum juts out almost horizontally, (normally the plectrum is angled upwards a tiny amount) and passes just under the string. Historically, plectra were normally made of crow quill, or leather, though most modern harpsichords use a plastic ( delrin or celcon ) instead.
When the front of the key is pressed (2), the back is lifted up, the jack is raised, and the plectrum plucks the string (3).

Upon lowering the key, the jack falls back down under its own weight, and the plectrum pivots backwards to allow it past the string (4). This is made possible by having the plectrum held in a tongue which is attached with a hinge and a spring to the body of the jack.
At the top of the jack, a damper of felt sticks out and keeps the string from vibrating when the key is not depressed (1).

2 Kinds of harpsichords

While the terms used to denote various members of the family are relatively standardized today, in the harpsichord's heyday, this was not the case.

2.1 Harpsichord

In modern usage, a harpsichord can either mean all the members of the family, or more specifically, the grand- piano-shaped member, with a vaguely triangular case accommodating long bass strings at the left and short treble strings at the right; characteristically, the profile is more elongated than that of a modern piano, with a sharper curve to the bentside . A harpsichord can have from one to three, and occasionally even more, strings per note. Often one is at four-foot pitch, an octave higher than the normal eight-foot pitch. Single manuals , or keyboards are common, especially in Italian harpichords, though many other countries tended to produce double-manuals.

2.2 Virginals

The virginal or virginals is a smaller and simpler rectangular form of the harpsichord, with only one string per note running parallel to the keyboard on the long side of the case. The origin of the word is obscure but it is usually linked to the fact that the instrument was frequently played by young women. Note that the word "virginal" in Elizabethan times was often used to designate any kind of harpsichord; thus the masterworks of William Byrd and his contempories were often played on full-size Italian style harpsichords, and not just on the virginals as we call it today. Virginals are described either as spinet virginals (the usual type) or muselar virginals.

2.2.1 Spinet virginals

In spinet virginals, the keyboard is placed on the left, and the strings are plucked at one end, as in other members of the harpsichord family. This is the more common arrangement, and an instrument described simply as a "virginal" is likely to be a spinet virginal.

2.2.2 Muselar virginals

In muselar virginals, or muselars, the keyboard is placed to the right, so that the strings are plucked in the middle of their sounding length. This gives a warm and rich sound, but at a price: the action for the left hand is inevitably placed at the centre of the instrument's sounding board, with the result that any mechanical noise from this action is amplified. An eighteenth century commentator said that muselars "grunt in the bass like young pigs". In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, muselars were nonetheless popular, but they fell out of use in the eighteenth. In addition to mechanical noise, the central plucking point in the bass makes repetition difficult, because the motion of the still-sounding string interferes with the ability of the plectrum to connect again. Thus the muselar was better suited to chord-and-melody music, without complex left-hand parts.

2.3 Spinet

Finally, a harpsichord with the strings set at an angle to the keyboard (usually of about 30 degrees) is called a spinet. In such an instrument, the strings are too close to fit the jacks between them in the normal way; instead, the strings are arranged in pairs, the jacks are placed in the large gaps between pairs, and they face in opposite directions, plucking the strings adjacent to the gap.

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