By Mrs. VIOLET GORDON
WOODHOUSE
THE Harpsichord, the most important of all the ancestors of our pianoforte, held the place of its more full-toned modern representative during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. In Bach and Handel's music it figured regularly as a support to the orchestral instruments, and listeners to the Bach Cantatas are by now familiar with the word Continue, the ground bass from which the player of the harpsichord (or cembalo, or clavicembalo) filled up the harmonies.
The harpsichord differs from the modern pianoforte chiefly in this, that the strings are not struck by hammers, as the player depresses the keys, but plucked either by quills or by little hook-like pieces of hard leather. Originally, it had only one keyboard, so that no variation of tone was possible, but afterwards all manner of devices came into use for making louder and softer tone at the player's will, and many of the best examples which have come down to us have two keyboards, with several stops like organs.
Mrs. Violet Gordon Woodhouse has for a number of years made a special study of the instrument and its literature, and is known throughout the world as one of the leading exponents of its truly charming possibilities.