Early Keyboard Instruments

The New Grove Musical Instruments Series, a companion to the much-acclaimed New Grove Composer Biography Series, presents in book form many of the lengthy and informative articles published in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Each book is a comprehensive guide to all facets of an instrument: its history, construction, repertory, playing techniques, and makers, written by leading authorities.

The resulting volumes are suitable for performers, students, historians, and amateurs. All the material has been expanded and updated and each volume is supplemented by a full glossary of terms, an index of makers, and a comprehensive bibliography. The series is liberally illustrated with diagrams and photographs.

The New Grove Early Keyboard Instruments begins with and account of the structure and history of the clavichord. The main part of the book, however, is devoted to the central early keyboard instrument, the harpsichord. Research on the harpsichord, particularly the Italian instrument, has proceeded apace during the mid-1980s, and Denzil Wraight's account of the history and structure of the Italian instrument from the 16th century to the 18th presents much new material. The full account of the North european harpsichord (from Flanders, France, England and Germany) published in The New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments has been further revised and updated in the light of recent research. Further chapters are devoted to the spinet and the virginal, and to those numerous if often short-lived instruments of the 16th to the 18th centuries whose names have so often baffled music-lovers (and scholars too) in the past. Finally, there is a directory of makers, covering the earliest times through to the present day, along with a bibliography and a comprehensive index.