The first comprehensive technical and historical study of stringed keyboard instruments from their fourteenth-century origins to modern times.

Intended for the Music Literature course for music majors.

Although eighteenth-century Viennese keyboard music, especially by such composers as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, is among the most popular ever written, there has been surprisingly little serious research into the instruments for which it was composed. This book fills that gap. Based on evidence from primary source material, much of it previously undiscovered or neglected, Maunder traces the history and development of the various keyboard instruments available in Vienna throughout the eighteenth century--harpsichords, clavichords, and pianos--and their use by composers and performers.

This book looks at the history of the three types of stringed keyboard instrument that dominated Western music from the sixteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century.The Virginal, which provided the musical accompaniment to the reign of Elizabeth 1st, was part of the family that also included the harpsichord, which was the concert keyboard for over two hundred years, and its smaller cousin the spinet, which could be found in ladies' chambers across Europe. But not every polite lady owned a spinet - for some this instrument, with its plucked strings, was altogether too harsh -and the clavichord, which used flexible quills to stroke the strings, was much a much gentler option. In the latter part of the eighteenth century a new type of keyboard began to sweep all of these instruments into history: the fortepiano, the forerunner of the piano. This instrument used hammers to strike the strings, giving the possibility, for the first time, of real dynamic contrast.

Written by a distinguished musicologist, this comprehensive history of musical instruments traces their evolution from prehistoric times in a fusion of music, anthropology, and fine arts. Includes 24 plates and 167 illustrations.