Instruments
Clavichord
The writer Ivor Darreg likens the clavichord to a Hawaiian steel guitar with a keyboard. The analogy is technically inaccurate -- no steel bar is involved in its tone production, and sliding tones are not involved. Yet Darreg's idea points to the expressivity of the clavichord as compared with other members of the keyboard family. A rectangular box keyboard intended primarily for domestic rather than concert use, the clavichord probably began to take shape in the early 1400s; it faded along with the harpsichord as the piano gained popularity around 1780. The keys of a clavichord operate a mechanism that, unlike the plucking action of a harpsichord, gently strikes the strings. The bars attached to the keys, known as tangents, do not hammer the strings and retract, as with a piano, but continue to touch the key. Thus the player, by wiggling his or her finger, can produce a slight vibrato (specifed notationally in the works of the clavichord's primary classical exponent, C.P.E. Bach). The clavichord can produce sounds over a dynamic range from extremely quiet to moderate in volume. The classical repertoire for the clavichord is not large, so it is something of a mystery that this little-known instrument occupies an unheralded but definite niche in the output of rock keyboardists. In an amplified version, the clavichord appeared in various 1970s progressive rock bands. Perhaps rock musicians were spurred to investigate it by the appearance, at about the same time, of the electronic keyboard known as the Clavinova -- that instrument mimicked the sound of the clavichord to some degree. Among the clavichord's modern players is Tori Amos.