Instruments
Harpsichord
The most important predecessor of the modern piano, the harpsichord was the dominant keyboard instrument in Western classical music for several centuries until the piano supplanted it in the early 1700s. Smaller and much lighter than a piano, a harpsichord generally resembles it in shape. The harpsichord features a mechanism essentially similar to that of a piano: tuned strings mounted on a frame are sounded when the keyboard sets a sounding device in motion. The biggest difference is that the harpsichord's strings are plucked rather than struck with hammers when the player touches a key. The force with which the key is struck has little effect on the volume produced, and the piano was developed in part to enable the player to vary the dynamics of the music. Widely identified with the Baroque period and with such pillars of the keyboard repertory as the Goldberg Variations of Johann Sebastian Bach, the harpsichord was also a common instrument during the Renaissance. It first appeared around the year 1400. The harpsichord has several times enjoyed a vogue in popular music, its quasi-mechanical sound providing an inexpensive suggestion of electronic sound.