Keyboard Instruments in Early Modern England

Para1The modern-day piano’s ancestors in early modern England looked quite different. Popular keyboard instruments of the day included the harpsichord, virginal, and clavichord. Each of these keyboard instruments sounds distinctive, and of them, the harpsichord is the most widely played in the 21st century.

Harpsichords

Para2The harpsichord was the primary keyboard instrument in early modern Europe. Similar to a modern piano, the harpsichord is a stringed instrument in a large wooden case that produces sound by a plucking mechanism that is triggered once a key is pressed on the keyboard. Its shape, size, and sound varied depending on which region of Europe where the instrument was built. The register of an early modern harpsichord ranges from one octave up to three octaves up.
Para3In England, a common harpsichord shape would be square with a two to three octave register. Unlike the standard 88 key piano today, harpsichords had a wide range of registers, shapes, sizes, and tones depending on the area, time, and customs of the builder. The sound created from the plucking mechanism gave a much higher and brighter sound compared to the sound from the hammers on a piano.
Para4The harpsichord began to lose popularity around the end of the 19th century as the piano made its way into mainstream music. Since the development of the piano, the harpsichord has become a callback sound to the Renaissance and is seldom heard in modern compositions.

Virginals

Para5Virginals were traditionally played by women in wealthier households for entertainment of guests. They were part of the suite of gentile accomplishments that young ladies were supposed to acquire, including needlework, dancing, and household management. In Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale, King Leontes’s jealousy leads him to see the way his childhood friend, Polixenes, touches his wife’s hand as being like a musician touching the keyboard, at the same time making clear his obsession with what he believes to be her lack of chastity. He mutters, Still virginalling on her palm? (1.2.125), showing that audiences would have been familiar with the instrument and its role in feminine accomplishments.
Para6While in the same family as the harpsichord, virginals have two distinct differences. One is the shape and look of the virginal. While harpsichords take on the look of a piano, with a large case and permanent legs, virginals look more like a box or a cabinet than a musical instrument. If it wasn’t for the keyboard, the cabinets of virginals could easily be mistaken for furniture. The cabinets were moveable and placed atop tables or other stands when played.
Para7The second difference is the direction of the strings. Unlike harpsichords, virginal strings run parallel to the keyboard.

Clavichords

Para8The clavichord creates sound by metal tongues called tangents striking the strings inside the cabinet. Unlike the virginals and harpsichord, a clavichord keyboard is touch sensitive, meaning the more force the player applies, the louder the sound. This style of keyboard is the most similar to the piano used today.
Para9Unlike the piano, the clavichord does not have one string for each note. Multiple notes use on the same string, so holding a particular note mutes another note if not played properly. This made the clavichord not only one of the more difficult keyboard instruments to play, but also had limitations in creating chords because multiple notes could not be pressed at the same time.
Para10The clavichord is also a quieter instrument, less useful in large gatherings. However, it was widely used from the 1500s onward in Europe to teach young people music. The tone of the clavichord sounds like a mixture of a piano and a harpsichord, with the brightness of a harpsichord balanced against the resonance of a piano.

Keyboards Today

Para11The harpsichord, virginals, and clavichord all played an important role in the development of modern-day piano or even in the digital MIDI keyboard. The keyboard itself still carries out the same function today as it did in the 15th century, triggering a tone. Whether that trigger be a hammer, metal tangent, plucking mechanism, or digital binary, the keyboard serves the same function, to create music.

Key Print Sources

Rowland, David. Early Keyboard Instruments: A Practical Guide. Cambridge University, 2001.

Key Online Sources

Best, Michael. Keyboard Instruments. Shakespeare’s Life and Times. Internet Shakespeare Editions. University of Victoria, 4 Jan. 2011. https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Library/SLT/literature/music/keyboard.html.
Montagu, Jeremy. Clavichord. The Oxford Companion to Music. Ed. Alison Latham. Oxford University Press, 2011. Oxford Reference. https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/acref/9780199579037.001.0001/acref-9780199579037-e-1449?rskey=sQoF7d&result=1.

Prosopography

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

Leah Hamby

Leah Hamby is the primary encoder for the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Aside from encoding, she also works as an editor for the project and contributed several articles of her own. She has been working on the EMEE since February 2023. As of February 2026, she is soon to graduate with honours from Utah Valley University with a major in history and a minor in creative writing. Her other work with the LEMDO program includes remediating William Kemp’s Kemp’s Nine Day’s Wonder for the Digital Renaissance Editions.

Matthew Davies

Matthew Davies was a student at Utah Valley University.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata

Authority title Keyboard Instruments in Early Modern England
Type of text Critical
Publisher University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series Early Modern England Encyclopedia
Source
By Matthew Davies, inspired by Michael Best’s Shakespeare’s Life and Times, Internet Shakespeare Editions
Editorial declaration This document uses Canadian English spelling
Edition Released with Early Modern England Encyclopedia 1.0a
Sponsor(s)

Early Modern England Encyclopedia

Anthology Leads: Kate McPherson and Kate Moncrief.
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Document status published, peer-reviewed
Funder(s) Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Mitacs Globalink Research Internship
Utah Valley University
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