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and Scarlatti. In fact Scarlatti wrote about 550 pieces

of music for the harpsichord which are called sonatas.

You will also notice from the photo it was common

practice to richly
decorative the instrument

with various paintings

countryside scenes. You
will also notice that on the

manuals the colours of

the notes are reversed,
different from that of a

piano. This was a common

feature for both the
harpsichord and the organ during the 18th century.

One of the problems of the harpsichord, since it has
three sets of strings it needs to be tuned almost every

day and that is time consuming. The sound of the

harpsichord is very different from that of the piano
and you will see below an Internet link to a website

where you can hear a harpsichord being played.

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/m/music-for-the-harpsichord/

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