Virginals

Muselar Virginal Demonstration

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• published: 24 May 2008
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Virginals From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Muselar (also muselaar or muselars) virginals were made only in northern Europe. Here, the keyboard is placed right of centre and the strings are plucked about one third the way along their sounding length. This gives a warm rich and fundamental sound (somewhat reminiscent of a square wave), but at a price: the action for the left hand is inevitably placed in the middle of the instrument's sounding board, with the result that any mechanical noise from this action is amplified. In addition to mechanical noise, from the string vibrating against the descending plectrum, the central plucking point in the bass makes repetition difficult, because the motion of the still-sounding string interferes with the ability of the plectrum to connect again. An 18th century commentator (Van Blankenberg, 1739) said that muselars "grunt in the bass like young pigs". Thus the muselar was better suited to chord-and-melody music without complex left hand parts. The muselar could also be provided with a stop called the Harpichordium (also arpichordium), which consists of lead hooks being being lightly applied against the ends of the bass strings in such a manner that the string vibrating against the hook produces a buzzing, snarling sound. Muselars were popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and their ubiquity has been compared to that of the upright piano in the early 20th century, but like other types of virginals they fell out of use in the 18th century.