Which instrument?

Deciding which instrument is the most appropriate for any part of the early keyboard repertory can be problematic. The scores of many keyboard pieces contain no mention of any particular instrument while others are labelled ambiguously. Even those that are specific may be difficult to interpret (‘for harpsichord or piano’, etc.). A number of factors need to be taken into account before a decision is made.

The meaning of some terms associated with the keyboard repertory changed during the period of their use. In 1619 Praetorius commented that the English term ‘virginals’ referred to a wide variety of plucked-string keyboard instruments. This broad meaning for the term was common throughout the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries. It is almost certainly the sense in which the term is used, for example, in Parthenia or the maydenhead of the first musicke that ever was printed for the virginalls composed by three famous masters: William Byrd, Dr. John Bull & Orlando Gibbons (1612). From the middle of the seventeenth century, however, formulations such as ‘for the virginals or harpsichord’ are given, suggesting that the wider use of the term ‘virginals’ was declining. Moreover, there is some evidence to suggest that the term ‘harpsichord’ was beginning to be used as the new generic term for plucked-string keyboards in England, although it was frequently used in a more specific sense.

Comparable generic terms were used on the continent.