Finishing the keyboard

Since the keyboard and case are not brought together until a late stage in the construction of the virginal, I started finishing the keyboard before the case was strung and the left bridge was pinned. The key levers are made of basswood (also known as lime - this comes from linden trees, and has nothing to do with the citrus fruit) for its strength, lightness, and ease of working. However, for a durable key surface with good feel, a veneer must be applied to the upper surfaces of the natural keys where they will be touched by the players' fingers. The most common wood veneer for this purpose is probably boxwood, a slow-growing wood that is actually denser than water.

Key levers after and before sanding

The veneers had been glued to the levers an unknown number of years ago using contact cement (which is the adhesive recommended in the ©1975 manual), but the bond had failed and some of the boxwood slips detached from the levers with just a light touch. I removed them all and sanded all of the dried contact cement from both the key levers and the boxwood. Sanding the 1/16" thick veneer was a challenge. Infamous mobster John Dillinger had his fingerprints burned off with acid in a futile attempt to avoid detection; I think my method may actually be more thorough.

Once the levers and veneer slips were completely free of the old adhesive, they could be glued back together. I chose to use normal yellow wood glue (Titebond) instead of contact cement for a couple of reasons; first, I did not want the adhesive to fail again in a few years, and second, the glue takes a minute or two to begin to set, leaving time to rearrange the veneer if it doesn't go on the lever exactly straight.

The veneers are in two pieces - a wide one for the head of each key, and a narrow one for the tail. The heads and tails were not cut from the same pieces of veneer, so I made no attempt to match the grain. I did save the most interesting head pieces for the "C" keys, though.

Veneers for Key Heads and Tails

After the veneers had been glued to the levers, they had to be sanded down so that the head slips were flush with the sides of the levers. For the tail pieces, this would not have been a good idea since the tails of the levers are not even close to being square.

Tails of key levers are not square.

At this point, the arcade mouldings are attached to the front of the key levers, where the boxwood slips overhang the levers. The arcades supplied with the kit are fairly pedestrian compared to some that are available.

Once the arcades are on, the natural keys are put back on the keyboard frame and a small sanding block is used to file all the boxwood slips down so that they are all the same length.

Now the boxwood head slips have to be shaped in the traditional Italian style. First, two thin, shallow lines are scored right across the keys, one where the head and tail pieces meet, and one 1/8" closer to the front of the keyboard (the "proximal end" - impress your guests at your next cocktail party). A straightedge clamped down to the keyboard (after removing the sharps) to provide a cutting guide, and the manual recommends using an X-acto knife with the blade broken off about halfway down to make the cut. I found it difficult to control the super-sharp blade of the X-acto knife, and will try another alternative next time. This was the most nerve-wracking part of the construction process so far; if the blade goes astray (and believe me, it really wants to) and makes a cut in the wrong place, you have to throw away the boxwood slip and start over with another one. I was only able to avoid disaster by taking it slowly and doing one key at a time; even so, I spread this task out over a couple of days.

With the score lines in place, a small notch is cut into each edge of each key (but not the outside edges of the top and bottom keys!) to serve as a stop for rounding the edges. The edges of the keys in an Italian style keyboard are rounded from the proximal end up to the first score line, then kept perfectly square for the rest of the key. This improves the feel of the keyboard in a way that I can't describe, but somehow makes playing the instrument feel easier and more natural, in addition to giving the keyboard an attractive and finished look. I started shaping with a metal file and finished up with some fine sandpaper. You keep your thumbnail in the notch you made earlier to keep the file from touching the part that is supposed to be kept square. There wasn't much left of my thumbnail after this job was completed, but at least the keyboard looks good. Here is a sequence of photos illustrating the process:

Once all the keys had been through this process, I started smoothing the tops of the veneers with several grades of fine sandpaper, starting with 400 grit and progressing through 800, 1000, and finally 2000 grit. These superfine grits can be purchased from auto parts stores; hardware stores almost never carry anything beyond 400 or sometimes 600 grit. The dense boxwood takes on an almost glassy surface after sanding with the 2000 grit.

After the keys had been shaped, I applied two thin coats of tung oil finish to the boxwood veneer, which penetrates the wood and protects it from absorbing oils from the fingers.

Pinning the left bridge

Now that the virginal is completely strung, it is time to pin the left bridge. Small metal pins are attached to the inside edges of both bridges to hold the strings in the right place. If the bridges were not pinned, or pinned poorly, some strings would be further from the jacks than other strings, leading to inconsistent voicing since those plectra would have to be longer than the others. Pinning the strings to the bridges also increases the effect of the acoustical function of the bridge; the pins hold the strings tightly against the bridges, helping maximize the transfer of vibration from the strings to the bridges. The bridges then transfer those vibrations to the soundboard, which transfers its vibrations to the air, from the air to our ears, etc.

On the left side of the virginal, the treble hitchpins are down below the level of the bridge. On the right side, the wire is wrapped around the tuning pins so that they leave the pins just a few millimeters above the level of the soundboard. So on both sides of the instrument, the hitchpins and tuning pins hold the strings down against the bridges, increasing the pressure of the strings against the bridges for the aforementioned acoustical reasons. This is called downbearing.

You can also see that the bridge pins pull the strings toward the front of the instrument, quite dramatically in the highest strings. This is called sidebearing and it serves the same acoustical purpose as downbearing.

Moving toward the front of the instrument, the bass hitchpins are set in a higher plane than the treble hitchpins, meaning there is little downbearing; and they also provide little in the way of sidebearing. The theory is that excessive pressure on the bridge by these heavier strings will dampen the vibrating of the bridge and lead to a dull, muffled tone. I have verified this by sounding notes while pressing down with some force on the bridge and listening to the results.
To provide the acoustical benefit of sidebearing without interfering with the free operation of the bridge, these lower strings are backpinned. This simply means that another bridgepin is inserted on the far side of the bridge, offset slightly toward the rear of the instrument. The bass strings are then threaded through the path between these two pins. In this way, the back pins provide a degree of sidebearing, while remaining in mechanical contact with the bridge, reducing the damping effect that would result if a similar amount of sidebearing were introduced by the bass hitchpins.

Although both bridges on the virginal must be pinned, the right bridge was already pinned by the previous owner of the kit; it was about the last task he completed on the project. To locate these right bridge pins, the manufacturer provided cross-marks on the full-sized drawing; the builder simply attaches the drawing to the bridge, and then makes dimples in the bridge with a sharp tool such as an awl. After removing the drawing, each dimple is drilled out and the pins are inserted into the resulting holes.

While this works fine for the right bridge, following the same procedure for the left bridge would require an unrealistic level of accuracy from the manufacturer, draftsman, and builder, so another solution is required. Ideally, a plectrum length of about 1/8" is desired; so, we put a piece of heavy cardstock in the damper slot of a jack, push it back so that exactly 1/8" of the cardstock projects from the jack, and place the jack in the jack guide. We then pull the string that corresponds to that particular slot in the jack guide into position on the left bridge, and make a dimple in the bridge where the string meets the bridge. After all the dimples are made, we drill them all out and insert the pins.



This was a simple and straightforward task. I only ran into two problems; first, the #27 drill bit used to drill out the holes is so small that the chuck in my electric hand-drill could not grip it; I had to use a bit of tape on the end of the bit to give it enough girth for the chuck to hold it in place. This did not work very well, and I had to reposition or replace the tape after every two or three holes drilled. The next time I do this, I will look for a better solution.



The other problem I had was due to my own inexperience and carelessness. The strings are supposed to run just behind the pins on the inside of the bridge, but a couple of times I forgot this and wound up making dimples in the bridge on the wrong side of the string. This is particularly easy to do on the bass strings, which have to be pulled with the fingers toward the back of the instrument to get them into the correct position before the dimple is made.

Anatomy of a Virginal: the Jack

N.B.: I am deeply indebted to Mr. Carey Beebe of Carey Beebe Harpsichords Australia for information and insight concerning modern jacks. At his site can be found his own lucid description of the jack mechanism, as well as many photographs of both modern and traditional jacks.


The jacks perform two crucial roles in the virginal: first, a jack plucks the string when a key is depressed, and second, it damps the string to stop the note when the key is released.

Modern jacks are usually made from molded plastic, although some makers offer traditional jacks in hardwood (at increased cost). Installed in each jack is a tongue, an independent piece which rides on a hinge so that it may rock back and forth. And into each tongue is installed a plectrum, the little strip of thin material that actually plucks the string.

One of the great breakthroughs of instrument design must be the simple yet ingenious design of the harpsichord/virginal jack. The trick is that the tongue must hold the plectrum rigidly in place on the way up when the key is depressed, so that the plectrum plucks the string, causing it to vibrate and produce the sound. But at the conclusion of the note, as the jack comes back down to its resting place, the tongue must allow the plectrum to pivot backwards and slip around the string. If this did not happen, after the initial pluck the plectrum would simply come to rest on top of the string and the jack would have to be reset manually before that note could be played again. In such a case, each note could only be played once in each piece; twelve-tone serial music probably would have evolved much earlier in history.



Fortunately for us, someone (no one knows who) figured out that placing a little stop in front of the tongue keeps the tongue immobilized as the jack rides up, holding the plectrum steady in order to pluck the string. On the way back down, the hinge allows the tongue to pivot back out of the way of the string, and then a small spring (this was traditionally made of brass wire, or more usually, hog bristle) attached to the back of the tongue pops it back into place under the string, ready to pluck again. In real time, this whole operation takes only a tiny fraction of a second, allowing a single note to be repeated quite rapidly.

Nowadays the springs, along with most of the rest of the jack, are normally made of the same plastic (usually Delrin) as the rest of the jack, rescuing many thousands of innocent hogs from the cruel practice of annual depilation.

A small felt damper is inserted into a slot in the top of the jack, with the bottom of the felt positioned just above the level of the plectrum. This felt damps the string, stopping the note when the key is released. Since the plectrum and damper are part of the same mechanism, there is no way to lift all the dampers simultaneously, as with a piano damper pedal, and each note ends as soon as its key is released. In terms of practical musical impact, this means that any "smoothing" or "blending" of one note into the next to achieve a legato effect must be done entirely by the fingers; no cheating with the damper pedal. Sicut erat in principio, et nunc, et semper …

The jack pictured here is not from the Zuckermann virginal kit, but from a French-style harpsichord built from a Hubbard kit. It is a little more sophisticated than the old Zuckermann jack, although the modern touches also create some practical problems. The major differences are the tongue stop, the bottom adjustment screw, and the hinge. In the Zuckermann jack, the hinge is dispensed with altogether and the spring takes over its function. This sounds a bit suspect but it works well enough in practice. We will see how it holds up to constant use once the instrument is completed. As you can see in the photos, the tongue stop in the Hubbard jack is actually the end of a small set screw, which allows the projection of the plectrum to be adjusted. While it is a fine idea to be able to control the plectrum projection so conveniently, it also changes the angle of the plectrum from 90 degrees to a more acute angle, which can adversely affect the voicing. In addition, this raises the height of the plectrum, meaning the string is plucked earlier in the keystroke. Ideally, all of the plectra should pluck their strings at the same point in the stroke - otherwise the response of the instrument becomes inconsistent, undermining the precise rhythmic control which is a hallmark of fine harpsichord playing. Finally, the Hubbard jack includes a bottom adjustment screw, allowing the overall height of the jack to be adjusted. Again, it's a nice convenience, but the small screw heads can dig into the end felt on the key levers, wearing through and making it impossible to remove the keyboard without removing all the jacks first. (Remember, a typical large harpsichord can have 189 or more jacks. Removing and then replacing them all can easily add up to an hour to an otherwise quick operation.) The Zuckermann jacks are supplied slightly too long, and the builder simply files them down until their height is correct. If you go too far and file too much off the bottom, you can always use masking tape or glue some felt to the bottom to raise it again. Historically, jacks never had the bottom adjustment screw; it has been theorized (I believe by Frank Hubbard) that screws with sufficiently fine threads were generally unavailable until the 19th century, well after the "golden age" of harpsichord manufacture (approximately 1500-1800).

A brief video of the harpsichord/virginal action will probably make clear its operation more effectively than any number of words. Here is a clip showing a jack plucking a single note. Since it takes only a tiny fraction of a second, it is difficult to show the tongue pivoting backwards on its hinge to allow the plectrum to go around the string on the way down, so I have included a slow-motion replay of this stage of the action at the end. Choose the High Quality (HQ) setting for better video detail.

Anatomy of a Virginal: The Keyboard

The keyboard of a virginal or harpsichord is independent of the case. The two components are constructed separately and only brought together fairly late in the building process.

To make the keys, or key levers, planks of softwood (basswood is typically used for its lightness and strength, although the choice of wood apparently is not critical) are glued together into a single large board and planed flat. In a small workshop, a template showing all the keys is drawn onto this board and then each key is sawn out by hand or with a bandsaw. In a large production facility, such as a piano factory, specialized gang bandsaws are set up to saw all the keys in one go.

Did you ever look really closely at a keyboard? The geometry is not trivial. The tails of the keys are evenly spaced, twelve to each octave (since there are twelve half-steps in each octave). But in the front, there are seven evenly spaced naturals per octave, with the sharps recessed behind the natural key heads. So each natural key head must be 12/7 of a half-step wide, and everything has to come out even from one octave to the next.

Once fabricated, the keys are placed on a keyboard frame to hold them in position. Smooth iron balance pins are sunk into the balance rail, and provide a pivot for the keys to rock forward and backward on when depressed. The front rail limits how far down the keys can move (this measurement is called key dip), and the back rail supports the backs of the keys when they are at rest.



To obtain the smooth rocking motion of the keys, a small hole, just large enough to fit over the balance pins, is drilled though each key from top to bottom. On the bottom of the key, this hole is left at this size so the the entire key does not slip back and forth, but from the top of the key, the hole is enlarged to permit the balance pin to move freely from front to back as the key pivots. Once cut, it is necessary to use a spare balance pin to burnish the holes in order to achieve a smooth action.



At the back of the keyboard frame is the rack, also called the diapason. This rack consists of a thin hardwood veneer with narrow slots sawn into it, twelve to the octave. Small iron pins are inserted into the ends of each key, and the pins ride up and down in the rack, limiting the side-to-side movement of the keys so that they do not rub against each other when played.

To see some construction photos of a single-manual harpsichord keyboard, visit this site. Be sure to follow the links at the bottom of each post to see the complete process.

Anatomy of a Virginal: the Case

At this point an explanation of the parts of the virginal is in order so that the descriptions of the assembly make sense. The case is essentially a rectangular box, open at the top, with a thin soundboard installed about 2/3 of the way up from the bottom of the case, and an opening in the front where the keyboard goes in. The keyboard is screwed into the case from the bottom, and can be removed fairly easily for service.


In this photo, the case is almost complete, and the strings have been installed. Several pieces are missing from the photo: the keyboard, jacks, jack rail, and lid. But let's focus on the case for the moment.

Here is a close-up of the left side of the virginal. Descriptions of the labeled parts are below. Please ignore the horrific barrel distortion in my camera lens. The sides of the instrument really are straight in real life.




At the left end of the instrument, the end of each string is twisted into a loop, and the loop is secured around a hitch pin. This pin holds the string in place, and is buried deep in a block of wood to withstand the tension put on it when the strings are tightened. The longer bass strings attach to hitch pins along the edge of the virginal, but the shorter treble strings attach to the pins running in a diagonal line. A block of thick wood runs underneath the soundboard underneath this line; the soundboard itself is only 1/8" thick, and could never hold up under the tension of the strings. Here are three hitchpin loops, illustrating the range of wire gauges used. The rightmost wire is 8 thousandths of an inch in diameter.


Moving toward the right from the hitch pins, we come to the left bridge. The purpose of the bridge is twofold: first, it defines the speaking length of the strings; and second, it transfers vibrations from the string to the soundboard, which amplifies these vibrations into the sound you hear.

To the right of the bridge is the top jack guide, also called the register. As you can see, this guide consists of 54 slots (one for each note), each of which houses a jack. There is actually another guide inside the instrument, about two inches below the top guide, which is not visible here. Together, the upper and lower guides keep each jack in the correct plane as it travels up and down to pluck the string. Without these guides the jacks would wiggle back and forth, making it impossible to voice the instrument consistently. In historical Italian virginals and harpsichords, a single, deep guide that served the purpose of both upper and lower guides was painstakingly cut from a single piece of hardwood. If the slots were not cut perfectly, the jacks would rattle in them and make a sound one author likened to "the grunting of pigs." The finest instruments did not of course suffer from this porcine affliction, although Italian harpsichords generally suffered a bad rap for many years.

The right side of the virginal is a sort of inexact mirror image of the left side, the major difference being the presence of tuning pins rather than hitch pins.


On the left side of this photo, we see the termination of the hitch pins, left bridge, and jack guide from the last photo. The virginal is unique in that it has not one but two bridges, one at each end of the speaking length of the strings. Harpsichords normally have one bridge on the soundboard, and a nut that runs straight across the instrument, perpendicular to the strings. This nut is not fixed to the soundboard and does not transmit vibrations from the strings.


On this end, the strings are wrapped tightly around tuning pins, which are embedded in a block of hardwood called a wrest plank (underneath the soundboard). On a piano, this block is called a pin block. You use a tuning lever to twist the tuning pins, tightening or loosening the wire to tune each note.



Once the keyboard and jacks are finished, a plank of wood called the jack rail will be installed directly above the jack guide. This limits how far the jacks can travel and keeps them from flying out of the instrument and into the listeners' soup.

A decorative ornament called a rose, usually made from wood or heavy parchment, is often installed in a hole cut into the soundboard. I did not feel quite confident enough to attack my soundboard with the Black & Decker as of yet, so I decided to skip this for the time being. I may decide to add it later, although it will mean removing several strings to get at the soundboard. In any case, several authors note that the rose makes little if any difference to the sound, so it can wait. Here are some links to representative roses in the meantime:

From an Italian virginal of 1672
More information on this instrument

From a French harpsichord of 1683
More information on this instrument

The small hole in the upper right corner of the Zuckermann virginal is not a rose; a small toolbox with its cover lies in this corner, and the hole lets the player lift the cover off.

The Zuckermann Italian Virginal III

The kit instrument I am assembling is the Italian Virginal III, manufactured by Zuckermann Harpsichords, Inc. Zuckermann are still very much in business, and although they no longer offer the Italian Virginal as a kit, the finished instrument is still available. If after reading this you are just dying to start on your own virginal, a similar kit is available from The Paris Workshop, or you can try your hand at a Flemish virginal kit from Hubbard Harpsichords.

According to recent correspondence with Zuckermann, the Italian Virginal III kit was available from "the mid to late 1970s" which makes my kit between 29-34 years old. As I mentioned previously, I purchased the partially-assembled kit from a colleague of mine at my place of employment. He in turn "inherited" the kit from the previous owner of his house. The previous two owners of the kit had brought the construction fairly far along, completing the case and installing the soundboard, so most of the large assembly steps were done before I took over. Incredibly, all of the parts are still together after all these years. Unsurprisingly, the one item that seems to have migrated away from the kit is the included X-acto knife.

This virginal exemplifies the "false inner-outer" construction that Italian makers favored for centuries. The earliest Italian harpsichords were made of extremely thin cypress; while this made the instruments remarkably light (some single Italian harpsichords are reputedly light enough to carry under one arm) they must also have been very fragile. These harpsichords were kitted out with protective outer cases of heavier construction, which could be decorated with varnish, tooled leather, gilt, and so on. Over time, the separate inner/outer construction was abandoned, but the conceit of a smaller, fragile instrument inside a larger case was retained by the strategic use of veneer and molding on the (single) case.

In terms of modern harpsichord kit-building, the Italian Virginal represents one of the first Zuckermann instruments designed by then-owner David Jacques Way. The Zuckermann business had been successful purveying a harpsichord kit that represented a middle road between historical authenticity and economical modern manufacturing, as well as realistic expectations of amateur assembly. Way gradually took the kit business firmly in the direction of historical authenticity by eliminating modern materials such as plywood, reinstating the bentside in the harpsichord kit, and other less visible changes. The Zuckermann Italian Virginal represents an early stage in this process. The design is very close to that of historical models. While most of the construction is from plank wood (rather than plywood), and the soundboard appears to be solid wood, the jack register and lower guide appear to be made of plastic, and the jacks themselves, as is nearly universal in kits nowadays, are made of Delrin, the same plastic the plectra are made from. The most unfortunate concession to modern manufacturing lies in the plastic sharps on the keyboard. These look just awful next to all the beautiful bare wood; I may replace these with ebony or stained fruitwood if time and budget allow.

At this point there is a lot of little fiddly work to do, mostly consisting of small jobs that have to be done 54 times each (once for each note on the instrument). As the manual points out, though, some large double harpsichords have 189 strings, so the virginal should come together comparatively quickly.

Speaking of notes, the range of the keyboard is BB-e'''. That means the lowest note is the B two octaves and a half-step below middle C, and the highest note is the E two octaves and a major third above middle C. Looking at historical examples of this type of instrument, this seems to be a common enough range (if anything, the bass has a bit more range than many 16th and 17th century virginals and harpsichords). However, that low BB is somewhat deceiving. Many virginals and harpsichords prior to the 18th century were tuned to what is now called the "short octave," meaning that the last five or so notes do not descend chromatically; instead the sharps are tuned to diatonic notes, usually a major third lower than their "normal" pitches.

For example, a very common keyboard layout for a small instrument such as a spinet or virginal would have a bass range extending down to the E one octave and a sixth below middle c; but this note would be tuned to the C two octaves below middle c. Likewise, the lowest F# was tuned down to D, and the G# was tuned down to E. While this extended the bass range slightly, it unfortunately also eliminated four accidentals from the lowest octave (C# and D#, which are not on the keyboard at all, and F# and G# which sound D and E). But most keyboard music of the time doesn't require accidentals in this low octave, so the musical impact is not damaging. This may sound confusing but it actually works out quite well in practice, as long as the music is not too chromatic.

The Zuckermann Italian Virginal III also incorporates a short octave, but it begins lower down on the keyboard. The lowest note, BB, is tuned down to GG (two octaves and a fourth below middle c), the C# down to AA, and the D# down to BB. The impression I get from reading books on historical harpsichord construction is that the first variety of short octave was by far the more common; the deeper range of the kit may be a concession to modern players who may want to play later, more chromatic music on the virginal.

Since my own musical interests skew closer to J. S. Bach, I will probably go ahead and tune the lowest notes chromatically, in order to have the low chromatic notes necessary for the Well-tempered Clavier and the French Suites. Other Bach harpsichord works such as the Goldberg Variations and Teil I of Clavierübung require a fully chromatic bass range down to GG and are not possible to play on this instrument without altering a few notes of Bach's music.

The current Italian Virginals available from Zuckermann and the Paris Workshop appear to have further bowed to modern tastes and are fully chromatic down to GG, giving up two notes at the top end of the keyboard making the top note d'''. It's probably not an accident that this exactly matches the range of Bach's harpsichord music.

At this point, I have the virginal strung (except for two notes - I ran out of the correct wire for these and will have to purchase some more) and have a couple of parallel tasks going. First, now that the strings are on, it's time to pin the left-hand bridge. The small metal pins guide the strings so that they run in exactly the right place, as well as binding the strings to the bridge. The bridge is responsible for transmitting the strings' vibrations to the soundboard, so a good, solid connection between the strings and the bridge is essential for a full tone. Second, I need to finish the keyboard by gluing the slips of boxwood veneer to the softwood key levers, shaping the keys, varnishing the boxwood, leveling and aligning the keys, and finally installing the completed keyboard into the virginal. Then, it will be time to file the jacks so that each one is a custom fit in its respective slot, install the Delrin plectra in the jacks, voice the jacks (trim the plectra so that each note speaks at the same volume level), install the jack rail, attach the lid with hinges, apply the decorative molding to the inside of the case, and paint the case. Piece of cake.

What is a virginal, anyway?

Basically, a virginal is a sort of sideways harpsichord. The strings are plucked by little plectra, like tiny guitar picks, rather than struck by hammers as in a piano. The major difference between a harpsichord and a virginal is that where the harpsichord strings run straight back away from the player (as in a grand piano), virginal strings run left-to-right. I suppose the idea is to save space in a domestic environment, although the actual space savings are not as large as you might hope, since the size of either instrument is largely determined by the length of the bass strings. Still, the virginal keyboard is situated on the side of the instrument, rather than at one end as with a harpsichord or grand piano, which makes placement of the instrument a little more flexible since you don't have to provide room at the end for the player.

Due to the left-right orientation of the strings, there is usually only space to equip a virginal with a single choir of strings (a "choir" just means a single set of strings, one for each note on the keyboard). In a typical harpsichord, there would be two choirs for a single-manual (one-keyboard) instrument, or three or more choirs for a double-manual instrument. This not only provides greater volume of sound, but allows the player to vary the tone color somewhat, since each choir can be engaged or disengaged individually. Since virginals have only one choir, it is not possible to change tone color in this way, but that doesn't mean there is no variation in the timbre. The jacks (mechanisms that hold the plectra) in a virginal do not stretch across the instrument in a straight line (as they do in a harpsichord); rather, the jacks are arranged on the diagonal, so that the relative plucking point of each string is slightly different that its neighbors. The effect is a bit like the similar yet distinct timbres of violin, viola, and cello in a string quartet or orchestra; although each instrument has a distinctive voice, they can blend together logically almost like a single instrument.

There are several styles of virginals. The kit I am assembling is representative of the Italian style, which consists of a basically rectangular box with the keyboard jutting out from one long side of the instrument, slightly to the left. The Flemish style virginals are also basically rectangular, but the keyboard is recessed into the side of the instrument. Flemish virginals can be further divided into "spinets" and "muselaars;" spinets have the keyboard on the left side and muselaars have the keyboard on the right. This has a radical effect on the sound produced. Spinets pluck the string close to the nut (in other words, towards one end of the string) and as a result the sound is rather thin and nasal. Muselaars, in contrast, pluck the string closer to its middle and the resulting sound has been described as "round," "flute-like," and "plummy." If you play the guitar, you can simulate the effect of either type by plucking near the bridge or over the fingerboard.

The most elaborate virginals were made by the Flemish makers such as the famous Ruckers family. Called "mother and child," these included a second, smaller instrument that slid into a recess in the side of the larger instrument and could be removed from the recess for performance. This smaller instrument was called an "ottavino" since it sounded one octave higher than the larger virginal. If desired, the "child" could be placed on top of the "mother's" jacks (after the jackrail had been removed) and slots in the bottom of the child would allow the mother's jacks to operate the child's keyboard, coupling the two mechanisms. When coupled this way, the mother's keyboard would play both instruments.



Other types of virginals exist, which eliminate the "dead space" in the corners, resulting in an instrument shaped like an irregular pentagon, or even an elongated triangle. While slightly smaller and lighter, according to some authorities the tone of these instruments is not as full or attractive as the rectangular virginals.

So why is it called a virginal? No one is really sure. Sadly, there is no truth to the notion that it was named for the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I of England (although she was, by the way, reportedly an excellent player of the instrument). It seems likely that as a domestic instrument, it would have been associated with young girls and unmarried women, hence the name.

One more note about the name: in Elizabethan English usage, you often come across the term "virginals" or "pair of virginals." Much like a "pair of scissors" or a "pair of pants," this refers, paradoxically, to a single instrument. Furthermore, at that time, the term "virginal" could refer to any plucked-string keyboard instrument, such as a spinet, muselaar, or harpsichord.

In my next post, I'll have some more information about the specific kit I am assembling, as well as some photos.