Has anyone taken grades in harpsichord. How different is it to the piano or is it similar to the organ.

Must baroque music only be played on Harpsichord?
Thanx

I think that to play it would be quite different to piano or organ.

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Has anyone taken grades in harpsichord.  How different is it to the piano or is it similar to the organ.

I have not seen/played on a harpsichord. So use my reply only as a reference:

Harpsichord strings are plucked. So if it is to be compared with piano - its sound is weaker, and faint out faster. One will need to put a loooooot of efforts to produce some, nearly not noticeable, dynamic variations. It has less number of keys, compare to a standard 88-key piano.

I believe you know that Harpsichord keyboard are black-and-white inverted, as compare to piano. You would also find Harpsichords with two keyboards - similar to an organ.

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Must baroque music only be played on Harpsichord?

There are many ways to answer your question, and therefore I don't know what you actually expect to see.

In general I would say "NO" - As an analogy, one can play violin music on piano, and vice versa. So, it is not a "Must".

But when playing a Baroque music, one is expected to produce/mimic a similar style of a Harpsichord. Without going into much details, you could borrow/buy some Harpsichord music as a reference.

hi, i havent had much experience on harpsichords but i have had a few lessons and was going to be performing bach triple haprsichord concerto before i develeoped tendonitis and it all fell apart!

the main difference is harpsichords have no dynamic range, musicality is brought out through ornamentation, delaying of notes (rubato), holding over of notes, and extremely well played articulation, without these the harpsichord is nothing.... I would advise any pianist who wants to start the harps to have at least a few lessons with a good harpsichord teacher as the techniques are soo different to piano, You may also find yourself coming away like i did with a far greater understanding when you take your music back to the piano.

Another thing is that us pianists are very lucky in that our music is almost always written out for us, with harps you are pretty much left to your own devices with ornamentaion, articualtion etc etc and you alaso need to have a good grasp of figured bass

hope this answers your quesiton a little

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Must baroque music only be played on Harpsichord?

No. Unless you're interested in producing a performance in the way that it would have sounded at the time of writing. An example: Bach's 'Well Tempered Klavier' was written for harpsichord (the piano didn't exist in Bach's time) but some of the material from it is on the piano DipABRSM exam; it is quite frequent that the piano exams use music originally written for harpsichord. When playing music originally written for harpsichord on the piano it is usual to attempt to maintain a reasonably authentic performance although dynamics are often added.

The harpsichord is what the piano started life as; most instruments have developed significantly over the last few hundred years too: if you watch an orchestra performing classical music on period instruments you'll notice that there are differences between those instruments and today's.

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How different is it to the piano or is it similar to the organ

The answer to this question is somewhat paradoxical; the piano and harpsichord are very similar yet very different. In practise it's not possible to get a non-negligable change in dynamics on a harpsichord; yet the piano gets it's name as a result of the wide dynamic variation of which it is capable. In terms of playing I'd say they would be fairly similar except that on the harpsichord one would not have to be as concerned about false accents and there's no need to worry about dynamics. As Lynne says the music written for harpsichord is often more ornamented since there's not as much that one can do in terms of expression with a harpsichord and most harpsichord music is baroque which again, generally speaking, has less expression than more modern music but a lot of ornamentation. I suppose though when playing this music on the piano one would have to emulate that though.

I can't really say much about the organ as I don't know a lot about it except that many organists seem to complain that pianists don't make good organists for some reason! I suppose the lack of dynamics controlled by force with which fingers hit the keys would be similar to the harpsichord; although organs usually have lots of stops to control the volume and sound and one has to be able to play with one's feet too.

Playing the piano would definitley give you a good head start on the harpsichord but I wouldn't say that if you're a good pianist you can necessarily claim to be a good harpsichord player although you'd probably find it easier to make the transition that way than to do it the other way around.

Has anyone taken grades in harpsichord. How different is it to the piano or is it similar to the organ.

Well, I may be able to help you. I'm 15 and doing my DipABRSM next month in harpsichord performance. I can say that the harpsichord is more similar to the organ than the piano even though all three actions are different. It is extremly different to the piano. My Dad went as far as to stick pins into an old piano so that the sound was more harpsichordish.

Must baroque music only be played on Harpsichord?
Thanx

In my opinion...yes! It's impossible to play piano music on a harpsichord and harpsichord music on a piano. Plus, you are able to have a better understanding of what the composer intended.