Finding the Harpsichord information on our site…

To find out something of my background, visit my brief online Résumé which is available in fourteen different languages. The Chronology page lists the highlights of my career. Some of our regular collaborators can be found on the Who’s Who pages.

A few original instruments from the eighteenth century are pictured and described in the Collection section, including the 1770 Baker Harris spinet and the 1773 Kirckman harpsichord.

The next page details the Coming Events using our instruments or services. For the latest on film or CD, check our Discography section which shows a selected list of various releases from the most recent running back in historic order. The Exhibitions page details my participation in exhibitions around the world with early keyboard instruments.

Some of our customers sing their praises on the Testimonials page.

We were involved in the First Fortepiano Concerts in China—our exciting trip to Beijing before Christmas 1996 for Pieter Wispelwey and Neal da Costa’s Florilegium, but several other Interesting Projects are mentioned.

In the Press Gallery are some clippings from around the globe, gleaned from our scrapbook. Or perhaps the NSW Department of Education Workplace Learning for high school students will interest you.

Visiting Sydney? We welcome personal callers by appointment. Our workshop is about half an hour from the famous Sydney Opera House on the harbour: Please check the directions on Finding our shop.

With apologies in advance for any inconvenience to those who wish to contact us, in an effort to reduce the thousands of spam messages received every month by thwarting the spam robots which incessantly trawl the web, the only page on our site listing our eMail address is our Contact page, and you must have JavaScript enabled to be able to see it.

Of course, if you’re ready to buy an instrument, you’ve found to the right place. Building your own harpsichord continues to be a popular pastime, from one of our famous kits from THE PARIS WORKSHOP. Each one of our popular models has its own specification page with photos, including the Delin Spinet and French Single Harpsichord. The instruments are offered in varying degrees of completion, called Versions, and the Tools we expect you to own are few in number. A Gallery shows all the kit models.

Our Instrument List is a frequently updated listing of the several dozen secondhand early keyboard instruments for sale. In the past, we have exported many Antique instruments. The Fully Imported link shows a harpsichord model from Atelier Marc Ducornet in Paris available with a short delivery time, and the Henk Klop Continuo organ.

I share some of my philosophy with you on the Custom instruments page. You can view the various Custom Instrument Galleries, follow the links to each individual instrument specification page, find our Pre-loved Custom instruments, or see the Work in progress.

Compare the complete specifications and pictures of our eight superb instruments available on Hire for functions, concerts, recordings or photographic use. The latest addition to our hire stable: The Regal. The hire pricing details are found on a separate page. When you want to try to avoid the benefits of using a real harpsichord, read the Concert Organizer’s Harpsichord Excuse Sheet.

If you already own an instrument, view our Spare Parts & Accessories selection to make your instrument upkeep or decoration enjoyable.

A little regular maintenance preserves the investment you have made in your instrument, by ensuring it’s operating correctly. My travel schedule is shown on that page. Or ask me to tune for your special project.

One of our more interesting workshop assignments was the Restoration of a typhoon-devastated Square Pianoforte by Rädecker & Lunau, Lübeck c1830, owned by Hong Kong University Music Department, but there are several other projects detailed here.

I enjoying presenting Workshop and Seminars to a range of audiences from general public through music students to harpsichord owners and piano tuner/technicians.

We do please ask that all our overseas customers read the advice on our Export page before ordering.

And don’t discard your harpsichord ephemera, but view our Wanted page instead.

Tuning is always of interest to harpsichordists, and a frequent anxiety of newbies. Rest assured, though, that a good harpsichord stays in tune a surprizing length of time. You can find sensible advice in our Technical Library, with General hints as well as specific instructions on exploring some of the popular Historic temperaments. Two pages specifically assist clavichord owners, detailing tuning for either Double- or Triple-fretted instruments. Some people prefer to use an Electronic Tuner, which you may care to purchase from us. Another page is a complete rundown with pictures of all the previous Korg models we have stocked.

DANIEL HUTCHINGS

Voicing a replacement quill

There’s more in our Technical Library area. Some people were uncertain about describing the keyboard compass and pitch, so we deal with Describing Pitch. If you’re moving a harpsichord, the answers on how to do it safely are here. If you’re decorating, likewise, with ease. If you live somewhere with adverse climate, check our advice on Looking after instruments in the tropics. How the harpsichord jack works is detailed in the Action section, which continues with Replacing a quill. The Technical Library also includes details of Stringing, or even Transposing the Keyboards. The most recent additions are new areas devoted to the Early Piano and the Continuo Organ.

The Dox page contains links to all the pdf files available for to download, including our series of color instrument postcards, my business card in ten languages, fifteen years of issues of The Harpsichord News Brief, stringing schedules and more.

On our Flix page are detailed links to access to all the movie files on our site and a few hosted on external sites as well. Or you can check our YouTube page.

Our Soundbytes page assembles all the links to the various sound files on our site.

A discussion of musical instrument auctions can be found in our Auction Results section, including numberous data pages of Sotheby’s auctions back to 1970.

Australian Made…Australian Played… was the title of the book on handcrafted musical instruments by Michael Atherton. You can hear our Flemish harpsichord and see how we got involved in the companion CD.

If it’s the main reference books you’re after, our Harpsichord Bibliography has eighteen pages, listing over two hundred texts on early keyboard instruments in various languages. Publication details are included with ISBN numbers, and there are links to the Popular titles we stock.

Our involvement with the Carmel Bach Festival each year is discussed on that page, and the Early Keyboard Instrument Gallery shows all the harpsichords, fortepianos and continuo organs used in the Festival each year.

A recent page discusses the history of Harpsichords in China, with a list of all the presently-known early keyboard instruments in the country and their whereabouts.

The Clavichord was the earliest keyboard instrument, often misunderstood, but explained here in simple terms. For a bit of fun, our Clavichord on the Nullabor page continues to be popular. It takes five days to drive across the continent, so there’s not much in the way of civilization to be found en route. As mentioned earlier, methods of tuning clavichords can be found in our Technical Library.

The harpsichord engravings from the Lutherie section of Diderot’s Encyclopédie reveal a lot of the times, and the Lantern Slides page is worth a look..

Some recent novels with a particular focus on either keyboard instruments or the great historic period of the harpsichord are shown on our Harpsichord Fantasy page.

If it’s early piano you’re interested in, our popular Fortepiano page has been recently moved to our Technical Library area.

Harpsichords come from simpler times, and you might like to use our Multilingual Lexicon to check the most frequently-used terms, but you must have a recent operating system with UTF-8 encoding. If not, you can always use our simpler European Lexicon to start, and follow the links to the individual language pages. You can also go straight to our Chinese Lexicon, Japanese Lexicon or Korean Lexicon if you have the necessary Asian font capabilities on your computer.

In 2006 we celebrated the 250th anniversary of Mozart’s birth.

A page details Stolen Harpsichords.

What goes into a harpsichord? Probably even more important than the choice of species is the quality and treatment of the timber. We offer this rundown on some of the Timbers we use and why.

If you are thinking of learning the harpsichord, our Harpsichord teachers page may help with some general information, and a current listing of Australian and Asian harpsichord teachers.

Wolfgang’s Jacks are the actual jacks collected by Wolfgang Zuckermann from makers around the world, many photographed for his 1969 work, The Modern Harpsichord. There’s an individual link to each pictured jack.

When it’s time to exit, on our External Links pages you will find an interesting assortment of almost two thousand (mainly) early music links from around the world, including two extensive pages of links to pages of all Harpsichord Makers to be found on the internet.

Our Browsers page details the computer requirements to view this site, and some hints to ensure you are getting the best site performance. The people who have assisted in putting this site together—particularly the foreign language content—are acknowledged on Site Credits.

To help our regular visitors, direct links to all the Latest Additions are listed on their own page.

Your Privacy & Security concerns addressed in our policy there.

I hope you’ve figured you are already on the Site Overview page now.

On the Site Search page you can use the power of Google to search our site, or the whole internet.

Click on the Full Navigation link to fill your screen and expand the navigation menu to show the links available under all the categories, or click on the Reduced Navigation link to collapse the menu.

Home returns you to our opening page.