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News and notes from the world of classical music.

Flint Institute of Music gets under the hood of the harpsichord

Harpsichord photo
flickr creative commons
A look at the double harpsichord of Johann Sebastian Bach.

It’s an ancestor to the piano, and over the past few years it's been making a comeback. Meet the man from the Flint Institute of Music who teaches how to play the harpsichord.

Did you know that in a grand piano, the strings being played are exerting about 30 tons of tension on the hundreds of strings found inside? Before a piano was manufactured, another instrument was played, an ancestor with exponentially less tension to deal with. That instrument was the harpsichord.

Current State’s Jamie Paisley spoke with professor Jeffrey Walker, who still teaches how to play this ancestor to the piano at the Flint Institute of Music.

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