No other keyboard instrument has been so sadly misunderstood as the clavichord, so no wonder that its applications for xenharmonics have been ignored, or not even suspected. [Older books on music seldom described the instrument accurately, so their definitions were misleading in many cases.]

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Unfortunately, the revival of the harpsichord has not stimulated the revival of the clavichord, as it should have. Instead, it has merely compounded the confusion. Let's throw out all the traditionalist snobbery, and define the clavichord realistically in modem terms: a clavichord is a Hawaiian steel guitar with a keyboard, while a harpsichord is a Spanish guitar with a keyboard, and a piano is a hammer dulcimer (cimbalom) with a keyboard.

The keys on a clavichord are fitted with upright pieces of metal at the back end, called tangents. They are hammers and also bridges at the very same time. The effect can be almost exactly duplicated on a steel guitar by striking the string(s) with the steel, then holding down firmly and wiggling the arm up and down slightly, just enough to vary the pressure on the string. Select a point about one-third of the way from nut to bridge, so that you will feel the elasticity of the string. This experiment will help you to determine whether you are interested enough in the clavichord idea to pursue it further.

"But the steel guitar is amplified!" the music historians yell. Precisely. That's the very point I wish to make. The conventional clavichord went out of use because it could never be loud enough to compete with other instruments, and it did not provide sufficient support for any but the quietest voices. So I shall take my stand right here, and say that I am talking about amplifying clavichords, not the conventional affairs that can't do much more than a ghostly whisper.

Just because they didn't have amplifiers and loudspeakers in seventeen-umpty-ump doesn't mean that we must kill all our chances of succeeding in order to please a lot of dead composers who couldn't care less whether we thwart and hamstring ourselves or not. For good or ill, this is a noisy world and concerts and recitals have to be above the noise level.

Unlike the harpsichord and piano, the clavichord has no dampers in the ordinary sense. But it damps just as well-a strip of felt is interwoven between the strings, and becomes instantly effective when the tangent falls and the string's whole length is no longer cut in two, so the muting-felt stops all the vibrating. What a simple action, compared with the Rube-Goldberg intricacy of a piano!

The clavichord is more intimate: the piano hammer is thrown at the string, and the key loses control of it, whereas the clavichord tangent is firmly attached to the key at all times, and the player can change pressure on the key and get an equal change in pressure on the string, altering the tone WHILE IT IS SOUNDING. This alteration is both in loudness and in pitch. In today's terms, the clavichord can bend pitches just like the rock guitarists. The clavichord has a very expressive vibrato. Or, the tuning of a clavichord is ELASTIC.

On the organ or harpsichord or piano, you are completely at the tuner's mercy. On the clavichord, you can actually sharpen a note which has gone down a bit.

You can alter the tempered intervals. This degree of alteration is enough in many cases to make the difference between C-sharp and D-flat in the meantone system, so much of the theorizing about how clavichords were tuned is so much malarkey. The clavichord is not a precision instrument like a tuning-fork or computer-controlled electronic organ. It is valuable because it is elastic.

The violinist is taught to sharpen leading-tones. You can do that on a clavichord. You can take the pitch sharp and let it drop back in the latter portion of the tone. You can do the Bebung (vibrato) wide or narrow, slow or fast. Or apply it a moment after the tone has begun instead of right with the attack.

The traditional string4ayout is at an angle to the keys, almost parallel to the nameboard, as in old square pianos. But I am not in favor of this arrangement, even if it does make for a more compact design. I prefer that the strings be parallel with the keys, going straight out along that line, as they do in most harpsichords. The reason is that one can give the clavichord one important thing it lacked before the days of amplification: by having two or three it will have the stops of timbre changes that the organ and the harpsichord enjoy. And adding a reverb unit to the amplifier will remove the one chief objection to the clavichord, that it has no "loud" damper pedal.