There’s a video being circulated this week that demonstrates just how quickly one media type can overshadow another.
In the clip, a one year old child is shown playing with an iPad. She swipes, clicks, and gestures, though it is clear that she is more captivated by the moving screen than fully aware of what it all means.
Then she is given a stack of magazines, and something really interesting happens.
They say that everything old is new again. In the case of the harpsichord, this definitely applies – or should anyway.
It’s hard to imagine, but before there was the venerable piano, everyone played the harpsichord. Actually, they played a whole group of similar instruments, including the virginal, spinet, clavicytherium, ottavino, and clavichord.
Then, around two hundred years ago, these instruments almost all went extinct.