Keyboard instruments are played with a musical keyboard on which every key generates one or more sounds. Many keyboard instruments have extra means (pedals for a piano, stops for an organ) to manipulate these sounds. The following list of Elizabethan Keyboard instruments is not exhaustive but contains the majority of this category of Instruments:

• The Spinet - a small and compactly built upright piano which generates sound by plucking a string rather than striking one
• The Harpsichord - The strings are made to vibrate by being plucked
• The Church Organ - sound is produced by means of pipes supplied with air from a bellows and controlled from a large complex musical keyboard
• The Virginals - generates sound by plucking a string rather than striking one
• The Clavicytherium - a harpsichord that was vertically strung

The harpsichord family, consisting of the spinet, clavicytherium and virginals, is thought to have originated when a keyboard was affixed to the end of a psaltery, providing a mechanical means to pluck the strings.

Elizabethan Elizabethan Keyboard Instruments
Details, facts and information about other Elizabethan Instruments and Elizabethan Music can be accessed via the Elizabethan Era Sitemap or from the following links: