Italian Harpsichord - Edition Beurmann

Pack Summary

The Italian Harpsichord library contains a historical harpsichord built in 1579 by Pierluigi in Livorno. Sharing its tonal qualities for almost half a millenium, it is a classic example of how Italian harpsichords were built for about 200 years.

Compared to its Dutch and English siblings, the Pierluigi harpsichord stands out due to its light and simple design (one 8' register) and mostly because of its fundamental, sonorous warm and deep tone.

This unique instrument in the collection of Andreas Beurmann still remains in excellent playable condition despite its age. It is now available for the first time for your sampler within the Italian Harpsichord library, presented in its original meantone tuning at 383 Hz.

Like all harpsichords, the Pierluigi is not touch-sensitive in the sense of a piano. However, even if the differences are minuscule, not any given note will sound exactly the same due to different resonances of body and strings.

Until now, many keyboards and samplers represented harpsichords by always triggering off the exact same digital sample, leaving a cold and sterile sounding impression.

In order to improve upon previous recreations and to pay tribute to the liveliness and depth of this antique instrument, we captured 8 variations of each note.

The release sounds of the keys are also of major importance: What was originally side noise is now often overlooked and even simply left out in artifical simulations, resulting in a very abstract overall picture. Therefore, we recorded 4 release samples of each note.

To start right away, presets are available for all common sample formats including HAlion, Kontakt2 and EXS24.

For the critical task of recording this harpsichord, we employed active tube-driven Royer R-122V ribbon microphones in conjunction with Crane Song Flamingo preamps and Universal Audio 2192 digital converters to do the instrument justice.

For maximum sound quality, we recorded in 192 khz/24 bits and downsampled.

In addition to the samples, the library contains an essay in German from Professor Andreas E. Beurmann himself, explaining both the historical and musical background of the instrument.