The Harpsichord
The harpsichord is a keyboard instrument whose sound is produced by a “nail” called a plectrum, which plucks or plays the strings, differing, therefore, from the piano, an instrument whose strings are struck by hammers.
The Harpsichord in Brazil
The Harpsichord in Brazil
It seems that the first harpsichords arrived in Brazil as soon as 1552, with the arrival of D. Pero Sardinha to Bahia to organize the first church. Several passages of chronicles and missives of the priests attest to the presence of harpsichords in the convents of the Company of Jesus in the 16th century, as we can observe in the following excerpt from the letter by Fernão Cardim to El-Rei
(Rodrigues Vale, 1978, p.17):
[...] in all of these three villages there as schools of reading and writing, in which priests teach native children; to a few more skilled ones they also teach how to count, sing and play; they take everything well and there are already many who play flutes, violas, the harpsichord and celebrate mass in organum, things their parents esteem very much [...].
