Editing Virginals (section)

===Muselars===
[[File:Johannes Vermeer - Zittende Klavecimbelspeelster (1673-1675).jpg|upright|thumb|''Woman at a Muselar'', by [[Johannes Vermeer]], {{circa}} 1672 ([[National Gallery, London]]). Note the keyboard placed to the right.]]
[[File:Muselaar.jpg|thumb|A typical muselar of the [[Ruckers]] school. Note the keyboard on the right of the case.]]

Muselars (also ''muselaar'') were made only in northern Europe. Here, the keyboard is placed right of centre and the strings are plucked about one-third the way along their sounding length. This gives a warm, rich, resonant sound, with a strong fundamental and weak overtones. However, this comes at a price: the jacks and keys for the left hand are inevitably placed in the middle of the instrument's [[Sound board (music)|soundboard]], with the result that any mechanical noise from these is amplified. In addition to mechanical noise, from the string vibrating against the descending [[plectrum]], the central plucking point in the bass makes repetition difficult, because the motion of the still-sounding string interferes with the ability of the plectrum to connect again. An 18th-century commentator (Van Blankenberg, 1739) wrote that muselars "grunt in the bass like young pigs". Thus the muselar was better suited to [[chord (music)|chord]]-and-[[melody]] music without complex left hand parts. The muselar could also be provided with a stop called the ''harpichordium'' (also ''arpichordium''), which consists of lead hooks being lightly applied against the ends of the bass strings in such a manner that the string vibrating against the hook produces a buzzing, snarling sound.

Muselars were popular in the 16th and 17th centuries and their ubiquity has been compared to that of the upright piano in the early 20th century, but like other types of virginals they fell out of use in the 18th century.