A harpsichordist is a person who plays the harpsichord

Harpsichord

A harpsichord is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It produces sound by plucking a string when a key is pressed.In the narrow sense, "harpsichord" designates only the large wing-shaped instruments in which the strings are perpendicular to the keyboard...

.

Many baroque

Baroque music

Baroque music describes a style of Western Classical music approximately extending from 1600 to 1760. This era follows the Renaissance and was followed in turn by the Classical era...

 composers played the harpsichord, including Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach was a German composer, organist, harpsichordist, violist, and violinist whose sacred and secular works for choir, orchestra, and solo instruments drew together the strands of the Baroque period and brought it to its ultimate maturity...

, Domenico Scarlatti

Domenico Scarlatti

Giuseppe Domenico Scarlatti was an Italian composer who spent much of his life in the service of the Portuguese and Spanish royal families. He is classified as a Baroque composer chronologically, although his music was influential in the development of the Classical style...

, George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel

George Frideric Handel was a German-British Baroque composer, famous for his operas, oratorios, anthems and organ concertos. Handel was born in 1685, in a family indifferent to music...

, François Couperin

François Couperin

François Couperin was a French Baroque composer, organist and harpsichordist. He was known as Couperin le Grand to distinguish him from other members of the musically talented Couperin family.-Life:Couperin was born in Paris...

 and Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau

Jean-Philippe Rameau was one of the most important French composers and music theorists of the Baroque era. He replaced Jean-Baptiste Lully as the dominant composer of French opera and is also considered the leading French composer for the harpsichord of his time, alongside François...

. At this time, it was common for such musicians also to play the organ

Pipe organ

The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through pipes selected via a keyboard. Because each organ pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass...

, and all keyboard instrument

Keyboard instrument

A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument which is played using a musical keyboard. The most common of these is the piano. Other widely used keyboard instruments include organs of various types as well as other mechanical, electromechanical and electronic instruments...

s, and to direct orchestral music while playing continuo

Figured bass

Figured bass, or thoroughbass, is a kind of integer musical notation used to indicate intervals, chords, and non-chord tones, in relation to a bass note...

 on the instrument.

Modern harpsichord playing can be roughly divided into three eras, beginning with the career of the influential reviver of the instrument, Wanda Landowska

Wanda Landowska

Wanda Landowska was a Polish harpsichordist whose performances, teaching, recordings and writings played a large role in reviving the popularity of the harpsichord in the early 20th century...

. At this stage of the 'harpsichord revival', players generally used harpsichords of a heavy, piano-influenced type made by makers such as Pleyel

Ignaz Pleyel

Ignace Joseph Pleyel , ; was an Austrian-born French composer and piano builder of the Classical period.-Early years:...

; the revival of the instrument also led some composers to write specifically for the instrument, often on the request of Landowska. An influential later group of English players using post-Pleyel instruments by Thomas Goff and the Goble

Robert Goble

Robert Goble was an English harpsichord builder.The son of Harriet and John Goble, a wheelwright, he grew up in Thursley, Surrey. He first encountered pioneering early-instrument-maker Arnold Dolmetsch and his family in the autumn of 1917, when they took refuge from London air raids by renting a...

 family included George Malcolm

George Malcolm (musician)

George Malcolm CBE was an English harpsichordist and conductor.Malcolm's first instrument was the piano, and his first teacher was a nun who recognised his talent and recommended him to the Royal College of Music. Malcolm went on to study at Balliol College, Oxford...

 and Thurston Dart

Thurston Dart

Robert Thurston Dart , was a British musicologist, conductor and keyboard player. From 1964 he was Professor of Music at King's College London....

.

The next generation of harpsichordists were pioneers of modern performance on instruments built according to the authentic practices of the earlier period, following the research of such scholar-builders as Frank Hubbard

Frank Hubbard

Frank Twombly Hubbard was an American harpsichord maker, a pioneer in the revival of historical methods of harpsichord building.-Student days:...

 and William Dowd

William Dowd

William Richmond Dowd was an American harpsichord maker and one of the most important pioneers of the historical harpsichord movement....

. This generation of performers included such players as Ralph Kirkpatrick

Ralph Kirkpatrick

Ralph Kirkpatrick was an American musician, musicologist and harpsichordist. He is most famous for his chronological catalog of Domenico Scarlatti's keyboard sonatas.-Life and work:...

, Igor Kipnis

Igor Kipnis

Igor Kipnis was a well-known American harpsichordist and pianist.-Biography:Born in Berlin, the son of Russian bass Alexander Kipnis, Igor Kipnis moved to the United States with his family in 1938. He learned the piano with his maternal grandfather, Heniot Levy; attended the Westport School of...

, and Gustav Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt

Gustav Leonhardt is a highly renowned Dutch keyboard player, conductor, musicologist, teacher and editor. Leonhardt has been a leading figure in the movement to perform music on period instruments...

. More recently, many outstanding harpsichordists have appeared, such as Trevor Pinnock

Trevor Pinnock

Trevor David Pinnock CBE is an English conductor, harpsichordist, and occasional organist and pianist.He is best known for his association with the period-performance orchestra The English Concert which he helped found and directed from the keyboard for over 30 years in baroque and early classical...

, Kenneth Gilbert

Kenneth Gilbert

Kenneth Gilbert, OC is a Canadian harpsichordist, organist, musicologist and music educator.Gilbert was trained at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Montréal where he was a pupil of Yvonne Hubert and Gabriel Cusson . He also studied the organ privately with Conrad Letendre in Montréal...

, Christopher Hogwood

Christopher Hogwood

Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood CBE, MA , HonMusD , born 10 September 1941, Nottingham, is an English conductor, harpsichordist, writer and musicologist, well known as the founder of the Academy of Ancient Music.-Biography:...

, Jos van Immerseel

Jos van Immerseel

Jos van Immerseel is a Flemish harpsichordist, pianist and conductor.Van Immerseel studied organ, piano and harpsichord at the Antwerp Conservatory under Flor Peeters, Eugène Traey and harpsichordist and musicologist Kenneth Gilbert...

 and Ton Koopman

Ton Koopman

Ton Koopman is a conductor, organist and harpsichordist.Koopman had a "classical education" and then studied the organ , harpsichord and musicology in Amsterdam...

, many of them also directing a baroque orchestra

Baroque orchestra

The Baroque orchestra is the type of orchestra that existed during the Baroque period, commonly identified as 1600-1750. Its origins were in France where Jean-Baptiste Lully added the newly re-designed hautboy and transverse flutes to his vingt-quatre violons du Roy...

from the instrument, as was the contemporary practise.