A harpsichord is a keyboard instrument that looks a little like a small, thin grand piano but works in a different way. When you press a key on a piano, a soft hammer hits the string and you can play louder by pressing harder. On a harpsichord, pressing a key makes a small point pluck the string, like a tiny finger. That has two results: the sound is bright, silvery and slightly metallic, and you cannot play louder or softer by changing how hard you press. To change the volume or the colour, the player pulls stops or moves to a second keyboard. It was the main keyboard instrument in Europe for a few hundred years, up to about the late 1700s — the instrument Bach, Handel and Scarlatti wrote for — and then the piano, which could do loud and soft, replaced it almost completely. It came back in the 1900s when musicians wanted to play old music the way it once sounded, so today you hear it in early-music concerts, on recordings, and sometimes as a special colour in film music and pop songs.