Talk:Virginals

Improving the article

"The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element."

It explains the different types of virginal and their history. I disagree with this rating. --Gwib (talk) 07:55, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I too disagree with this rating. The majority of the material necessary is certainly present. There are no significant gaps or missing elements, and the English is clear and comprehensible. There are no other encyclopedias that do a better job as far as I can find. I think this article should be upgraded to A-class, or B-class at the very least. Nick Michael (talk) 09:29, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Gwib. Feel free to re-rate the article. That having been said, I still feel that the article is generally at Start class, and certainly no higher than B class. It could do with more information on history of the invention of the instrument, important pieces of music composed for the instrument, and when it reached the height of its popularity and when it got consigned to the annals of music history. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 00:03, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the tips, Nick Michael has agreed to tackle the article and bring it up to standards. --Gwib (talk) 17:03, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

You might want to also consider the following:

• The lead section (introductory paragraph) of the article should really be a concise summary of the article as a whole. Therefore, you may want to try to put the bulk of the material that is currently in the lead into the main article, and revise the lead.
• Have you got access to the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians? It may be a source for more information about the virginals.
• Try and find a reference for the extract from Pepys' diary. Try Google Books or Project Gutenberg.

— Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 18:31, 18 May 2008 (UTC)

Getting the English Grammer and Idiom right

It strikes me that to refer to Virginals only in the past tense implies that no such item exists any more. Surely a Virginals IS a musical keyboard instrument (present tense) ? For certain, it was far more popular and common in the past (past tense) but that does not preclude the fact that a Virginals sitting on my living room table still IS a Virginals, it hasn't now become something else making the use of the past tense appropriate. I give up trying to correct the tense in the opening paragraph of the article, because every time I do someone undoes it, so I am happy for someone else to take the credit for getting the grammer right.

Regarding idiom, I rather feel that idiomatic language is frowned on in encyclopaedias as it makes an article sort of unclear to non native English speakers.

I refer to http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/sort+of and the current article. A Virginals was a sort of harpsichord. My initial reaction was to cringe or wince at the incorrect use of tense and the awful cockney style idiom. Surely it is a musical keyboard instrument similar to a harpsichord. A 'form of' or 'type of' or 'similar to' or 'early variant of' would all be standard English in near diametric opposition to the current use of 'sort of'; being crude idiom implying uncertainty, idiocy or imprecision. Aethandor (talk) 13:46, 9 June 2008 (UTC)aethandor Aethandor (talk) 15:20, 9 June 2008 (UTC)aethandor

Good point on the tense, but I'm not sure about idiomatic language - this isn't Simple English Wikipedia after all. On the other hand, you're quite right, 'a type of Harpsichord' would be more precise and equally idiomatic. InfernoXV (talk) 17:04, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

'Getting the English Grammer and Idiom right'

With all due respect to Aethandor: What you have described, seems to be an American problem. The fact that your corrected version has been vandalised repeatedly, demonstrates that these advocates for 'American English' are becoming bolder in their practice of turning English grammar on its head; promoting discord seems to be the goal. After all, 'American English' is a euphemism for illiteracy. There is no such thing as 'American German' is there? 
Regarding the virginal itself. I am surprised that no sound file is present within such a comprehensive article about music. The addition of such a file, enabling users to hear what a virginal sounds like, would certainly improve the article.  DieselEstate (talk) 11:07, 20 October 2019 (UTC)

Description and use of singular/plural word type

There is still inconsistency in this article on the use of "virginals" for the singular form. The current opening Description says "virginal" for the singular form, yet throughout the rest of the article "virginals" is used for the singular form. Rather than change the Description section myself, I thought it better to point this out. Oh, and I see that some of the picture descriptors also use the word "virginal" rather than "virginals".109.153.19.54 (talk) 16:08, 16 March 2019 (UTC)

Actually, the current opening description says "The virginals[a] or virginal is a keyboard instrument ...", with then footnote "[a]" reading "The plural form may be used to refer to a single instrument". This is historically the case, but could be better documented here, since the cited "sources" are merely examples of the title given in modern English to a painting by Vermeer. In my personal experience, the singular form is almost always "a virginals", but my experience does not constitute a reliable source.—Jerome Kohl (talk) 01:14, 17 March 2019 (UTC)

Decoration, Flemish style, marbling?

In the "Decoration" section, it says the following regarding Flemish virginals:

"The case exteriors were usually marbled, ..."

I'm not sure what this means. Slabs of marble? (surely not?) Decorative small pieces of marble? Painted in the style/method that's called marbling? TooManyFingers (talk) 18:27, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Compass

It's stated (more or less) that the compass of the instrument was sufficient for the music of its time, but isn't the converse of this idea more accurate and more logical? I think it's clear that as soon as a good instrument with more notes becomes widely available, composers use the added range - they weren't abstractly writing music in a narrow range and then having instruments built to suit it, they were writing music that the available instruments could play.

It *seems* like it might be a mysterious chicken-and-egg problem, but IMO it's clear that the instrument came first and the music had to be written to fit it, and not the other way around. TooManyFingers (talk) 18:13, 7 January 2022 (UTC)