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Virginals From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Muselar (also muselaar or muselars) virginals 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 and fundamental sound (somewhat reminiscent of a square wave), but at a price: the action for the left hand is inevitably placed in the middle of the instrument's sounding board, with the result that any mechanical noise from this action 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) said that muselars “grunt in the bass like young pigs“. Thus the muselar was better suited to chord-and-melody music without complex left hand parts. T
