The Benton Fletcher collection, housed at Fenton House in London, contains an outstanding selection of early keyboard instruments including harpsichords, spinets, virginals, clavichords and pianos. Considering its small size, this collection includes a remarkable selection of extremely rare sixteenth-or early seventeenth-century Italian examples, along with rare seventeenth-century English virginals. The instruments range from the elegantly simple to the exquisitely extravagant. Collectively the provide a fascinating history of the craft of early keyboard-making. Each of the 19 instruments in the collection is carefully described in terms of manufacture, content, musical components, history and technical data, and each is illustrated; often by specially commissioned photographs.

Hear the beautiful sounds of early keyboard instruments in a specially recorded CD that comes free with this book. The CD contains 30 individual pieces of music played on many of the instruments in the collection by early keyboard specialist Terence Charleston.