The NEMUS project has released a free Kontakt instrument sampled from an exact replica of the 1547 Alessandro Trasuntino harpsichord, the oldest known Italian harpsichord with two eight-foot registers, held (unplayed, and unrestored) in the Tagliavini Collection at Museo San Colombano in Bologna.
The 1547 Alessandro Trasuntino harpsichord is among the oldest and most important Italian harpsichords in existence. It is also cracked, pierced, and silent. Rather than return it to playing condition — which would mean destroying the very evidence that makes it valuable — we built two faithful copies of it: one in wood, and one in numbers, played from a keyboard that makes no sound of its own.
Since the original instrument cannot be played without risking the loss of the physical evidence in its untouched soundboard and case, NEMUS commissioned harpsichord builder Roberto Livi to build a faithful copy, reproducing the original’s geometry and soundboard thickness map. That copy was recorded by Simone Coen at his studio near Milan in February 2026, and the resulting samples form the basis of this release.
Two Kontakt patches are included, sampling the same instrument but mapping the bass octave differently:
- Harpsichord Ottava Corta — reproduces the instrument’s historical Italian short octave (C/E type). The bass keys don’t map chromatically: MIDI E2 sounds C2, F♯2 sounds D2, and G♯2 sounds E2, exactly as on the original.
- Harpsichord Esteso — the same samples with a fully chromatic bass octave, for players who’d rather not deal with short-octave remapping.
Both patches share the same control set: a Denoised/Original switch toggling between the raw recordings and a version run through a light iZotope RX wideband denoise pass (~9 dB lower noise floor), a 1 Register/2 Registers switch for choosing one or both of the instrument’s 8′ registers, and two noise-window knobs (Sus Start, Rel Start) that let players dial the captured mechanical action noise — the jack, quill, and damper — in or out of the sustain and release portions of each sample.
Tuning is fixed in meantone temperament at A4 = 415 Hz, see the documentation for a full tuning map.
Check the case study for more details on the project and download the sample library for the full version of Kontakt 7 or later at the NEMUS Project software downloads page.
