The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)

William Dowd, at 86; built harpsichords

The Boston Globe (Boston, MA) | December 8, 2008 | Copyright

William Dowd always remembered the first moment he pressed the keys of an old harpsichord while he was studying at Harvard after World War II. The music rose into the room.

"I was thrilled by it," he told the Christian Science Monitor in 1981.

Less thrilling, however, were newer models made in the 1940s with designs that mirrored the piano in ways that altered the harpsichord's delicate plucked sound.

"It was simply the difference between good and bad," Mr. Dowd told the Globe in 1982. "The classic instruments were simpler; the sound they made was more beautiful, more…

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