Wolfgang Zuckermann; harpsichord designer

For some 200 years, the harpsichord was king. The Baroque composers J.S. Bach, George Frideric Handel and Domenico Scarlatti all wrote sonatas, suites and solo works for the instrument, a rich-sounding keyboard in which strings are plucked – not hammered – by a tiny piece of quill or leather called a plectrum.

But in music, as in fashion or art, tastes change. Technologies advance. And by the end of the 18th century, when revolutions were raging in France and America, the harpsichord was eclipsed by its gentle cousin, the fortepiano.

Abandoned by most composers and musicians, the instrument never retook its place at the center of the musical universe. Yet in the 20th century, the harpsichord experienced a notable resurgence, with its tinkling keys featured in works by composers Benjamin Britten and György Ligeti, by Artie Shaw’s acclaimed jazz combo, and by the Beach Boys in “God Only Knows.”

At the fore of this antiquarian revival was Wolfgang Zuckermann, a German-born Jew who fled to the United States after Adolf Hitler came to power, worked as a child psychologist and piano technician and, in 1959, developed a build-it-yourself harpsichord kit that brought this once-obscure instrument into thousands of homes from North America to Australia.

Zuckermann turned from music to become an unlikely pied piper of the anticonsumerist and environmentalist movements, then retired to a quiet life as a book salesman in France.

He was 96 when he died Oct. 31 at his home in Avignon, not far from the former Shakespeare Books, where he had long offered customers homemade scones and cream tea.