This panel was referred to as a ‘harpsichord’ even in the eighteenth century. X-rays reveal that it was painted on a harpsichord lid, with the scene appearing on the inside and a painted pattern (now covered by black paint) on the outside. Gonzales Coques’s ‘Young Scholar and his Wife’ of 1640 (Kassel) shows what such an illustrated harpsichord would have looked like. An addition at the top right corner turned the curved instrument lid into a rectangle - the join is still visible to the naked eye. This conversion of a piece of furniture into a conventional landscape appears to have taken place very early, perhaps even in Teniers’s time.

The family to the left are obviously portraits and presumably the owners of the country house in the background and the bearers of the arms which appear there - including a St Andrew’s cross which was also picked up in the decoration of the shutters. The music of the village dance is clearly an appropriate subject for a harpsichord, but the scene also suggests the harmony which exist between lord of the manor and his tenants and hired hands. His son cheerfully joins in the dance and is daughter seems minded to accept the pressing invitation of the rustic to do likewise.