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Room Size

Size

The size of a room can alter a perceived sound in terms of its intensity. If a harpsichord were played in a large room or concert hall, it would take longer for the sound to reach the ear of a listener who wasn't sitting right next to the instrument.

In addition to a reduced intensity in the sound, the sound waves coming from a harpsichord in an open area would have less surfaces to reflect off of. This is due to the fact that compressional sound waves dissipate as they travel farther away from the sound source. So, much of the reverberation that would give a richness to the music would be lost.

For a harpsichord, which has such a quiet sound when compared to other instruments, a small room would be required to obtain the a fullness in the music. Traditionally, when they were much more common, harpsichords were often played in small parlor rooms, and sometimes in ensemble settings. In such areas, the sound from a harpsichord would not fade out as much due to the size of the space.

Localization

"Until the early 1960s, ... music was presented monophonically, that is, through one loudspeaker enclosure with all the sounds from the original performance coming from one direction. The illusion of the spaciousness of the original performance hall could be conveyed by reverberation--sounds reflected off distant walls behind the microphone--on the recording. But information as to the actual positions of instruments and voices was largely lost in monophonic presentation."
-Music Cognition pg. 53

This illustrates the importance of secondary reverberations that come off the walls of a room are for creating an auditorily right listening environment.

Domes

Similarly to a concave mirror for light waves, a domed ceiling will reflect sound to different points in a room. Sound starting from one focal point can reach another focal point by reflecting off of a point in the dome. This principle is evident in the Whispering Gallery in St. Paul's Capthedral in London. The gallery gets its name from the fact that even a whisper against its walls is audible on the opposite side of the room.

Similarly, in the Statuary Hall inside the U.S. Capitol building, John Quincy Adams discovered the same acoustical occurrence. He situated his desk at a focal point of the elliptical ceiling, and managed to eavesdrop on the conversations of other House members located near the opposite focal point.