Harpsichord News

Italian Christmas: 

Fiesole Revisited

Reader Mark Dirksen, business manager for John-Paul Buzard Pipe Organ Builders of Champaign, Illinois, wrote in response to the Christmas excerpt from my Salzburg memoir in our December 2016 Harpsichord News column:

. . . I am writing to acknowledge your lovely reminiscence of a Christmas Day in Fiesole in 1958 because it uncannily mirrors my own.

In 2004–05 my wife and I were fortunate enough to go on a “pilgrimage to an unknown destination.” That academic year took us on many adventures: mission work in South Africa and three glorious months living in Paris to mention just two highlights.

Christmas found us in Florence. It was a lovely December day in mid-Italy, just such a one as you describe, and we motored up to Fiesole, having been told of the glorious views. And lo! There was that same Monastery and the same Chapel, with Christmas Day Mass in progress: the monks, a handful of parishioners, and two very blessed Americans. It was truly a Christmas to remember­—followed by a lovely picnic lunch beside the Arno in a plaza all to ourselves. Thanks for bringing that memory back!

Paul Wolfe Remembered

Born in Waco, Texas, in 1929, Paul Wolfe grew up in the small town of Hico (a unique name that he used as a prime element of his e-mail address). Only 16 when he graduated from high school, Paul continued his education at the University of Texas (Austin), earning his undergraduate degree at 19! A fine pianist, he became interested in the harpsichord and was counseled to study the instrument with either Ralph Kirkpatrick or Wanda Landowska. Paul chose the latter option, and, together with Rafael Puyana and Irma Rogell, had the distinction of being in the final group of students to be taught by the iconic artist.

For an interesting and comprehensive report on Wolfe’s Landowska years and his career as a harpsichordist in Europe and the United States, I refer our readers to the feature article, “Mamusia: Paul Wolfe Remembers Wanda Landowska” (The Diapason, October 2012, pp. 23–25), copiously illustrated with ten rare photographs. Author Craig Smith, currently a freelance writer on music and the arts, was formerly a classical music critic for the Santa Fe New Mexican and a longtime friend of Paul Wolfe. When I invited Paul to reminisce about his Landowska years at our final Southern Methodist University summer harpsichord workshop in New Mexico (Summer 2008), he agreed to speak to the class, but only if Craig Smith were engaged to be the “host questioner” for the interview.

My own fondly remembered friendship with Paul Wolfe came about when Nick Fritsch of Lyrachord Records decided to transfer to compact disc and reissue Paul’s path-breaking harpsichord recordings made in the mid-1950s for Expériences Anonymes. Rightly concerned that many listeners in the 1990s might not understand the colorful sounds and frequent changes of registration available on earlier revival harpsichords, Nick commissioned me to write an essay, “When They Had Pedals,” to be published together with Paul’s original extensive notes on the music. As a consistent attendee of the Santa Fe Opera I travel every summer to that most wonderful arts mecca; so, during one of these annual visits I was able to make an appointment to meet and speak with Paul Wolfe concerning the reissue project.

He liked my essay, I enjoyed his company, and consistently, through the ensuing years, we continued to share quite a number of delightful dinners or lunches at several of Santa Fe’s better restaurants. Later in that tradition it was settled that our favorite spot was SantaCafé, where, on a shaded dining patio, Paul could order his favorite lunch—an all-beef frankfurter on a bun, with sauerkraut slaw, jalapeño mustard, and rosemary potato chips, Santa Fe’s take on New York-style cuisine.

Paul’s association with and eventual marriage to Brigitta Lieberson (also known as Vera Zorina) brought him into a highly artistic family that included the composer Peter Lieberson and his wife, the irreplaceable mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, both of whom thus became Paul’s stepchildren. Mental vignettes of his love for two pet dachshunds and his racy sports car driving at “Presto” speed, my memories of Paul are those of a vibrant and charming human being who was blessed with a fine musical talent as well as a quiet gift for warm friendship. No longer playing the harpsichord, Paul turned to writing as an artistic outlet. The resulting novel Choices (2006), a racy story of intrigue at a fictitious Italian music festival (cleverly dubbed Lospello by the crafty author), is a good read for those not offended by adult situations and language.

And now his hands and voice are stilled: Paul passed away on Christmas Day 2016, the last of Landowska’s American students. The two Lyrachord double-disc albums, When They Had Pedals, issued in 1998, comprise works by Frescobaldi and the English virginalists (LEMS-8033), played on Wolfe’s 1907 Pleyel instrument, and
G. F. Handel’s Suites 3, 8, 11, 13, 14, and 15 (LEMS-8034), performed on the well-loved Rutkowski harpsichord Wolfe purchased in 1958.

Masterful Froberger by Glen Wilson

Referencing admired compact discs brings us to 23 Suites for Harpsichord plus Tombeau and Lamentation by the 17th-century composer Johann Jacob Froberger, recorded by harpsichordist Glen Wilson. American-born, a Juilliard graduate who studied with Albert Fuller, then a favored pupil of Gustav Leonhardt (1971–75), Glen Wilson has pursued his stellar career in Holland and Germany. The music heard on this two-disc album from Naxos provides more than two hours of evocative and individual harpsichord playing. I recommend this set highly and suggest that referencing Wilson’s extensive 15-page online essay (in which he sets forth his well-researched ideas that form the bases for the performances on Naxos 8.573493-94) will provide all readers a fascinating study of both composer and player.

An Internet search for “Glen Wilson Harpsichordist” will lead directly to his website: www.glenwilson.eu/. After chuckling at the home page’s whimsical drawing “Flying Harpsichord” by Emma Wilson, age 7 (1997), click on Articles and Sound Clips to access Article 6 (the Naxos-connected one). Also of immense interest and import is Article 1, “The Other Mr. Couperin,” in which Wilson, a deft and determined musicological sleuth, presents the probable answer to a dichotomy that has puzzled me for a number of years: why is Louis Couperin’s harpsichord music so much more polished and interesting than his compositions for the organ? Read Wilson’s quite remarkable online report and consider his well-reasoned conclusion!

A Recital Program by J. William Greene

Finally, in a fortuitous e-mail, I received a program recently played at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, by J. William Greene. Readers of this column may remember encountering Greene’s winsome compositions for organ or harpsichord, especially his Christmas Ayres and Dances (see Harpsichord News, June 2015, p. 11).

In Part One of his recital the artist played a Peter Fisk single-manual harpsichord (2011), tuned in meantone. Works performed were by Frescobaldi, Dirck Janszoon Sweelinck (son of the better-known Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck), Delphin Strungk, Dieterich Buxtehude, and (to continue our previous theme) the Suite XXVII (27) by J. J. Froberger, a formerly incomplete set of pieces now fleshed out to suite-length, thanks to several recent discoveries of additional source material. This suite begins with the short, but extremely pictorial Allemande, “written to document a marine tragedy that took place on the Rhine [River].” (A facsimile of the original manuscript is to be found in the Froberger/Wilson article cited above.)

For Part Two of this imaginative program, Dr. Greene offered four Couperin preludes from L’art de toucher le clavecin (recently the focus of Harpsichord News), and the artist confided that he added Prelude Four as an encore! The remaining selections were J. S. Bach’s Ouverture, BWV 820, Carlo Antonio Campioni’s Sonata II in E Major, and Fandango by Padre Antonio Soler. The harpsichord was a Frank Hubbard French 18th-century double-manual instrument from 1979, tuned in a well-temperament.

I am certain that a “Zugabe” [Encore] was well earned, and could only wish that I had been present to hear this decidedly unusual harpsichord repertory. Bravo!

According to Janus

The ancient Romans worshipped many gods. Janus, who provided the name for our first month of the year, had two faces, which allowed him to look in both directions: back to the past and forward to the future. Thus, a Janusian column seems appropriate for the first month of a new year.

Looking Back: Topics of the
2016 Harpsichord News
Columns

January: Buried Treasures: The Harpsichord Pages in Retrospect (2006–2015); Something New: Mysteries with Musical References

March: William Bolcom’s Compositions for Solo Harpsichord

April: More Duphly; Two Additional Mystery Novels; Semibrevity Website

May: Historical Keyboard Society of North America Conference at Oberlin College: Duphly, Skowroneck, Leonhardt, and Kreisler—A Twisted Tale

June: Tempi in Early Music from Beverly Jerold Scheibert; Two Clavichords at the Oberlin HKSNA

July: In Memoriam: Drawings by Jane Johnson (A Retrospective Feature Article)

August: Broadening a Harpsichordist’s Horizon: The Fifth East Texas Pipe Organ Festival Continues Tradition

September: Striking Gold: Some Thoughts on Performing Bach’s Goldberg Variations

October: Well-Tempered: Lou Harrison and the Harpsichord

November: Some Thoughts on Programming

December: Christmas Musings: Joseph Wechsberg’s The Best Things in Life; Recordings of the complete harpsichord works of Marchand and Clérambault on compact disc and 21st-century solos on another from the British Harpsichord Society; plus a Christmas Vignette (excerpted from Palmer: Letters from Salzburg).

Two Vignettes from 2016 East

Texas Pipe Organ Festival
(November 6–11)

The most recent pipe organ fest in November followed its traditional, successful schedule, albeit with a bit more time allowed for dining and socializing. After the brilliant Sunday evening opening organ recital by Richard Elliot on Kilgore’s prized Roy Perry-designed Aeolian-Skinner organ (Opus 1173, First Presbyterian Church), Christopher Marks (new to the artist roster) began the first full day of the festival on Monday with a recital on the same instrument. His well-designed program devoted to music by Seth Bingham (1882–1972) showed the conservative American church musician to be a composer consistent in craftsmanship, and one indebted to the French school of organ music as well. Nostalgia welled up when, for the first time since high school, I heard again two pieces from Bingham’s organ suite Harmonies of Florence (1929): Savonarola, and one that was in my repertoire in those youthful years, Twilight at Fiesole. These pieces brought back memories of another outstanding advocate for French music, Oberlin professor of organ Fenner Douglass, with whom I had the great privilege of studying during my senior year. Douglass played French organ music ranging from Titelouze to the most recent works of Messiaen, but an American whom he admired and whose music he performed was none other than . . . Seth Bingham. 

Vignette Two: In Janus-Speak,
Ave atque Vale (Hail and 

Farewell)

I was not particularly looking forward to the fourth organ concert of our annual “day in Shreveport” even though the program was to take place on the grandest of the festival organs (Aeolian-Skinner opus 1308) in the most accommodating acoustic: St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. Replacing the indisposed Marilyn Keiser as recitalist was the winner of the 2016 Longwood Gardens Competition, Joshua Stafford. His stylishly eclectic program comprised Leo Sowerby’s Comes Autumn Time, Seth Bingham’s Roulade (heard for the second time at this Festival), Lemare’s transcription of Dvorák’s Carnival Overture, a quiet Lied (Douze Pièces) by Gaston Litaize, and, following intermission, Liszt’s lengthy Fantasie and Fugue on the Chorale “Ad nos” from Meyerbeer’s Le Prophète. From the opening notes until the final strains of his patriotic encore, it was apparent that this young man is a stellar musician with a seemingly effortless technique that could encompass anything. But more than that, he demonstrated music-making of the highest order, delivered without affectation, obviously played with delight and musical intensity. At the conclusion of this amazing recital, before the final chord had died away in the reverberant cathedral, the audience, as one, rose to its feet, shouting “Bravo.” My own word choice was “Bravissimo!” Welcome to the company of outstanding artists, Joshua Stafford. I can scarcely wait to hear more from your talented fingers, feet, heart, and soul.

The closing event of the festival on Thursday evening was a recital by Frederick Swann at Kilgore’s First Presbyterian Church. Announced as the veteran artist’s final organ concert (he will continue to play church services), this repeat of the program he had given as a rededication concert for Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1173 following its 1966 revision by Roy Perry, capped Swann’s career of some 3,000 recitals with graceful, intense playing, always offered to the benefit of the music. In a class act that will be remembered for a very long time, the acclaimed organist did not play a traditional “encore” to acknowledge the continuing ovation of the large crowd; instead he instructed us to open our hymn books and sing, supported by his inspired accompaniment, “Praise to the Lord, the Almighty, the King of Creation.” These two unforgettable musical events receive my vote for best in show, ETPOF VI. 

The Future: Hello 2017

Billing itself as “the world’s best-selling classical music magazine,” BBC Music is a very good journal. Each monthly copy has affixed to its cover a compact disc, custom-produced to form part of the month’s offerings. For the December 2016 issue the featured composer is Johann Sebastian Bach. Articles discuss “the secret of his genius in ten masterpieces,” attempt to make sense of the extensive Bach family tree, and generally aid the reader/listener in various musical discoveries. This issue also contains 110 reviews of classical music discs by knowledgeable critics. The accompanying CD is of JSB’s final masterpiece, The Art of Fugue, in an orchestration devised by harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani for a substantial baroque instrumental contingent made up of two violins, viola, cello, viola da gamba, violone, two flutes, recorder, oboe, oboe d’amore, oboe da caccia, bassoon, cornetto, and two harpsichords (the players are members of the Academy of Ancient Music). This baroque chamber orchestra version is an attempt to suggest the type of coffee-house performance that Bach might have put together. With some moments of solo harpsichord, but many more with the instrumental band, it is indeed a colorful and unusual performance.

To suggest something for the future, I would like to reference a BBC Music “last page”—one of its “Music That Changed Me” series. In the September 2005 issue, the featured musician was the brilliant, energetic British harpsichordist (and conductor) Richard Egarr. I have been an admirer of his nimble-fingered, exciting playing for quite some time, and a part of what nourishes this spirited musical drive surely could be traced, in part, to the choices he makes for his own listening. Egarr cites six recordings, and I note with interest that only two of them comprise music for a solo keyboard. Both of these discs are historical testaments from unique and path-breaking musical artists. I suspect that many of Egarr’s own savvy musical instincts come from his “listening outside the [keyboard] box,” something I have long advocated, and that I recommend to our readers as a sure path to continuing aural adventures during this new year. My own choices nearly always include vocal works, for listening to good singers or choral ensembles helps incredibly in learning to make our own phrases breathe naturally (a benefit that is also attained by playing, or listening to, wind instruments).

So, for the record (as it were), here are Egarr’s six choices: Music of the Gothic Era (David Munrow); Early Violin Music (Musica Antiqua Köln); Mahler, Symphony I (Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Leonard Bernstein); Moritz Rosenthal (historical recording of piano music issued by American Columbia’s Biddulph label); Tchaikovsky, Marche Slav (London Symphony Orchestra, Leopold Stokowski); and, as the second keyboard item: Bach’s Goldberg Variations (Glenn Gould, piano), which he cites as a performance style that he has had to overcome in his own study of the monumental work.

Finally, dear readers, a few hints of some developing columns that may appear during the first half of 2017: from a group of colleagues who perform contemporary harpsichord music, some listings of their favorite works; an in-depth examination of a Bach prelude and fugue from the WTC; a guest article about some legendary French harpsichordists; an article on harpsichord pedagogy. Any suggestions for other topics of interest?

Lessons from Couperin

It was not until my first academic sabbatical semester in the late 1970s that I took the time to learn all eight of the preludes published in the remarkable method, L’Art de toucher le Clavecin (1716–1717) by François Couperin “le Grand,” organist, harpsichordist, and Ordinaire de la Musique at the Court of France’s Louis XIV. My scholastic harpsichord study had not been lengthy: a year of intense lessons with Isolde Ahlgrimm (with as much practice as possible) at the Salzburg Mozarteum (1958–59) followed by two of the revelatory three-week summer courses with Gustav Leonhardt in Haarlem (1964 and 1967) comprised the sum total of formal guidance at the instrument.

Ahlgrimm was an inspiring mentor: fluent in many languages, at the time learning baroque dance from Vienna State Opera ballerina Rikki Raab, and fresh from her path-breaking Bach cycle for Philips, the Dutch recording company. My first repertoire assignments from her included a few pieces by the English Virginalists, several short selections by the Austrian composer Paul Hofhaymer (rushed into the schedule when I was tagged on extremely short notice to fill in as harpsichordist for a 500th anniversary celebration in Radstadt, the composer’s birthplace), and signature pieces by Couperin (Les Baricades mistérieuses and B-minor Passacaille), plus, for the year’s finale concert, Bach’s A-minor English Suite. The Mozarteum’s harpsichord was a tank-like Maendler-Schramm double, joined at the end of the year by a new Sperrhake, its size, as Frau Ahlgrimm noted, larger than many of the rooms in which she had slept!¹

Leonhardt’s seminars covered more repertoire: multiple suites by Louis Couperin and Johann Jakob Froberger, plus the big Bach masterpieces, as well as other German and Dutch pieces, all offered with a great deal of mind-changing ideas about number symbolism, rare manuscript variants, and the valuable lessons gained from his Martin Skowroneck two-manual harpsichord, my first encounter with an historic copy instrument, an experience that determined my future preferences and resulted in my first William Dowd instrument, completed in December 1968.

By the time of that first sabbatical leave I had moved to Dallas to take over the harpsichord program begun by James Tallis (who, sadly, died in 1969 at the beginning of his second year on the Southern Methodist University faculty). Our harpsichord class had blossomed: students were legion; majors and minors filled my load, which also included teaching ten organ majors. Organist colleague Robert Anderson had a full studio of twenty major students. As I look back at those years of vibrant organ and harpsichord enrollments I reflect on the irony of it all: while trying to hone my teaching skills I was besieged with candidates, but by the time I was experienced and, hopefully, had something valuable to teach them, the number of students in these majors had begun its national downward trajectory.

During the years when organists made up the majority of harpsichord students (two semesters of harpsichord study were required for the master’s degree in organ) one could expect some level of knowledge about Baroque performance practice, legato playing, and other organistic skills. With the decline in number of majors, but aided by the welcome encouragement of my colleague, superb pianist Joaquin Achúcarro (who encouraged his brilliant piano students to study harpsichord and/or organ, thus following the Maxims of the composer Robert Schumann), one was required to introduce most basic Baroque stylistic concepts and techniques, and here we arrive at the discussion of these remarkable Couperin examples.

I adopted the eight preludes as the required foundation for harpsichord study. Every subsequent harpsichord student began with Prelude One (C major). Many of the advanced players found it extremely difficult to make music of something they regarded as a simple exercise. Couperin’s fingerings, promoting his new-found style of finger substitution as a basis for producing a fine legato, are relevant today, although getting a contemporary player to forego the constant use of a pivotal thumb is a difficult task for both student and teacher. (I do not forbid thumb use, but make its use less “ordinary.”) 

Prelude Two (D minor) seems light years advanced in difficulty. (I continually wonder how Couperin’s students fared? Probably they had a better teacher!). So, instead of assigning it next, I move to Prelude Four (F major), which seems a more logical successor to Prelude One. (It even begins with the same mordent and follows that with a similar bass note one octave lower). This piece, however, adds a wonderful introduction to the sliding of the second finger from A-flat to A-natural (as in the penultimate measure’s bass line).

I then move back to the Third Prelude (G minor), which provides a lesson in listening. There is one totally wrong note in the original engraving of this piece, a note not corrected in the 1717 second printing. It is the unique rare example in which one can prove that the note is incorrect! (I had, in my devotion to the text, played it wrong for quite a long time before I was led to the truth at a Bernard Lagacé masterclass.) The proof that the bass B-flat on beat four of measure 16 should be C, a whole step higher, is shown by the guide note in the original print which clearly indicates a C. Perhaps this is the reason that the composer and engraver did not bother to change it in the subsequent edition? Engraving another whole copper plate, after all, would have been extremely tedious and expensive.

But what a lesson this makes: nearly all of us are far too bound by the printed notes in a score. It is rare, in my experience, that any piece of music is totally accurate. Printing errors, human errors—they do exist. So, by using this splendid example during lessons, I assign the piece and wait to hear what will ensue. Will the student hear an ugly sound on that beat, note the sequence deviation in the bass pattern, and at least question it? Or not?

Usually “or not” wins! And what a teaching moment that becomes, when I can simply say, “Use your ears! If it sounds wrong, it probably IS wrong, especially for music of this tonal style!” Having the original printed error to buttress the argument (and sometimes it did turn into an argument: “How could you be sure?” “Change a note in the score? How awful,” et cetera)—that was both valuable and necessary. Then we point out the offending measure and bless the fact that the incorrect note came at the change of staves (quite possibly because of this change, in fact). Lesson learned: listen and be vigilant, even when playing from Ur- or Ur-Urtexts!

Finally, in the ordering of the first half of these eight pieces, the Second Prelude in D minor provides a triumphant conclusion and a well-earned sense of achievement when its technical challenges are mastered.

Usually from that point on I leave it up to the student to select an order for the “final four” pieces, having often wondered why Couperin put them in his chosen printed sequence? The pieces do increase in difficulty, but my reaction to the order of the final two usually leads me to play Number Eight (E minor) before Number Seven (a stately French Ouverture Prelude in B-flat Major), especially if I am programming all of the pieces and interspersing them with quotations from the lively dialogues the composer has provided in his Observations. Of these bon-mots my absolute favorite is typical: “A reflection: Men who wish to attain a certain degree of perfection at the harpsichord should never do any rough work with their hands. Women’s hands, on the contrary, are generally better for harpsichord playing . . . .”

What a wonderful response should your significant other try to shame you into doing yard work or other (non-practicing) manual labor!

About editions: I prefer the Alfred Masterwork Edition, edited by Margery Halford. It provides the full text in French with an English translation in a printing that has no obvious errors (save for Couperin’s, as noted above), and one that is refreshingly both “Made in America” and inexpensive. Performance suggestions, printed in light gray, may be helpful for some ornaments, but Mrs. Halford and I have had a long-term disagreement about the performance of the so called “passing appoggiatura”—basically a passing note, especially in the figure of the descending third. The editor once admitted that she likes my interpretation of these petite notes as unaccented passing tones, but asserted that there was no documentary evidence for performing them in that manner (i.e., before the beat, not on it).

About the time that I was learning these pieces, that is, the late 1970s, a number of players, independently, began treating these notes as passing tones. Among them were Leonhardt (several years after the classes with him) and other luminaries; all of us just happened to start doing it independently. I am pleased to share with our readers that the world did not come to an end (at that juncture), and that Robert Donington, in the second revised edition of his The Interpretation of Early Music (W. W. Norton, 1992) clarified the “passing-ness” of those little notes with his Postscript to Chapter 18 (page 228), as well as his citing of Leopold Mozart and a French writer, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Dictionaire de musique, Paris, 1768), who clinches the argument with his native authority (page 227). 

Other than that, and not warning of the wrong note in one of her many footnotes, the Halford edition is a fine one. A caution: one to avoid is the 1930s German Breitkopf edition of L’Art (edited by Anna Linde), in which many of the fast note groupings have been changed to reflect correct mathematically barred patterns, but thereby lose their graphic, semi-improvisatory visual invitations to “play fast, and fit them in as you are able.” If you want a true 18th-century feeling, choose one of several facsimile editions, but only if you wish to deal with soprano and alto C-clefs. Both Broude Brothers and Fuzeau have published reprints of the original 18th-century copper engravings.

I continue to love Couperin’s exceptional contributions to harpsichord pedagogy and frequently play them as the warm-up musical pieces they were intended to be. In retirement from academe, I continue to instruct several mature students; even those who are currently teaching music themselves are required to traverse François-le-Grand’s stylistic and basic introduction to their new and unfamiliar instrument. Only after they have learned to control these beautiful sounds are they permitted to proceed on to other Baroque and subsequent pieces that drew them to the harpsichord in the first place.

In Memoriam: Paul Wolfe 

(1929–2016)

The last of Wanda Landowska’s American students passed away in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Christmas Day. I am gathering material for a more detailed memoir of this gentle man and fine musician. If any reader has information, vignettes, or pictures of Paul, I would appreciate receiving your contributions for a memorial tribute to be published next month.

Notes

1. For more information on Ahlgrimm’s teaching, see Kim Kasling: “Harpsichord Lessons for the Beginner,” The Diapason, March 1977 (also reprinted in Peter
Watchorn’s fine book, Isolde Ahlgrimm, Vienna and the Early Music Revival, Ashgate Publishing, Burlington, Vermont, 2007).

People, look east. 

The time is near . . .

We’ve done it again. We’ve finished a holiday season replete with performances of Messiah and Nutcracker, carol services, and pageants. We’ve roared through the glorious descants by David Willcocks, the Noël variations of d’Aquin and Balbastre, and we’ve sent choir members home to their families in the wee hours of the morning. We’ve tolerated ten weeks of holiday advertising—the first Christmas displays I saw this year were in Home Depot, two weeks before Halloween—and through it all, we’ve celebrated the holiday with our family and friends.

November and December are busy organ tuning months. In the northeast where I live, we think of these as “cold weather” tunings, adjusting the organs as required by the flow and striation of heated air, or the exposure of one organ chamber to prevailing winds while the other is in the lee. In this neck of the woods, Christmas and Easter are both winter holidays, so it makes more sense to tune in November and May. In the last couple months I’ve tuned more than fifty organs in New York and Boston, shuttling in and out of buildings, greasing the bearings of blower motors, cleaning keyboards, setting temperaments, and regulating reeds.

Of the crowning of the year . . .

I’ve been doing this since the 1970s, and I’ve always thought it’s fun to poke around the choir rooms to see what music is out. It’s also fun to see little packages of goodies that have been left for the organist, sometimes even a bottle or two, and notes on white boards offering thanks for the beautiful music.

Christmas is a holiday of traditions, so each church has a list of pieces that get sung each year. And lots of those pieces are common to hundreds of churches. Carols for Choirs is ubiquitous, in all its volumes. When I was a junior chorister, starting around 1966, Carols for Choirs I was five years old. The Willcocks descant to O Come, All Ye Faithful must be the standard against which all others are judged; how many millions of people know to start “Sing, choirs of angels . . .” on D. And let’s not forget those fantasmagorical chords under “Word of the Father . . .” or the majestic progression in the last phrase of the refrain after verse 7—all those sharps! Wow. Fifty-five years later, it stills gets me every time. Nice work, Sir David.

Daniel Pinkham’s Christmas Cantata is another favorite, with its beguiling mix of Renaissance-inspired motives and rhythms, and contemporary harmonies. Choirs love to sing it, and congregations love hearing it. I was at a party with Pinkham where he mentioned that Christmas Cantata paid for his house. Nice work, Daniel.

In the past generation, John Rutter’s music has renewed Christmas for many churches. Shepherd’s Pipe Carol is a peppy little number that makes people smile, and I imagine that Candlelight Carol will be as much a staple as Silent Night, Holy Night in a decade or two. Nice work, John.

Many organists consider the French Noël variations an essential part of Christmas. I know I do. But I had an interesting moment once when a parishioner asked me what was all that French stuff I play at Christmas. He helped me realize that the people in that New England Congregational church had never heard the French carols, as familiar to a French congregation as Hark! The Herald Angels Sing is to us, and equally familiar to organists. I had published the titles in the bulletin in French, meaningless to everyone except me. I knew it was Christmas music, but no one else did. Claude Balbastre (1724–99) was one of the most popular musicians in France, a virtuoso for the people. His Noël variations were wildly popular and people thronged to hear him play them, causing such a disturbance in the church that the Archbishop of Paris barred him from playing Christmas services. We should all have such trouble. Nice work, Claude.

Make your house fair as you are able . . .

Eleanor Farjeon (1881–1965) was a British writer, best known for the more than eighty books of stories and poems she wrote for children. She won several prestigious literary awards, and the Children’s Book Circle, a society of publishers, authors, and librarians, presents the Eleanor Farjeon Award annually in Great Britain for excellence in children’s literature.

Farjeon’s People Look East is a delightful sprightly poem, familiarly set to the tune of a French carol. It was first published in the Oxford Book of Carols in 1928 and has become a mainstay of traditional Christmas music. I bet the tune is rollicking through your mind’s ears as you read. I love this carol, both for its beguiling singability, and for the marvelous metaphorical allusion it suggests. Obviously, “. . . Make your house fair as you are able . . .” suggests the pleasure of decorating our houses, yards, and church buildings for the sweetest of Christian holidays. Nice work, Eleanor.

But it means so much more. As we prepare for the celebration of the birth of Christ, we pull out the rich heritage of seasonal music. While I know it’s important to take Facebook with a grain of salt, my community of “friends” includes thousands of organists and organbuilders making thoughtful comments that enrich my experience. As we approached Christmas I saw conversations about how to finger tricky passages, how to read composers’ metronome markings, and what people might suggest for new and interesting choral music to offer during this most traditional of celebrations. Working out the slithery fingerings for Dupré’s Variations on a Noël is just another way to “trim the hearth and set the table.”¹

To the organ tuner, in addition to oiling blowers and tuning reeds, making the house fair expands to include making sure the Zimbelstern reversible works reliably. And given the usual keys for such carols as Silent Night and O Little Town of Bethlehem, it’s smart to check that B-flat and F in the chimes are sounding their best. The sickening clunk of a chime struck by a faulty hammer can change everything in that magical moment at midnight when everyone is singing with a candle in their hands.

We all love to play the French Noël variations, so it’s important to check the Cornet combinations on each organ. The classic registration is flue pipes at 8′, 4′, 22⁄3′, 2′, and the pesky 13⁄5′. Sometimes the Cornet is created by combining five independent ranks, sometimes it’s independent ranks at 8′, 4′, and 2′, plus the Sesquialtera, which comprises the 22⁄3′ (Nazard) and 13⁄5′ (Tierce) ranks, and sometimes all five pitches pull as one stop. It’s most common for those five ranks to be wider-scale flutes, although some larger organs have Cornets both as flutes and as principals. In any event, those pitches, especially the two mutations, the second and fourth in the overtone series, complement the Cromornes and Trumpets of the organ because they reinforce the predominant overtones that color the reed voices.

If the organs you play have Trumpets, Nazards, and Tierces, you can prove this to yourself. Play a note on the Trumpet and turn the Nazard on and off. When it’s on, it reinforces that pitch hidden in the tone of the Trumpet, and when you turn it off, you can hear the tone linger as a component of the reed’s voice. If you have trouble hearing it, try it with different notes until you find one that’s clearer. It works best in the tenor range. This trick also works with an Oboe, Krummhorn, or Clarinet.

The Tierce is one of the most difficult pitches to hear in any organ. They’re tricky to tune accurately. But the pitch is clearer to your ears against a reed than a flue pipe. Try it. Play the Tierce with the Octave 4′, which is the usual tuning reference stop, then play the Tierce with a reed. I bet you’ll hear the tuning easier. It’s a good trick to tune a Tierce to a reed, as long as the reed has stable pitch and speech, and as long as you check each note as you go.

In French Classic organs, the combination of Cornet was developed to reinforce the treble ranges of the reeds, which were weaker than the tenor and bass ranges. That’s a simple explanation for why there are duets between cornet trebles and reed basses. It’s also the reason for the predominance of the Grand Jeu in French registrations. Those organs have lusty, powerful reeds that sound great with a Cornet added to the treble range. Hmm. Maybe that’s why the five-rank Cornet starts at middle C. Nice work, François (Bédos de Celles).²

Trim the hearth and set

the table . . .

The Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens (CMBG) is a spectacular example of community imagination, effort, and achievement. In 1991, a group of about ten families in the area of Boothbay, Maine, founded the original organization. They mortgaged their homes to raise the funds to purchase a 270-acre tract of coastal land, rescuing it from development, and they established the not-for-profit corporation. Corporate and private sponsorship came in at a rapid rate, and in June 2007, the gardens held a grand opening celebration. Less than ten years later, the CMBG comprises a rich collection of theme-based gardens, several public buildings with a café, gift shop, and educational facility. They present chamber music concerts and dozens of public events, and receive more than 100,000 visitors each year.

You might think that plants all grow at a common rate, but as we have visited the gardens several times each year, we wonder what they are using for fertilizer. You can almost hear the garden grow if you stand still. It’s gorgeous, thrilling, informative, and enriching. If you’re ever in the area, about forty miles up the coast from Portland, I recommend you stop in. Take a look at www.mainegardens.org.

Last year, CMBG introduced “Gardens Aglow,” an extensive lighting display festooned about the grounds. This year, with a houseful of family from out of town for Thanksgiving, we convoyed to the Gardens to witness the spectacle. Knowing it would be crowded, we arrived as they opened at 4:00 p.m., just as the sun was setting (Maine is at the extreme eastern end of the eastern time zone, and includes the eastern most point of land in the United States). We were amazed by the number of people. It was the third night of the season, and we learned that they had received more than 10,000 visitors over the previous two nights. That may not seem like much to city dwellers, but considering that the population of Boothbay is under 2,500, and the ten neighboring towns combined have fewer than 12,000 people, this is a big deal. They anticipate more than 100,000 visitors before the exhibit closes on New Year’s Day, effectively doubling the annual attendance at CMBG. Nice work, people.

The “Gardens Aglow” page of the CMBG website mentioned that the exhibit is open Thursdays through Sundays, November 18 through December 31, but closed on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve—that was the only time I saw or heard the word Christmas connected with the event. The tasteful jazzy music playing through Bluetooth speakers seemed Christmasy, but it was actually just the wintery classics we associate with Christmas: Let it Snow, Jingle Bells, Sleigh Ride, Frosty the Snowman. Rudolph was nowhere to be heard, abolished, no doubt, due to his connection to Santa Claus, even though Jesus makes no appearance in the lyrics. Even the word “holiday” was missing.

It sure felt Christmasy to me, as it did to our Greek Orthodox in-laws. But I thought it was nice that the marvelous event could be freely enjoyed by people of any faith, or by people of no faith.

People, look east and 

sing today . . .

The United States has just experienced a painful and nasty presidential election. The amount of abuse suffered by both the candidates and their supporters is unprecedented. Things were said across public media that wouldn’t be tolerated in school playgrounds, and people of all races and ideological backgrounds were savaged and humiliated in public. No matter how we each feel about the results, no matter how we voted, we can’t escape the fact that it was a disgraceful display, a national tantrum displayed to the rest of the world. We should all be mortified. As a nation we are better than that.

While The Diapason is not a place to express or exchange political opinions, this experience must resonate for many readers because so much of the discourse involved interpretations of religious freedom. The idea that the United States was founded on religious principles is at best only partially correct, and according to many historians, it’s patently false. Of course, there was a huge indigenous population here before European settlers arrived in the early seventeenth century. But those European settlers did not arrive with the intention of establishing a religious country, they were escaping persecution because of their beliefs.

The point was to be able to worship freely, not just as Puritans, Anglicans, or Catholics, but as members of any faith. In the age of the Internet and the culture of social media, we express and confirm our opinions through memes, especially photos taken out of context and peppered with clever captions—modern versions of a political cartoon, and the campaign season fertilized many doozies. There was one that said, “If your religion tells you to hate anyone, you’re doing it wrong.” In others it was easy to interpret that “religious freedom” meant denying someone else the freedom to worship or express themselves.

A particularly poignant moment occurred less than a week before the election, when members of the Westboro Baptist Church protested in front of New York’s Juilliard School of Music. Their message was against the vanity of the arts and included hateful derogatory language directed at the faculty and students. The students responded elegantly. They came out onto the sidewalk with their instruments to play patriotic and religious music, and spoke eloquently about the importance of the arts to our shared human expression. Nice work, Juilliard students.

This was a small protest. Only three members of the Westboro Baptist Church were involved, including the daughter of the church’s founder, and fewer than a hundred students responded. It was not covered by major newspapers. Without social media it wouldn’t have amounted to much. But it was symbolic of how hatred and intolerance allows some people to condemn huge segments of society, justifying that intolerance by excerpting passages from the Bible out of context.According to my quick Google search, Playbill Magazine was the most prominent publication to carry a story with photographs. You can read the article at http://www.playbill.com/article/juilliard-students-greet-westboro-bapti….

Love the Guest is on the way.

A few days after the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, I was invited to visit Trinity Church Wall Street to inspect the organs there. I lived in Boston then, and while I had seen dozens of hours of television coverage of the attack, I was surprised by the devastation, the misery, and even the smells I encountered. St. Paul’s Chapel, the neighboring church building that is part of the Trinity family, had instantly been converted into an emergency aid station, providing rest, refreshment, medical attention, even massages to the rescue workers. And the iron fence surrounding the property became a poignant memorial, adorned with photos of missing people and lost loved ones and expressions of national loss and unity through poetry, art, music, and memorabilia.

I had a brief encounter with the church’s rector, a tall handsome guy with an enviable white coif, and suggested to him that it seemed a little strange to be thinking about a pipe organ in the midst of that immense tragedy. He responded that the work of the church had never been more important—and he meant all of the work of the church.

Many, if not most of us who read and care about The Diapason, serve the church in at least one capacity. We plan and present the church’s music, maintain and prepare its musical instruments for worship, sharing the message of the church through its music and through all forms of artistic expression. As we work through the next seasons of the Christian year, we should be aware of how bruised we are as a people. Our work has never been more important. Celebrate the talents and gifts you’ve been given, nurture them through study and practice, and return them to the church and to the nation, doing all you can to make this a better world. It matters. And it’s important. Go do it. Good work, people. ν

Notes

1. Eleanor Farjeon also wrote the poem, Morning Has Broken, popularly set to the Gaelic tune, Bunessan.

2. François Bédos des Celles (1709–1779), familiarly known to organbuilders as Dom Bédos, was a Benedictine monk and master organbuilder. His treatise, L’art du facteur d’Orgues (The Art of Organ Building), published in 1768, is still central to the education of every modern organbuilder.

Striking gold: some thoughts on performing Bach’s Goldberg Variations

Among iconic works for harpsichord, Bach’s masterful variation set BWV 988, published in 1742 as the fourth part of the composer’s Clavierübung series, is a culminating goal for those of us who revere and play the solo keyboard works of the Leipzig Cantor. Unique in its scope, variety of invention, and complex displays of variation techniques, as well as for the high level of keyboard skills required to perform this Aria with its thirty diverse variations, the “Goldbergs” remain a lofty destination on any harpsichordist’s “must-achieve” list.

Landowska and the first
recording of the Goldbergs

The most prominent 20th-century harpsichordist, Wanda Landowska, added these variations to her public performance repertoire in May 1933, just two months before her 54th birthday. She committed her interpretation to discs in November of that same year. This very recording, played on her signature Pleyel harpsichord equipped with 16-foot register and foot pedals for controlling registers, has been available in every successive recording format: 78-rpm vinyl; LP (331⁄3 rpm); and, ultimately, as a crown jewel in EMI’s 1987 “Great Recordings of the Century” series of compact discs. Like those of her contemporary, tenor Enrico Caruso, the pioneering harpsichordist’s recordings have survived each new technology, and their historic performances continue to delight each successive generation of listeners.

Landowska’s recording of the Goldbergs

Landowska recorded the complete work without repeats, but added idiosyncratic recapitulations of the first eight measures in variations 5, 7, and 18, resulting in a total duration just a few seconds shy of 47 minutes of music.

Also of compelling interest are Landowska’s commentaries on BVW 988. Originally written as program notes for the recording, they comprise 31 fascinating paragraphs, available in the book Landowska on Music (collected by Denise Restout, assisted by Robert Hawkins; New York: Stein and Day, paperback edition, 1969; pp. 209–220). They recount the tale of 14-year-old Danzig-born Bach student Johann Theophilus Goldberg who, as a protégé of Bach’s patron, the insomniac diplomat Count Kayserling, played the Variations for him (as chronicled by Bach’s first biographer Forkel), here embellished further by colorful imagery from Landowska. Brief descriptions of the individual movements of BWV 988 culminate in her evocative appreciation of Variation 25, third of the three variations in G minor, dubbed by the author as “the supreme pearl of this necklace—the black pearl.”

Concluding her essay, Landowska, who also was lauded by her contemporaries as a fine pianist, showed exquisite taste as she opined: “. . . the piano, which has no more than a single eight-foot-register, goes contrary to the needs and nature of overlapping voices. Besides, the bluntness of sound produced by the impact of hammers on the strings is alien to the transparency obtained with plucked strings, a transparency so necessary to poly-melodic writing. By interchanging parts on various registers of a two-keyboard harpsichord, we discover the secret of this foolproof writing which is similar to a hand-woven rug with no wrong side.”

[Comment by LP: It has always seemed strange, perhaps even perverse, that many pianists choose to play almost exclusively the pieces that Bach specifically designated for harpsichord with two keyboards—those major works found in parts two and four of his engraved/published keyboard works. To my ears, such performances are rarely successful. Perhaps the most bizarre of all such attempts was encountered during an undergraduate pianist’s audition for admission to a harpsichord degree program: the applicant attempted to play the slow movement of the Italian Concerto on a single keyboard (of a harpsichord). Admission was denied.]

A second thought-provoking set of program notes

Matthew Dirst, educated at the University of Illinois, Southern Methodist University, and Stanford University, now professor of music at the University of Houston, is well known as a Bach researcher who specializes in the reception history of the master’s works. He is also that ideal musicologist who is a virtuoso organist and harpsichordist, with multiple international prizes to support that affirmation. His writing is witty, lyrical, often thought provoking, and accurate! The seven paragraphs that he penned for the program of his complete Goldbergs, sponsored in 2005 by the Dallas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, serve as representative examples. Dirst has played the complete set in many venues, but his thoughts on playing all the movements in one long program are both enlightening and liberating. 

As one who has strayed quite often from the obligation to “play them all,” I applaud this more flexible stance: “Bach surely never intended—much less gave—such a [complete] performance. His purpose in assembling large collections was, as he writes in more than one title page, ‘for music lovers, to refresh their spirits. . . .’ But if we are to believe Forkel’s story about the insomniac count, it would seem that listening attentively to all these variations in one sitting is hardly what Bach had in mind . . . Fortunately, Bach’s music survives equally well in large helpings at prime time or as small courses during the wee hours.” Bravo, Matthew!

My first public Goldbergs

Elena Presser, the Argentinian-born American artist, has devoted much of her career to creating works of art inspired by the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. In June 1987 the Meadows Museum at Southern Methodist University hosted an exhibition of Presser’s 32 wall sculptures, The Goldberg Variations. Replete with number symbolism and specific colors often representing musical keys, this artist’s works share fascinating artistic insights that are inspiring and capable of expanding one’s understanding of Bach’s musical architecture. Each plexi-boxed creation depicts one movement: the basic Sarabande/Aria, the ensuing thirty variations, and the closing recapitulation of the Aria.

I was invited to perform the complete work as part of the opening festivities for this exhibition. It was my first complete traversal of Bach’s magnum opus. At age 48, I was only a few years younger than Landowska had been when she played her first complete set. At a special dinner following the concert I was seated next to Elena Presser. Thus began a friendship, abetted by my driving her to the airport for her return flight to Miami. During this trip I expressed an interest in commissioning one of her future art creations. Several years later, without any more discussion or correspondence, I received an invoice for a single piece inspired by Bach’s French Ouverture (in B minor), BWV 831. It took several years to pay for this commission, but the Presser piece remains a joyous highlight of the Palmer music room art collection.

Later in that summer of 1987 the museum director requested a second performance of the Goldbergs to mark the final week of the exhibition. This time we had a slide of each artwork to be shown simultaneously with the playing of the motivating movement: another successful expansion of artistic energies that made sense to the appreciative auditors/viewers.

It must have been something in the atmosphere that inspired more and more diverse Goldberg performances that year: from a far-away east coast, harpsichordist Igor Kipnis sent a program from his Connecticut Music Festival—and there was a listing of his solo performance of the entire piece, with another innovation: Kipnis prefaced Bach’s masterwork with three Polonaises from the pen of its first executant, the young Goldberg! Since Igor and I often exchanged newly discovered scores, I requested information about these pieces, to which he responded by sending copies. On several subsequent outings of the Goldberg Variations I have emulated his interest-generating prelude to the cycle.

For most of my Goldberg programs I have relied on the Landowska-inspired program notes written by her American student Putnam Aldrich (a faculty member at the University of Texas, Austin, and, subsequently, early music/harpsichord guru at Stanford University). Professor Aldrich’s cogent notes came to me through a close friendship with Putnam’s widow, Momo, who had been Landowska’s first secretary during the early years of her residence at St-Leu-la-Forêt. After Put’s death, Mrs. Aldrich moved to Hawaii to be near their only daughter and the grandchildren. It was during a treasured series of post-Christmas visits to Hawaii that I culled much information from her as I gathered materials for the book Harpsichord in America: so much, indeed, that the book is dedicated to her.

The ultimate luxury of two collaborators

That my final harpsichord student at SMU should be the Central American pianist José Luis Correa was a tremendous boon. Moving to Dallas for study with artist-in-residence Joaquin Achucarro, José also signed up for harpsichord lessons, and he bonded with this second instrument, the harpsichord, with intense devotion and dedication. Although I was on sabbatical leave during my final semester (his fourth of harpsichord study) I continued to give him lessons. My general absence from the harpsichord studio gave him much extra time to indulge his passion for the instrument—so all things worked out well. For his “final exam” I decided that we would divide the Goldberg Variations equally and perform them at the third house concert (Limited Editions) of the 2014–15 season. And so we did: I played the Aria, José the first variation; we then alternated back and forth through the whole cycle, with only two exceptions to this musical ying and yang: twice I performed two consecutive movements so I could play my favorites: Landowska’s “Black Pearl” and the rollicking Quodlibet. On the flip side, this allowed José to have the final glory of playing the Aria da Capo: fitting, it seemed, to pass a small torch to a new generation of harpsichordists.

And that is what Señor Correa has become! Back in his native Colombia he has positions as pianist and harpsichordist with a chamber orchestra—and the great joy (he wrote) that the instruments belonging to that group are now stored at his house, so he has a harpsichord (and a chamber organ) always available for practice.

I recommend highly the division of performing that alternating the variations provides. Sharing in this way gives each player an opportunity to recover from the intensity of his own performance before beginning the next assignment. As for the audience, hearing two differing harpsichord timbres helps to keep them focused on the music. Unfortunately, not everyone will have the luxury of a Richard Kingston Franco-Flemish double (played by LP) and a Willard Martin Saxon double (played by JC). I can only report that our concert was a great success: prefaced this time not by Goldberg’s Polonaises but by a much-loved and scintillating work for two harpsichords­—Carillon (1967) by the British composer Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013).

Well-Tempered: Lou Harrison
and the harpsichord

Long before others had expressed interest in the use of varied historic temperaments for harpsichord tuning, the American composer Lou Harrison advocated using just, meantone, and other exotic ones as the preferred aural components for the realization of his early keyboard compositions. Among the earlier 20th-century works for plucked keyboards, Harrison’s Six Cembalo Sonatas (composed between 1934 and 1943) hold a special place because of his spare, mostly two-part idiom, perfectly suited for effective performance at the harpsichord, and his understanding that non-equal tuning adds a further dimension to the expressivity of music, an important advancement among composers of the early keyboard revival. Originally published as a facsimile of his holograph manuscript as part of the New Music Edition series produced by Harrison’s mentor and friend, Henry Cowell, Six Sonatas joined a small group of well-crafted American works for revival instruments, appearing midway between Theodore Ward Chanler’s Prelude and Fugue for Clavichord (1934, the unpublished manuscript is held by the Library of Congress) and Walter Piston’s Sonatina for Violin and Harpsichord (1945, published by Boosey and Hawkes). Harrison’s six short pieces have continued to garner kudos from a small but savvy group of players who program revival repertory.

While gathering material for my 1989 book Harpsichord in America, I wrote to the American iconoclast with some questions about the genesis of these early works. His answers came in an extensive two-page typewritten, single-spaced letter, dated September 11, 1979, from which I quote the following passages:

It is entirely possible that [a dating problem] derives from the fact that I wrote [the sonatas] individually or in groups of two at several times, thus the first one actually dates from the mid-30’s but the whole set was not completed until the early ‘40’s. I am sorry that I cannot get you any closer dates than that. The original impulse came from two sources as the Sonatas themselves have probably already made clear to you. The first of these was my intense admiration for Manuel de Falla and especially for his use of the harpsichord in several instances including the famous Concerto. This was, in my own feelings, perhaps erroneously embedded in a matrix of feeling which concerned California. The ‘Mission Period’ style of life, artifacts, and feelings intrigued me very much. You will, of course, remember that this was the WPA period and that the dominant impulse was ‘Regionalism.’ Thus, the Cembalo Sonatas reflect ‘Nights in the Gardens of Spain,’ ‘Flamenco,’ as well as ‘Indian Dances’ and ‘Provincial Baroquery’ in the West. As to the question for whom they were composed, the answer is—everybody who is interested. Of several, I played the premiere on a tiny Wittmayer [spinet] that Eileen Washington had brought from Munich to San Francisco in the late ‘30’s and which was used at San Francisco State College (University now). Later, Henry Cowell published them in the New Music Edition and they were circulated by the State Department to various embassies as part of our cultural campaign. Alas for those days!!!

Later they were played, I think, in part by Sylvia Marlowe in Times Hall [New York City] and then still later (this was the 50’s I believe) Ralph Kirkpatrick took them on tour nationally, along with Henry Cowell’s ‘set’. [Set of Four, composed for Kirkpatrick, published by Associated Music Publishers]. He also played all six Sonatas as a ‘Suite’ which I had had vaguely in mind when I arranged them in the printed order.

. . . I am very happy that you play a Dowd instrument. My own is a simple Zuckermann Flemish model, but I do enjoy it. Last night I re-tuned it in the Kirnberger Well Temperament, one of six tunings that I am going to be writing about for the Canadian magazine, Continuo . . . .

P. S. I now remembered that Margaret Fabrizio [harpsichord teacher at Stanford University] made a tape with me of the Sonatas on a tiny Wittmayer which she had in her home down in Big Sur during the late ‘50’s. We individually tuned each Sonata in Just Intonation and the result was fun.

What a personable and interesting letter to receive from a composer! But then this “gentle person” was so much more than merely a reliable source for new music! In The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (published in 1986) the extensive entry for Lou Harrison was written by his only slightly younger colleague Ned Rorem (born 1923), who provided this utterly fascinating introductory paragraph: 

Born in Portland, Oregon, on May 14, 1917, Harrison studied with Cowell in San Francisco, and with Schoenberg in Los Angeles [!]. During World War Two he organized recitals of percussion music with John Cage and by himself, while working as a florist, record clerk, poet, dancer, and dance critic, music copyist (his handwriting is known for its beauty), and playwright. . . . In 1943 he moved to New York City, where he was intellectually (though not musically) influenced by Virgil Thomson. . . . He wrote for [various musical publications] including The New York Herald Tribune . . . and conducted the first complete performance of a symphony by Charles Ives (the Third) in 1947.

Slightly more than four decades after that Ives symphony premiere, I had my one face-to-face meeting with Lou Harrison on Monday, April 25, 1988. I had the opportunity to speak with Lou when he and his life partner William Colvig (also born in Oregon in 1917) were in Dallas to attend a concert presented by the contemporary music ensemble Voices of Change. The program featured music by Toru Takemitsu and Harrison. During our brief conversation I asked Lou if he had composed any additional music for harpsichord, to which he responded that he had, indeed, just completed his new work, A Summerfield Set, and that he would be happy to send me a copy. The eagerly awaited package, mailed on May 5 from the Harrison-Colvig home at 7121 Viewpoint Road in Aptos, California, arrived on May 9. Inside were the Xeroxed pages of a three-movement piece comprising a Sonata—Air—Sonata da Capo, Ground, and Round for the Triumph of Alexander (the young son of organist-harpsichordist Susan and her husband Harry Summerfield). Suffice it to say that the first readings revealed a most attractive work, one that I have enjoyed playing on several occasions, including the first movement’s London premiere in recital at the Handel House.

The handwritten letter (seen in the accompanying illustration) corroborates Rorem’s comment about Harrison’s exceptional calligraphy, and it remains a highly prized treasure amidst my collection of composer/performer autographs.

In the years that came after Harrison’s wildly varied early career, the lauded composer/conductor became more and more fascinated with the ethnic music of America’s natives as well as the exotic scales and instruments to be found in Asia (which he visited for the first time in 1961). With Colvig, whom he met in San Francisco in 1967, Harrison travelled extensively, and the two men shared an interest in collecting and building unusual percussion instruments, including several Javanese gamelans for which ensembles Lou composed highly individual scores.

Among a very extensive list of compositions, two short operas are of particular interest: the first, Rapunzel, garnered two prizes for Lou. In 1954 he was awarded a 20th-Century Masterpiece Citation for the best composition utilizing voice and chamber orchestra at the Rome meeting of the International Conference of Contemporary Music. A second “prize” must surely have been that this winning selection, “Air,” was sung by none other than the young soprano Leontyne Price! Both composition and performance received ecstatic press notices.

A second opera, originally for puppets and esoteric instruments, is based on an episode from the life of Julius Caesar. Young Caesar was subsequently revised for traditional western instruments and human performers to enable performances by the Portland Gay Men’s Chorus. I hope that some enterprising opera company might schedule this work (which may be seen on YouTube) during the forthcoming Harrison centennial year. 

Although saddened by the death of Colvig in 2000, Lou remained musically productive until the final hours of his very productive life. Harrison was on his way to a celebratory festival devoted to his music organized by the Ohio State University in Columbus. Two graduate music students had been dispatched to drive Lou from Chicago to the campus. It was during a stop in Lafayette, Indiana, that the composer was felled by a fatal heart attack on February 2, 2003. The four concerts of Harrison’s music thus served as a memorial tribute, but it was far from a somber occasion. In a perceptive Wall Street Journal piece “Lou Harrison’s Music Is as Joyful as He Was” (February 18, 2003), author Brett Campbell concluded an extensive review of the wide-ranging Ohio State concerts with these exultant words: 

Characteristically, the composer had just finished revising the symphony [his third] after tinkering with it since its 1982 premiere, and he looked forward to hearing it performed. Looking forward while looking back, ever striving to create music of lasting beauty—that was the irrepressible, irreplaceable Lou Harrison. 

Celebrating the music of Lou Harrison: Scores and CDs

For my own centennial tribute to Lou and his music I plan to perform a selection, or perhaps even all of the Six Sonatas as well as my favorite movement (the Sonata) from A Summerfield Set during our final house concert of this current season (April 26, 2017). It was difficult to decide whether or not to publish this essay now or in May, but I have opted to do it well before the anniversary arrives in the hope that some of our readers will want to seek out the scores, learn the music, and perform Harrison’s music as a tribute to this important and truly unique American composer. 

The score of Six Cembalo Sonatas is available in Susan Summerfield’s revised, annotated score, published by Peer International Corporation, New York (1990; edition number 02-037365-535). The musical notation seems quite small (at least to my aging eyes), but Ms. Summerfield’s suggested ornamentation (printed in red) for the repetitions of both A and B sections in these pieces may be helpful to some players.

A Summerfield Set is listed in various editions. (I possess only the Xerox facsimile of the holograph.) Lou had indicated that Hermes Beard Press was the publisher; in a computer search for that organization I was directed to WorldCat and found there the publisher listed as FrogPeakMusic, Lebanon, New Hampshire (2009). 

A very fine traversal of Lou Harrison’s keyboard music that includes works for harpsichord, tack piano, and fortepiano, and utilizes his suggested historic and experimental tunings, is to be heard on a compact disc recorded by Linda Burman-Hall (New Albion Records, San Francisco, 2002), playing on instruments by Robert Greenberg, Joop Klinkhamer, and Thomas and Barbara Wolf. Excellent informative notes include diagrams charting the various non-equal tunings employed. Ms. Burman-Hall includes an additional 1999 Sonata for Harpsichord (8 minutes in length) and a collection of accessible shorter keyboard pieces that she has formed into a very beguiling suite (Village Music).

For a performance of A Summerfield Set on modern piano, I recommend the disc Lou Harrison (MMD60241X Music Masters, Amrico and Musical Heritage Society, 1990), which includes orchestral works (Solstice and Canticle) conducted by Denis Russell Davies. The elegant pianist Nohema Fernandez, at the time a faculty member at U CAL Santa Cruz, is currently Dean of the School of Music at U CAL Irvine. Her slightly more relaxed tempo of the Summerfield Sonata movement is closer to my preference, but that is a matter of personal taste. The Santa Cruz school’s website also makes available a complete listing of Lou Harrison’s extensive oeuvre. 

Another satisfying recording of Six Cembalo Sonatas may be found on Elaine Funaro’s 2001 Centaur CD Overture to Orpheus. Her instrument and its tuning are by the master harpsichord builder Richard Kingston.

I wish for us all both excitement and enjoyment as we explore the riches to be found in Lou Harrison’s beautiful and idiomatic music. Do be sure to share it with others, wherever you can.