Harpsichord News

Remembering George Lucktenberg (1930–2014)

Artist Walt Kuhn’s serious but jaunty painting of a horse jockey graced a color postcard from George Lucktenberg, received in Dallas on October 26. Morose information overflowed the small space for writing on the reverse side of the card: sad news of the suicide of a mutual friend. George continued with several lines about his own deteriorating health: “MY news isn’t quite THAT bad, but I AM in less-good shape than before . . .” Later the same day, while I sat at my computer trying to formulate some comforting words as a response, an e-mail arrived from harpsichord maker Richard Kingston with the shocking report of George’s massive heart attack and death that very day. 

A person who contributed a great deal to the growth of an American harpsichord culture in our time, Dr. Lucktenberg was indeed a man of many talents. We first met during my Virginia years (1963–70) when he and his violinist wife Jerrie Cadek Lucktenberg stopped the charmingly labelled “Harpsi-cart” in Norfolk during one of their many tours as a violin-harpsichord duo. George “looked me up” since we both owned German instruments from the Passau factory of Kurt Sperrhake. In 1969 George returned alone to marvel at my new William Dowd harpsichord, which he told me was his first experience with an instrument constructed in a historically accurate style. George soon joined the swelling ranks of advocates for these ear-opening instruments. 

After my move to Texas, there was another memorable encounter with George during the second harpsichord weekend organized by Bruce Gustafson and Arthur Lawrence at St. Mary’s College in Indiana (1979). A walk together back to the motel after an evening program gave opportunity for George to float the idea of organizing an early keyboard society. I, being inherently shy of organizations as time-consuming distractions from writing and practicing, suggested that perhaps the American Guild of Organists was already enough, and we interested players should try to include more harpsichord information within the context of programs presented by that august body.

Obviously not sharing my reluctance, George returned to Converse College in Spartanburg, South Carolina (where he served on the faculty from 1960 until 1990), and within a few years he became the founding president of a new group: the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society (1980). An offshoot of this organization was the founding of Aliénor: a privately funded interest group promoting the creation of contemporary repertoire for the harpsichord. It probably comes as no surprise that George was its first executive director. Happily, if not surprisingly, both groups have flourished —sometimes together, sometimes separately. Currently both are included in the recently formed Historical Keyboard Society of North America, whose fourth annual conclave will take place May 21–24, 2015, in Montreal, and is scheduled to include the most recent iteration of Aliénor’s harpsichord-composition competition as the culminating event of the meeting.

Following retirement from Converse, George and his instruments moved to Georgia, where he taught in Atlanta and served as artist-in-residence at Reinhardt College in Waleska. There he was genial host to the annual meeting of his own offspring organization, SEHKS, a meeting made memorable by the incredible artistry of the jazz-harpsichordist Don Angle. Incidentally, George was very proud of the double meaning that occurred in his society’s acronym. At Reinhardt, Dr. Lucktenberg remained musically active, presenting his final public concert on February 17, 2013, in the college’s Falany Performing Arts Center.

There was so much more to George’s legacy than successful organizing and artistic performing, not the least of which included his 52 summers of teaching eager young students at the Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. Among his printed contributions are volumes of early music, editions of contemporary works, and, as a result of his many trips across the Atlantic Ocean to visit historic instruments, a 1997 Indiana University Press book, Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums, co-authored with University of Iowa musicologist and harpsichord builder Ed Kottick. From the preface to this volume:

. . . The more I found out about historical keyboard instruments, the more I wanted to know. A delightful discovery was the extent to which a similar passion existed in kindred spirits; a thirst for firsthand knowledge and a professorial compulsion to share it with others led to the Lucktenberg Historical Keyboard Tours of Europe. On all but my earliest ventures I have been ably abetted and seconded by my esteemed colleague Edward Kottick, whose amiable presence and broad knowledge soon made him indispensable to the endeavor.

My own copy of this useful book came to me from the personal library of another departed friend, the noted scholar of early keyboards Dr. Martha Clinkscale. When I retrieved the volume from my overstocked bookshelves, I found, inside its cover, a gracious note from George to Martha, thanking her for her helpful reading of the original manuscript. Included as well were Martha’s penciled jottings of possible corrections and some linguistic suggestions. Many years ago, another treasured colleague, Dr. Betty Louise Lumby, assured me that each departed friend leaves us a gift if only we are acute enough to realize what it is! I hope that George and Martha will let me know what they have discovered about even more resonant keyboard instruments in the hereafter (thereby joining J. S. Bach and Claude-Bénigne Balbastre in correspondence with your Harpsichord Editor, who will, of course, share any such communications with our esteemed readers). But for now, I remain content with their substantial earthly contributions and keep in memory the warmth of their friendship. 

Comments and news items are welcome. Please send them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275 [email protected].

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

“With a Lot of Help from Friends”
Post-Christmas desk clearing always reminds me not only of how cluttered my working space is, but also how much I owe to the generosity of friends and correspondents as they “keep me in the loop” about matters of mutual interest. So here follows a miscellany of unrelated, but (hopefully) fascinating items, brought to my attention because of a friend’s initiative.

Oscar Peterson
The death on December 23 of jazz great Oscar Peterson brought to a close the far-ranging career of this major keyboard artist. Richard Severo, writing in The New York Times for December 25, 2007, commented “Mr. Peterson was one of the greatest virtuosos in jazz, with a piano technique that was always meticulous and ornate and sometimes overwhelming. . . . One of the most prolific major stars in jazz history, he amassed an enormous discography. From the 1950s until his death, he released sometimes four or five albums a year. . . . Norman Granz, his influential manager and producer, helped Mr. Peterson realize [his] success, setting loose a flow of records on his own Verve and Pablo labels.”
One of the more unusual of these Pablo records was made in Los Angeles on January 26, 1976: with guitarist Joe Pass, Peterson played music from George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess in instrumental arrangements for acoustic guitar and CLAVICHORD. The digital re-release of this rare duo [Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-829-2] was brought to my attention by friend Linda Raney, the director of music at First Presbyterian Church, Santa Fe, NM, who had received it as a gift from a retired Episcopal priest.
Not the least of the joys of this disc comes from reading the original liner notes by Benny Green, who relates “The genesis of this album is wildly improbable, even by jazz standards. In the late summer of 1975 Oscar Peterson talked on BBC-TV with a succession of guests whose only common denominator was their commitment, either as amateurs or professionals, writers or performers, to problems of keyboard technique. One of these guests was Edward Heath, one-time Prime Minister of Great Britain, . . . [who] turned up with an instrument called the clavichord, . . . an instrument that presents intriguing enigmas, the most challenging of all being its dulcet tonal quality which defies the resources of sound recording engineers; there are times when music played on this instrument seems less like an act of premeditated artistic execution than a musical enchantment of silence.”
Peterson was so captivated by the clavichord’s musical capabilities that he determined to acquire one, with a view to making jazz on it. The Gershwin album was the result of this aural infatuation. Peterson’s inspired arrangements of Gershwin’s immortal music survive as a touching, gentle memento from this great keyboard master of jazz.

19th-Century Harpsichord Citings
From John Carroll Collins, Dallas bibliophile and reliable purveyor of esoteric musical knowledge, come these references to harpsichord connections for two outstanding Romantic-era composers: Georges Bizet and Frédéric Chopin.
“Once when we were discussing the use of the harpsichord in Paris toward the middle of the 19th-century, you asked about my sources, which at the time I could not remember. I have tried to check back on them, and following is what I was able to recover.
I found the reference to Bizet’s early keyboard instruction on the harpsichord in Bizet and His World by Mina Curtis (New York, 1958). Curtis apparently was not a musician herself, but taught in the English department at Smith College, where she counted among her devoted students the young Anne Morrow, later the wife of Charles Lindbergh. Curtis had a wide knowledge of the historical and biographical aspects of her subject, and during the preparation of her beautifully written and thoroughly researched study she amassed an impressive collection of autograph letters by Bizet and other members of his circle. On pages 13 and 14 she tells of Bizet’s early keyboard training.
One of his first teachers was his uncle, François Dalsarte (born 1811), who taught voice at the Conservatoire. This was in 1846 and 1847, when Bizet was eight and nine years old and thus too young for admittance there. At their home he shared lessons with Dalsarte’s children, Bizet’s cousins. For their lessons they used Dalsarte’s favorite instrument, a harpsichord that had belonged to Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837), wife of King Louis Napoleon of Holland and mother of Napoleon III [of France]. Curtis is sometimes vague about her sources, but I gather she found her information on Dalsarte in a book by his student Angélique Arnaud (François Dalsarte, Paris, 1882).
Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, on page 184 of his Chopin: Pianist and Teacher (translated from the French, Cambridge University Press, 1986), mentions a harpsichord performance at a private concert in Paris on 25 December 1852. A group of Bach fugues was played on an early 18th-century harpsichord by one of Chopin’s students, the Norwegian Thomas Dyke Acland Tellefsen (1823–1874), this being just over three years after Chopin’s death. Eigeldinger gives as his source the Revue et gazette musicale de Paris, 1852–1853, page 447.”

Historic Harpsichordists in Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic
Robert Tifft (Dallas), long fascinated by the recordings of Hungarian revival harpsichordist János Sebestyén, provides comprehensive information about this highly-regarded artist in a remarkable website: <http://www.jsebestyen.org&gt;. Sites devoted to other lesser-known figures of European revival history may be accessed from the same address: Italian Luciano Sgrizzi (1910–1994); Landowska disciple Ruggero Gerlin (1899–1983); the “dean of Italian harpsichordists” Egida Giordani Sartori (1910–1999)—also interesting as the close friend and biographer of legendary soprano Toti Dal Monte; younger Hungarian artist Agnes Varallyay; and, added most recently, an accurate, complete discography and biography of leading Czech harpsichordist Zuzana Ruzickova.
Robert also sent a notice of the passing, on June 5, 2007, at age 64, of Hungarian harpsichordist Zsuzsa Pertis, a student of Isolde Ahlgrimm.

Fernando Valenti’s Scarlatti
Harpsichord aficionado and record collector David Kelzenberg ([email protected]) has completed his exhaustive project of locating all the Scarlatti recordings committed to long-playing discs by Fernando Valenti for Westminster Records beginning in 1951. Although the project was not ever to be comprehensive, Kelzenberg recently wrote, “To this day musicians wonder if Valenti actually managed to record all of the 545 sonatas in the Longo Edition [plus the Menuet in F]. After years of collecting scrounging, horse trading, and begging, I believe I have assembled all of [Valenti’s] Domenico Scarlatti that was ever commercially released by [the company]: 359 sonatas in all.”
David recently sent me eleven copied compact discs of these exciting, intensely musical performances. It has been a tremendous “labor of love” on Dave’s part to assemble and digitize such an extensive collection, and his gracious gift of these discs has brought much delight to this listener. Kelzenberg requests that any collector who knows of additional releases in the series contact him at the address printed above.

Trombones in Dido and Aeneas? Remembering Albert Fuller
The September 22, 2007 death of Albert Fuller brought back warm memories of several visits the fine American harpsichordist and educator made to Dallas. Perhaps the most memorable, amusing, and culinarily satisfying one occurred during the rehearsal period for the Dallas Opera’s production of Purcell's Dido and Aeneas in 1972. Although I had recently played harpsichord continuo for a Dido performance in Norfolk, the Opera in those days disdained local artists if they could import someone at great expense from Milan or New York. The management did, however, deign to rent my Dowd harpsichord since neither Opera nor Symphony owned such an “off-beat” instrument.
Albert had called me from New York to ask “why [the hell] they would bother to fly him such a distance when I was already there?” but I assured him that the discrimination was general, not personal, and that he should just enjoy the production (which turned out to be costumed in futuristic, space-age costumes), and charge them a high fee.
One evening Albert arrived at the Fair Park opera theatre to tune the harpsichord, but became alarmed when two trombonists entered the pit and began warming up. Perhaps, he thought, the scoring has been altered to match the costumes? But when a tuba player joined in he decided it was time to ask the musicians what was going on.
The brass players informed him that it was not Dido that was to be rehearsed that evening, but its companion work, Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci (nearly as strange a coupling as the costumes and staging). Albert was quite incensed that the management had changed the rehearsal schedule without informing him, thus resulting in his flying (first class) from New York when he would not be needed.
I received a telephone call relating this sequence of events, concluding with “Well, I’m here, so before I fly back home let’s have dinner at the best restaurant in Dallas—and charge it to the Opera!”
I had dined only once previously at The Old Warsaw, then considered one of the finest culinary experiences available in the city, so that’s where we had our leisurely and memorable meal. I don’t know if this was a prime example of “turning annoyance into pleasure” or simply the best way to ignore a scheduling snafu, but it was certainly a civilized way to deal with the matter, and remembering it reminds of a happy conversation with a distinguished fellow musician. Ave Albert, et vale.■

Comments or news items for these pages are always welcome. Please address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; <[email protected]>.

Three-score and ten:

Celebrating Richard Kingston

Born June 6, 1947, Richard Kingston reaches his Biblical milestone of 70 years this month. Now he is widely celebrated as one of America’s most distinguished harpsichord makers, but when Richard and I both arrived in Dallas in 1970, the world was younger, and the harpsichord still quite exotic and unfamiliar to many musically inclined listeners. The circumstances of our meeting seem quite humorous in retrospect: Southern Methodist University’s music department secretary left a note in my campus mail box: “Some nut wants to talk to you about a harpsichord.” And yes, the “nut” turned out to be Richard. To celebrate Richard’s multi-faceted life and his many contributions to the visibility and viability of the historic harpsichord during our nearly 50 years of collaboration and friendship, I have solicited some comments from several of our mutual colleagues.

• Jan Worden Lackey was my first Master of Music in harpsichord performance student at Southern Methodist University. Of those bygone years, she writes:

There was much new in the music world in Dallas in the 1970s and much of it revolved around the harpsichord. A young professor had come to SMU to lead its new degree program. Soon after his arrival a young man who, at that time had completed only one instrument, opened a professional harpsichord-building shop. The faculty member was Larry Palmer; the builder, Richard Kingston. We three, together with some others, founded and served on the board of directors of the Dallas Harpsichord Society.

The city was ready for historic keyboards and early music. There was a lot of publicity for our events. The Dallas Morning News printed concert notices, reviews, and feature articles, as did other local publications, for there was considerable interest in these concerts, lectures, instruction possibilities, and instruments.

It soon became apparent that Richard Kingston was an excellent and talented builder of harpsichords who both knew the instrument’s history, and possessed the requisite technical skills and ears to produce beautiful-sounding instruments. As a frequent visitor to his shop I found him friendly, an interesting conversationalist, and one who was ever delighted to show his latest work.

A lasting memory is of an evening spent playing one of Richard’s early instruments: I had been asked to be the solo harpsichordist for the opening of an exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Fine Art. Richard moved and tuned one of his magnificent French double harpsichords for the occasion. Memorable was the enjoyment of being surrounded by beautiful art, music, and the instrument—all together producing something that, individually, would not have made such an impact.

After Richard closed his shop and moved away from Dallas I had no contact with him. A few years ago my husband and I were invited to dinner at the home of a Santa Fe colleague. Included at our table were Dr. Palmer and Richard, who was still the same delightful and interesting person, happily sharing conversation and stories.

After a decade of successful harpsichord building in Dallas, Richard followed some sage advice from George Lucktenberg, founder of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society, who suggested that North Carolina had much to offer a harpsichord maker: namely its tradition of fine furniture making. Thus it was that Kingston’s 100th instrument, begun in Dallas, was completed in Marshall, North Carolina. Continuing his investigations into what should comprise a composite “eclectic northern European double harpsichord,” Richard developed a prototype during his first two years in the Carolinas. Important new clients, new craftspeople, and the soundboard painter Pam Gladding became his colleagues. At the apex of his sales, he produced 19 instruments in 1987, 14 in 1989—the final “big years,” as he noted in his shop history notes.

A beloved friend and colleague encountered at many meetings of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society (SEHKS) was the late musical and graphic artist Jane Johnson, whose clever drawing celebrating the birth of Richard’s first son combines two of his major achievements of the 1980s: starting a family and continuing to produce instruments of technical brilliance and physical beauty. Jane’s witty announcement card is typical of her warm heart and steady hand.

During Richard’s first decade in the eastern United States I had very little contact with him. However, that changed considerably during the 1990s with our increasing number of collaborations during SMU’s summer harpsichord workshops at Fort Burgwin, the university’s idyllic property near Ranchos de Taos, New Mexico. Richard taught classes in maintenance and tuning and “well-tuned” his elegant instruments. The rustic annual gatherings were succeeded by meetings in Denver and Santa Fe during the first decade of the 21st century. 

• Another of my outstanding harpsichord students from the early years at SMU, Barbara Baird joined us as a workshop faculty member for many of the summer offerings. She writes of her Kingston memories: 

I first met Richard in 1974 when I moved to Fort Worth to teach harpsichord at Texas Christian University. Through the years he and I found ourselves working together in Taos and Denver at SMU summer harpsichord events. I have long admired Richard’s gifts as a builder, his easy-going manner with students and harpsichord enthusiasts, and his willingness to make harpsichords travel. He would load a half dozen instruments worth tens of thousands of dollars into the back of his van and drive across the Southwest to make these harpsichord programs possible. Fearless? Foolish? No: Delightful!

November 1991 found Kingston at Clayton State University (Morrow, Georgia), where their six-day Spivey International Harpsichord Festival included a harpsichord builders’ competition. Twelve American makers each brought an example of their craft. After careful examination, the five-person jury unanimously awarded the Spivey Prize to Richard Kingston. Indeed, the jury chair, the German master craftsman Martin Skowroneck, told his cohorts that Richard’s instrument was so similar to something he himself might have made that Kingston and he must be soul mates! Since I was present to play the opening solo recital and chair a symposium of the builders, I was especially proud of my younger colleague’s great honor, and nearly overcome with emotion, when, for his acceptance of the award, he requested my presence beside him on stage. We had both come a very long way in 21 years!

The Georgia reunion led directly to the acquisition of my own Kingston harpsichord in 1994. A stellar example of Richard’s Franco-Flemish doubles, its keyboards utilize an octave span of 6¼ inches rather than the usual 6½—a small, but vital difference when attempting to negotiate some of the wide stretches found in many of the contemporary pieces that I have championed throughout my career.

A very special example of Kingston’s craft is his “Millennium” Harpsichord, Opus 300, built to celebrate things both old and new for the new century! The instrument received an extensive dedication recital debut on November 3, 2002, in the Washington, D.C., home of Charles and Susan Mize. Basically the well-loved Franco-Flemish Kingston double, this harpsichord is visually striking in its black-matte finish, supported on three stainless-steel pylons. An optional computer screen is also available as an augmentation of the usual music desk, thus allowing digitally scanned scores to be read by scrolling through them by utilizing a foot pedal.

Honored to be the first of a cadre of harpsichordists to “open” the musical feast, I chose a program that began with John Bull’s Coranto Kingston and ended with a commissioned work from composer Glenn Spring, Suite 3-D. This work for two to play at one harpsichord celebrates the hometowns of the composer (Denver) and the players (Dallas for me and D.C. [at that time] for Dr. Mize, who joined me for this first performance).

In the audience was one of Richard’s major mentors, the celebrated Boston harpsichord maker William Dowd. Following consecutive programs by Virginia Pleasants and Brigitte Haudebourg, Dowd’s shop foreman Don Angle brought down the house with his extraordinary keyboard skills in signature pieces by Scott Joplin, John Phillip Sousa, and, of course, the remarkable Angle himself.

When the Mizes moved to New Mexico a few years later, Opus 300 travelled with them. By then it had acquired a stunning lid painting in colorful abstract style by artist June Zinn Hobby. According to the harpsichord’s owners, my compact disc Hommages (recorded in 2007) is the only commercially available recording of this uniquely beautiful instrument.

• A brilliant harpsichordist and recording artist, Elaine Funaro lives in Durham, North Carolina, where her husband Randall Love teaches piano at Duke University. She describes her friendship with Kingston as follows:

Upon graduating from Oberlin College in 1974 I did what many harpsichordists did at the time: I went to Boston. There I started working for the harpsichord historian and decorator Sheridan Germann. For the most part we painted the soundboards of instruments from the shop of William Dowd, at the time the most famous American builder. Sheridan would travel around the country and to Paris [where Dowd had opened a second shop] to decorate soundboards. I recall her returning from a trip to Texas full of praise for the work of a new, young builder, Richard Kingston. That was the first time I heard his name.

Throughout the next decade his instruments, robust and musical, appeared at conferences and concerts. I did not need another instrument since I already had a Dowd, but our paths crossed more often when my husband and I returned from studies in Holland to settle in North Carolina. In 2009 Richard visited me and said that he had the parts for one last instrument and that he would like that instrument to be mine. As I was quite involved in performing contemporary music [as the Director of the Aliénor Competitions] we both wanted to create an instrument that reflected a completely modern aesthetic. Thus Richard’s Opus 333 was conceived. Currently Richard drops by quite often to regulate both the Dowd and his own instruments. We are very fortunate to have him so close by.

From the many archival papers that Kingston has entrusted to me for safekeeping and historical research, I share the following heartfelt words from this month’s honoree himself:

I have had a fascinating life and rewarding career. Often, upon reflection, it seems all that was ever required of me was to get dressed and show up each day. Considering the folk that took time with me, mentored me, gave me direction, I could not be any way other than successful in undertaking a career in harpsichord making.

I was on fire for the subject from the beginning, and that has never ceased. I did not plan it as a lifelong endeavor; I simply went from one harpsichord to the next, each intended to be the best work I could do, each as exciting to me as the very first.

The thrill of getting to the moment when I could begin voicing each instrument, to be reassured by those first sounds, was the same for me from the first to the last!

The sun is happy when it shines, a pen is happy when it writes, and I am happy when I am working on a harpsichord. I would do it all again.

As the fortunate owner of Richard’s harpsichord, the magnificent “Big Blue,” I share his happiness every time I play this triple-transposing instrument with its incredible resonance, even in the uppermost range of a treble that extends to top G.

One of the most memorable of the 101 Limited Editions Dallas house concerts presented during 33 years was the third one in season 28. On Sunday, February 19, 2012, Richard Kingston joined pianist Linton Powell and me as the narrator for a live performance of Said the Piano to the Harpsichord, which he had encountered as a favorite 45-rpm music disc during early childhood. The skit tells a dramatic story, illustrated with musical examples, during which sarcastic rivalry between the two keyboard instruments ends in collaboration, as demonstrated by composer Douglas Moore’s brief but charming Variations on The Old Gray Mare: the very recording that first introduced young Richard to the sounds of the harpsichord, thus beginning his lifelong love affair with the instrument.

It has been a fantastic journey, dear Maestro. Welcome to the “Three-Score-and-Ten” Club! Now, shall we both aim for “Four-Score” status?

The Diapason’s Harpsichord Editor since 1969, Larry Palmer is author of the pioneering book, Harpsichord in America: A Twentieth-Century Revival, published by Indiana University Press in 1989 (paperback second edition, 1993). Of six international advisors for the Berlin commemoration, two were Americans: Teri Noel Towe (New York) and Palmer (Dallas). Poster and postcard images for the exhibition featured an anonymous caricature belonging to Palmer, the gift of Momo Aldrich, first secretary to the iconic Landowska.

The Power of the Press:
“A Living Legend”
Nicholas Slonimsky (1894–1995), writing about harpsichordist Wanda Landowska for the French journal Disques in 1932, introduced his subject with a three-stanza poem. It begins:

Her fingers on the cembalo
Type out the polyphonic lore
Of Bach’s Inventions—and restore
The true original edition
Unobfuscated by tradition.1
Twelve years later, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, habitually cranky New York music critic Virgil Thomson (1896–1989), reviewed the Polish harpsichordist’s Town Hall concert of 20 November 1944 under the adulatory headline “Definitive Renderings”:

Wanda Landowska’s harpsichord recital of last evening . . . was as stimulating as a needle shower. . . . She played everything better than anybody else ever does. One might almost say, were not such a comparison foolish, that she plays the harpsichord better than anybody else ever plays anything . . .
. . . [Her] playing of the harpsichord . . . reminded one all over again that there is nothing else in the world like it. There does not exist in the world today, nor has there existed in my lifetime, another soloist of this or any other instrument whose work is so dependable, so authoritative, and so thoroughly satisfactory. From all the points of view—historical knowledge, style, taste, understanding, and spontaneous musicality—her renderings of harpsichord repertory are, for our epoch, definitive. Criticism is unavailing against them, has been so, indeed, for thirty years.2
It seems that the divine Wanda had accomplished her objective, half a century in the making, of restoring the harpsichord to a recognized place in the cultural consciousness of music lovers, both in Europe and in the western hemisphere. Her personal style, based on an innate rhythmic certainty, a turn-of-the-century impressionistic use of tonal color, and, not incidentally, her careful perusal of historical source materials had made her name virtually synonymous with the word harpsichord, at least in the collective consciousness of the public.

True Believers:
Expatriated European and Native American Disciples
Landowska’s acolytes dominated those American venues where harpsichords were played: Alice Ehlers (1887–1981), Professor Landowska’s first student in 1913 Berlin, immigrated to the United States and taught for 26 years at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Among Ehlers’s fascinating oral history recorded vignettes she noted that Landowska did not talk much in those early lessons, but she relied heavily on playing for her students. Later, in Ehlers’s own teaching, at least one anecdote retold by her student Malcolm Hamilton (1932–2003) showed that Ehlers was less than impressed at his derivative details copied from Landowska’s style. When Hamilton added an unwritten trill to the subject of a Bach fugue Ehlers stopped him to ask why. “I heard a recording by Wanda Landowska,” he began. Madame Ehlers interrupted brusquely, “Wanda Landowska was a genius. You and I, Malcolm, we are not geniuses—‘spaacially you!”3
Two more Landowska students holding American academic posts were Marie Zorn (b. 1907?), who promoted the Landowskian style in her harpsichord teaching at Indiana University from 1958 until 1976, and Putnam Aldrich (1904–1975), who married Wanda’s own personal secretary Madeleine Momot in 1931 (with a somewhat-reconciled Landowska as witness for the bride). Eventually “Put” settled his young family in northern California, where he established a prestigious doctoral program in early music at Stanford University.
In concert halls, Madame’s final brilliant students, Rafael Puyana (born 1931), a South American of blazing virtuosity, and Texas-born Paul Wolfe (born 1929), both built solo careers in the decade following their teacher’s death.
In 1961 Puyana played a concert at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, during my first year there as a doctoral student. Rafael, the scion of a wealthy family, toured the country with a Pleyel harpsichord (the instrument of choice for Landowska’s students) and a personal driver. His Eastman recital was a dashing and colorful evocation of a Landowska program, including kaleidoscopic changes of registration; a repertoire firmly grounded in the major Bach works; but with at least one non-Landowska addition: his own harpsichord transcription of a Canción for piano by the Catalan composer Frederico Mompou.
Paul Wolfe, not from a moneyed family, set out to make his name through recordings. I came to know him when Nick Fritsch of Lyrichord Records decided to reissue a number of their 1950s vinyl issues on compact discs and asked me to write an introductory article explaining harpsichord pedals. Wolfe’s instruments—a 1907 Pleyel of wooden construct and a large concert instrument completed in 1958 by the young northeastern builders Frank Rutkowski and Richard Robinette—as well as programs that featured 17th-century works by Frescobaldi and the English virginalists, Spanish music, and all eight of the 1720 Handel Suites—presented both facile young fingers and an expanding repertory of early keyboard music to the American harpsichord scene.

A Contrarian’s View of Landowska
During the autumnal years of Landowska’s career, critics of her playing style were not legion. But one composer-critic who did not idolize the High Priestess of the Harpsichord was neo-classicist composer Robert Evett (1922–1975). In a 1952 piece for The New Republic, Evett wrote:

Mme. Landowska has seduced the brighter part of the American public into believing that she offers it an authentic reading of Bach and his predecessors. What this lady actually uses is a modern Pleyel harpsichord, an instrument that she employs as a sort of dispose-all. . . .
After fifteen years of incredulous listening, I am finally convinced that this woman kicks all the pedals in sight when she senses danger ahead. When she sits down to play a Bach fugue, I go through all the torments that a passenger experiences when he is being driven over a treacherous mountain road by an erratic driver, and when she finally finishes the thing it is almost a pleasure to relax into nausea.4
A Different Aesthetic:
Ralph Kirkpatrick
Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911–1984), funded by a post-graduate John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University, set off for Europe in the fall of 1931 to hone his harpsichord playing skills. As described in his memoirs,5 the pre-eminent American harpsichordist of his generation had a difficult relationship with the priestess of St-Leu, eventually running off to Berlin for coaching and consolation with another Landowska student, the more congenial Eta Harich-Schneider (1897–1986). Kirkpatrick’s public playing, beginning with concerts and recordings during the 1930s, sounded distinctly unlike Landowska’s in its conscious avoidance of excessive registration changes and its near-metronomic regularity. Teri Noel Towe’s description of Kirkpatrick’s style, printed as a “disclaimer” in the compact disc reissue of these early solo recordings for Musicraft Records, puts it this way:

Some listeners confuse Ralph Kirkpatrick’s tenacious and unswerving commitment to the composer’s intentions with dullness and mistake his exquisite attention to detail and technical accuracy for dryness. These detractors would do well to listen again. There is a special beauty and unique warmth to Kirkpatrick’s sometimes austere but always direct, ‘no nonsense’ performances; his interpretations are always superbly conceived, often transcendent, and occasionally hypnotic. . . .6
For a balanced evaluation of Kirkpatrick the harpsichordist, one needs to sample some later examples from his extensive discography. A 1959 Deutsche Grammophon Archiv recording of Bach played on a Neupert instrument presents quite another aural document of a decidedly non-austere artist. And by 1973 when I experienced Kirkpatrick’s deeply-moving playing of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Rothko Chapel in Houston (Texas), I reported in The Diapason that “Kirkpatrick played magnificently with a prodigious technical command of the work as well as with spacious feeling for the overall architecture . . .”7
At the very end of a more than five-decade career, and now totally blind, the aged master could allow his innate musical sensitivity to triumph. Despite his end-of-career tongue-in-cheek comments about preferring the piano, the Yale professor was the most highly regarded and recorded native harpsichordist in the United States during the period of Landowska’s American residency.
Other noted American players of Kirkpatrick’s generation included Yella Pessl (1906–1991) and Sylvia Marlowe (1908–1981). Marlowe’s first instrument was a true Landowska Pleyel, by this time painted white, the better to be seen on the revolving stage of New York City’s Rainbow Room, where Sylvia played jazz arrangements of classical favorites under the catchy rubric Lavender and New Lace. Deeply influenced by Landowska’s playing, encountered while the New Yorker was studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Marlowe’s 1959 solo Bach recording for Decca demonstrates how much Madame’s long musical shadow dominated the American harpsichord scene.
Eventually Ms. Marlowe chose to play harpsichords built by the American maker John Challis, moving subsequently to those of Challis’s apprentice William Dowd (with lid-paintings by her own husband, the artist Leonid [Berman]). Non-night-club recital repertoire included 18th-century classics, soon augmented extensively by commissions to prominent living composers. Thus, important works by Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter, to cite only two, came into being through Marlowe’s sponsorship. Together with the impressive catalog of similar commissions from the Swiss harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer (1909–1973), Marlowe’s initiatives helped to provide the harpsichord with an extensive, new twentieth-century musical voice.
Influenced by Kirkpatrick during student days at Yale, Fernando Valenti (1926–1990) switched from piano to harpsichord, and also played important new works by Vincent Persichetti (that composer’s First Harpsichord Sonata composed in 1952) and Mel Powell (Recitative and Toccata Percossa). However, Valenti made his name primarily as the most exciting player of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas and specifically as the first harpsichordist to record such a large number of them—359 individual works performed on his Challis harpsichord in a series of albums for Westminster Records. In 1951 he was appointed the first harpsichord professor at New York’s Juilliard School. Several didactic books, published late in Valenti’s career, are as colorful and insightful as his playing. Who could resist a chuckle at words such as these?

Many years ago I promised myself that I would never put in print anything that even vaguely resembled a ‘method’ for harpsichord playing and this is it.8
One of the best-known harpsichordists to study privately with Valenti was Berlin-born Igor Kipnis (1930–2002), son of the prominent bass opera singer Alexander Kipnis. The family moved to the United States in 1938, where both Kipnises became familiar names in the classical music arena. Igor was particularly noted for his comprehensive and innovative repertory, recorded extensively. His playing was thoroughly representative of a more objective style of harpsichord performance.

Winds (or Strings and Quills) of Change?
One of the great services rendered by Kirkpatrick was his fervent advocacy for the historically inclined instruments of Frank Hubbard and William Dowd. As the years went by, these musical machines emulated ever more closely those from earlier centuries, albeit with some decidedly 20th-century materials, such as the plastics used for jacks and plectra. But with keyboards built to various baroque dimensions; sensitive, light actions; and registers deployed in a way that an 18th-century composer might have expected; together with the absence, for the most part, of the sixteen-foot register and pedals, these light and agile instruments gave the new generation of players sensitive tools for performing the music of the past. Emulating Hubbard and Dowd, a number of builders, in Boston and other American venues, and throughout the world, joined the “surge to the past,” and thereby changed both the dynamic and the expected sounds of harpsichord revival instruments.
Among Kirkpatrick’s allies in promoting these new “old” instruments were two Fullers—his student Albert (1926–2007) and the not-related David (born 1927), and harpsichordist/conductors Miles Morgan and William Christie. As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, nearly every emerging teacher and player in the country seemed to be joining the pedal-less crowd. In 1966 I met Dr. Joseph Stephens and played the Hubbard and Dowd harpsichord in his Baltimore (Maryland) home. Shortly thereafter I ordered my own first Dowd double. It was delivered at the beginning of January 1969. As has happened for so many players in our small musical world, that sensitive instrument taught me as much as had the memorable hours spent studying with two of the finest teachers imaginable: Isolde Ahlgrimm (at the Salzburg Mozarteum), and Gustav Leonhardt (during two memorable July participations in his master classes at the annual Haarlem Summer Organ Academies).

Influential European
Artist-Teachers
Both of these superb artists made significant contributions to harpsichord playing in the United States: Ahlgrimm (1914–1995) through her teaching in Salzburg, Vienna, and during semester-long guest professorships at Oberlin and Southern Methodist University, as well as several American concert tours organized by managers, but aided and attended by her grateful students. Until recently, Ahlgrimm’s place in the story of the 20th-century harpsichord revival has been little celebrated. With the publication of Peter Watchorn’s major study Isolde Ahlgrimm, Vienna and the Early Music Revival,9 that deficiency in our history has been rectified!
Leonhardt (born 1928), surely the most recorded of post-Landowska harpsichordists, has influenced virtually every harpsichordist from the second half of the 20th-century forward. His students seem to be everywhere. Even the most cursory of enumerations would include many of the leading teachers in the U.S: Oberlin’s first full-time professor of harpsichord Lisa Crawford; Michigan’s Edward Parmentier; Boston’s John Gibbons; University of New York at Stony Brook’s Arthur Haas; Florida State’s Karyl Louwenaar; Illinois’ Charlotte Mattax; and, particularly during the 1970s and ’80s, my own large group of harpsichord major students at Southern Methodist University. In the spirit of the early music excitement of those decades, SMU conferred his first doctorate on Leonhardt in 1984, citing the Dutch harpsichordist’s advocacy of “performance on period instruments,” as well as his “commitment to both stylistic authority and artistic sensitivity in recreating music of the past.”
To this day, more than 25 years after the conferral of that honorary degree, Leonhardt still refers to me in communications as his “Doktor-Vater.” Whereas Ahlgrimm referred to herself as a biological phenomenon since she “got more children the older she became,” Leonhardt’s humorous salutation presents me with a similar phenomenon: the “son” as father to the “father.” At any rate, I am pleased to have Dr. Leonhardt as my most distinguished graduate!
Ah yes, students—the new generators of harpsichord playing in America. Too many to list, but perhaps one graced with multiple “A’s” may serve as representative—Andrew Appel, American, who completed his doctoral studies with Juilliard harpsichord professor Albert Fuller in 1983, and now carries on that line from his teacher, who had been a pupil of Ralph Kirkpatrick, who was . . . and here we could circle back to the beginning of this essay. May Andrew Appel represent the achievements of so many of our fine young players: the late Scott Ross, the with-it Skip Sempé, the sensitive Michael Sponseller, the delightful teaching colleague Barbara Baird—Americans, all!
Ultimately all of us are indebted to those European “explorers” who have provided our inspiration and training: French/English Arnold Dolmetsch, Austrian Isolde Ahlgrimm, Dutch Gustav Leonhardt: all contributors to the variety and richness of the harpsichord’s presence in our contemporary musical life. And our Polish mother, Wanda Landowska: that vibrant musician who has brought us together for this celebration of her musical legacy.

Some Information about Added Aural Examples
This paper was presented at the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum on November 14, 2009, during a symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Die Dame mit dem Cembalo [The Lady with the Harpsichord], in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Wanda Landowska’s death. The topic was suggested by the museum’s curator Martin Elste, who organized the event. To remain within an imposed time limit, I chose to include only seven short recorded examples, each one a performance of the same final 25 measures from the third (Presto) movement of J. S. Bach’s Italian Concerto (BWV 971)—with an individual duration of between 30 and 40 seconds.
The first example demonstrated one of the most unforgettable of all my musical experiences: Landowska’s unexpected slight agogic hesitation between top and bottom notes of the climactic downward octave leap in measure 199, the last return of that wonderfully energetic opening theme. Taken from her 1936 recording for EMI [reissued in Great Recordings of the Century, CDH 7610082], it served as an aural measuring rod with which to compare the following recordings, made “after” Landowska.
Example Two presented the young Ralph Kirkpatrick playing his early 20th-century Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord, captured in a 1939 recording for Musicraft, digitized on Pearl [Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume II, GEMM CD 9245]. Example Three: Kirkpatrick again, 20 years later, recorded in a thrillingly theatrical performance played on a powerhouse Neupert instrument for Archiv [198 032] (LP).
Example Four: Sylvia Marlowe, like Landowska, played on an instrument by Pleyel, recorded in 1959 for Decca [DL 710012] (LP).
Example Five: Leading Bach authority Isolde Ahlgrimm, recorded 1975, playing her 1972 David Rubio harpsichord, recorded by Philips [6580 142] (LP).
Example Six: Gustav Leonhardt utilized the sound of an actual 18th-century historic instrument for his 1976 recording on a 1728 Hamburg harpsichord by Christian Zell. Seon [Pro Arte PAL-1025] (LP).
Example Seven: Andrew Appel played a 1966 harpsichord by Rutkowski and Robinette in his 1987 recording for Bridge Records [BCD 9005), concluding the musical examples in just under four minutes! Fortunately for the word-weary, the next, and final, presentation of the two-day seminar was given by British record collector extraordinaire Peter Adamson, comprising a fascinating sound and image survey of early harpsichord recordings.

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Each one of us surely has an individual concept of sin, generally from direct personal experience: I sometimes describe it as “anything that is more fun for the doer than for someone else!” Defining commission might be slightly more difficult. For the purpose of this narrative, I choose to define the term as “the solicitation of a new musical composition, whether or not money is involved.” In my nearly half-century of commissioning new music, much of the time I have been the recipient of extraordinary generosity: most of my composers have donated their music, while others have asked for only modest fees.

Calvin Hampton

The first time I solicited a composer to write something specifically for me was in 1957, when I asked my Oberlin classmate and fellow organ major Calvin Hampton if he would provide an offertory for a summer service at First Presbyterian Church, Canton, Ohio--my first major (if only month-long) church “gig.” His response came in the form of a lovely three-minute aria, titled Consonance. While not a major work by this important composer, it does illustrate the advantage of choosing the right friends; namely, ones who go on to become well-known, thereby considerably increasing the value of their manuscripts. Equally useful, subsequently such friendships may provide one with material for articles about “what they were like before they became well-known”--a perfectly good academic topic indeed, if one includes the proper footnotes.

Neely Bruce

In the fall of 1960 I moved to Rochester, New York to begin graduate study. There I met the next of my composer friends. On my second day at the Eastman School, as I waited in the fourth floor corridor to meet with my advisor Dr. M. Alfred Bichsel, head of the newly established Church Music Department, a striking younger student walked up to me and asked, with lilting southern inflection, if I could tell him where to find Dr. Bitch-el. I was captivated by Neely Bruce, a freshman who had come to audition for the Polyphonic Choir, a new choral ensemble established for this sacred music area. As Dr. Bichsel’s rehearsal assistant, I saw young Bruce regularly. We became friends, and Neely, a precociously talented pianist and composer, eventually supplied the concluding piece for my 1961 master’s recital Organ Compositions Based on the Kyrie fons bonitatis.

When he left Eastman after that single year to attend the University of Alabama, I was devastated. I wrote sad poems (a la Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dame Edith Sitwell)--filled with lines such as:

Our night for love designed, speeds silent on and on,

And time, which only breathless seconds since had seemed so kind,

Is gone.

Neely didn’t answer letters or write poetry. He did, however, write music, and some months later I received the penciled score of his first work for harpsichord--Nine Variations on an Original Theme. The piece held such emotional intensity for me that it was not until 1979 that I copied it out while on my first sabbatical leave, prepared it for performance, and then gave the premiere the following year. Whatever one may think now of such a youthful endeavor, the work certainly is well-crafted for harpsichord--one result of Neely’s frequent opportunities for experimenting with the instrument’s textures at the small two-manual Sperrhake harpsichord, shoehorned into the third-floor dormer room I rented at one of Rochester’s “organ student houses,” 20 Sibley Place.

During my seven years of teaching in Virginia I played a fair amount of 20th-century harpsichord music: Ned Rorem’s Lovers, the Falla Concerto, the Martinu Sonate. But there I was primarily a choral conductor and organist (and enjoyed premiering several new works written for choir or organ by St. Paul’s College colleague Walter Skolnik and New York composer Robin Escovado). My only harpsichord “commission” of this period went to the builder William Dowd, along with almost half a year’s salary, for my first truly first-rate harpsichord, one of his early Blanchet-inspired instruments, delivered to Norfolk in January 1969.

Rudy Shackelford

Shortly after moving to Dallas in 1970, an unanticipated package reached me at Southern Methodist University. This contained Virginia composer Rudy Shackelford’s piece Le Tombeau de Stravinsky. Since my SMU colleague Robert Anderson was a devoted exponent of wild and wooly new organ music, it seemed fitting for me to take on Rudy’s serialism. I also liked the work, and included it on my first Musical Heritage Society disc, The Harpsichord Now and Then, released in 1975.

Ross Lee Finney

Another challenging work, more thorny than I usually care to learn, is Ross Lee Finney’s unique essay for the instrument, Hexachord for Harpsichord. In four movements (Aria, Stomp, Ornaments, Fantasy), the 12-minute work was commissioned for me to play at a Hartt School of Music contemporary keyboard music festival scheduled for June 1984. Drawing few registrants, the event was cancelled, so I gave the first performance that fall in Dallas, not playing it in the composer’s presence until a concert in Hartford the following year.

Working with Finney was quite daunting. A most distinguished and individual composer, he basically disregarded my several suggestions as to texture, and provided me with a nearly-illegible score, the successful realization of which absolutely required a damper pedal, unfortunately not available on most harpsichords. I struggled to read his chicken scratches and tried to parlay his ideas into something that made sense on a plucked instrument. Eventually I wrote him a detailed letter filled with questions and suggestions for possible improvements, not knowing if I would be ignored, despised, or possibly even removed from the project.

Instead, this generous and intelligent man wrote back that it was all very helpful--reminding him of the careful editing his Piano Sonata had received years earlier from its first performer, John Kirkpatrick. For Hexachord’s last movement, the most unplayable of the four, he promised a revision, although current work on his opera left him little time. When the promised revision arrived, it was accompanied by this note: 

I don’t know whether this is better or worse. I’ve spent the vacation week on it and now am so loaded with commitments that it’s the best I can hope for. . . . I tied my right leg to the piano stool so I hope I didn’t think in terms of pedal. . .

Responding to a tape of the first performance, Finney wrote,

I like immensely your performance . . . It seems to me that you have done a wonderful job of projecting the music and it sounds better to me than I feared it would. I like all of your revisions, particularly the ending of the last movement, and I will see that your corrections get in the copy with Peters so that when it is published, they will be included. . .

Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. The printed score from Peters does not present the preferred ending, but rather a more-protracted, rather anemic one.

Herbert Howells

A major commission from the 1970s was Herbert Howells’ Dallas Canticles, the unique Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis composed for St. Luke’s Church, where I was organist and choirmaster from 1971 until 1980. This lovely work was first performed there in 1975. The dedication and copyright of the work, basically a gift from the generous English composer, led to some early adventures in music publishing and the nurturing of  professional and personal connections with the American composer, church musician, and publisher Gerald Near.

Gerald Near

Undoubtedly the most ambitious of my commissions thus far is Near’s three-movement Concerto for Harpsichord, composed for performance at the 1980 national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Minneapolis. Gerald, a Minnesota resident at that time, had not been included in the group of composers invited to provide new works for the gathering, so I asked him to write a concerted work for my program in Orchestra Hall. He took on the project, and, most generously, accepted no fee for this major work.

The performance was carefully prepared, with the composer conducting a superb string ensemble comprising players from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The work was greeted with warm applause and considerable affection by the large crowd of attendees. And why not? The piece is very appealing, with memorable melodies, lush harmonies, and an appropriately balanced scoring. Critic Byron Belt, writing in The American Organist for August 1980, concentrated his remarks on the plethora of new scores heard during the convention. Of the Near he commented “ . . . its obvious popular appeal was instantly audible in a splendid performance by Larry Palmer (to whom it is dedicated) and the orchestra under the composer.” In The Diapason (August 1980), Marilou Kratzenstein opined, “The Distler [Allegro Spirituoso e Scherzando] and Near works are both very idiomatic to the medium. By skillful orchestration, the harpsichord part comes through clearly even when accompanied by a 22-piece string orchestra. Both of these attractive works were given clean, crisp performances. It was a pleasure to be present at the premiere of the Gerald Near concerto, which will likely become a favorite with harpsichordists in the near-future.” A future “for the Near” has taken considerably longer than anticipated, but, at last, Gerald’s lovely work had its second performance in October 2004, this time with the SMU Meadows Symphony under Paul Phillips.

Ever peripatetic, Near lived in Dallas for a time, where he held several church positions. When I needed a piece to conclude a program given in conjunction with the Dallas Museum of Art’s major show of El Greco paintings I turned again to Gerald. He spent some time at my house trying various ideas on the harpsichord. The resulting Triptych, completed in 1982, was first played in public at the Museum in January 1983. It certainly achieved its requisite Spanish flavor in the concluding movement, a brilliant neo-Scarlattian romp. Before that Final there are two lovely miniatures--an impressionistic Carillon, and the lyrically Italianate Siciliano (inspired by the composer’s love interest at the time). All three movements are idiomatically conceived for the instrument.

Vincent Persichetti

Dear Vincent Persichetti responded to questions concerning his then-unpublished 1951 Harpsichord Sonata by sending a copy of the manuscript. I loved the work immediately, and still find this first essay for harpsichord to be Vincent’s most arresting and accessible work for the instrument! By the time I was engaged to play a harpsichord recital for the Philadelphia gathering of the International Congress of Organists in 1977, his Sonata was available in printed form. The concert was scheduled to be played in historic St. George’s Methodist Church in the central city, so Persichetti, who lived in Philadelphia, planned to attend, but heavy rain that afternoon delayed him. (It also knocked out power to many venues, causing consternation, and cancellation, for some concurrent organ recitals.) The composer arrived at the church just as my program ended, so I offered to play his Sonata for him after the audience departed. I did so, he made cogent comments (some of them concerned keeping steady tempi and he advised playing the work exactly as he had notated it), and he autographed my printed score (“Thanks to Larry Palmer for a meaningful Benjamin Franklin performance in my own city.” [The reference to Franklin refers to the bridge bearing his name. St. George’s is adjacent to the bridge access road, allowing considerable noise every few minutes from public transit vehicles.]). Then he drove me back to the hotel.

Thus began an acquaintance, nurtured by a Sonata commission from me, occasional piquant notes, or the random, unexpected telephone call from the composer. When he published an incorrect wording of the dedication in my commissioned Sonata VI (crediting Southern Methodist University with payment of the commission fee, an error that I feared might cause problems with some of my academic colleagues), Vincent assured me that he would think of some way to make it up to me. A year or so later, he telephoned with the news that his latest piece, Serenade Number 15, would bear the inscription “Commissioned by Larry Palmer.” “To make it official,” he said, “send me a check for one dollar.” Because this was a time of high inflation, I sent him a check for two dollars, eliciting the response, “How wonderful--this is the first time I’ve ever had a commission doubled!”

It was even more gratifying for me, since I gained two works from a significant composer for a total fee of $502.

Persichetti’s concise Serenade consists of five short movements: the moody Prelude, marked desolato; a quicker Episode; the even faster Bagatelle; a gentle, cantabile Arioso; and the closing Capriccio--made up of a delicato single line, in the texture of a Bach composition for solo stringed instrument. The seven-minute work reminds that, while Persichetti was a distinguished academic, whose mind espoused complicated serial techniques, his soul remained true to the song-inspired expressivity of his Italian heritage.

Rudy Davenport

The 1990s saw a veritable spate of harpsichord writing by Texas-based composer Rudy Davenport. First introduced to me in 1992 through Fr. Tom Goodwin, a harpsichord-playing Catholic padre on Padre Island, Rudy provided me with nine unique works for solo harpsichord or small ensemble with harpsichord. His first national exposure came at the combined 1998 Southeastern and Midwestern Historical Keyboard Societies’ meeting in Texas, where a program devoted to Davenport’s harpsichord writing concluded with the haunting Songs of the Bride, the composer’s settings of texts from The Song of Solomon for solo soprano, oboe, and harpsichord. (Six of these works comprise the program for the compact disc Music of Rudy Davenport, issued by Limited Editions Recordings in 2003.)

Some of my most enjoyable concert experiences have been those involving making music with others, and none has offered more delight than performing music for multiple harpsichords (usually two prove difficult enough to nudge into some semblance of compatible tunings). A Davenport work of exceptional charm, but one not graced with a completely written-out score, is his At Play with Giles Farnaby, a set of seven variations and a fugal finale on Farnaby’s For Two Virginals (Number 55 in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book). Rudy heard this short piece when it was performed by colleague Barbara Baird and me during our 1994 summer harpsichord workshop in New Mexico. His jaunty take on it, as well as the delightful and crafty contrapuntal ending have been an audience favorite on the two occasions we played together. This duo harpsichord work was an especially intensive collaboration, in its creation as well as its performance. Since the divergence of our ways after 1999, I have missed such exuberant music making, as well as the active involvement in fine polishing and editing Rudy’s engaging works.

Glenn Spring

But that void has been filled by the reintroduction into my artistic life of the Denver-based composer Glenn Spring, first encountered at the 1990 Alienor Harpsichord Composition competition finals in Augusta, Georgia. There his William Dowd: His Bleu was one of the winning works. Eventually Spring’s composition was published in The Diapason’s February 1992 tribute to the eminent harpsichord maker. A short while later Glenn’s son Brian moved to Dallas, giving us yet another reason to “stay in touch.” After Brian’s departure from this part of Texas there were years of diminishing communication, a situation suddenly reversed by Brian’s “out-of-the-blue” early morning call from Korea, where he was employed as an English teacher. He must have told his father about this call, for shortly thereafter I received a copy of a 1999 keyboard work, Glenn’s seven-movement charmer Trifles (now a prize winner in the most recent Alienor Competition, 2004). I liked it, learned it, and began playing it in recitals here and there.

A special confluence of friends occurred when Charles and Susan Mize, having contracted for Richard Kingston’s opus 300 Millennium harpsichord, a spectacular nine-foot Franco-Flemish instrument with contemporary brushed steel stand and computer-compatible music desk, asked me to play the Washington, D.C. dedication concert on the instrument. I thought it desirable that Charles should play on his new instrument at that event, so I commissioned Glenn Spring to write a work for two players at one instrument. The pleasing result was Suite 3-D, comprising Denver Rocket, Big D[allas] Blues, and D C Steamroller (honoring the three D’s of our home cities), interspersed with two quiet, lyrical movements (Romance, Night Thoughts). For a second performance on my home concert series (Limited Editions), long-time colleague Charles Brown brought both his musical and histrionic skills to the work, serving as collaborative harpsichordist as well as creator and reader of witty verses before each movement.

The most recent sins of commission, from the year 2004, have included another ensemble work by Spring, Images from Wallace Stevens for Violin and Harpsichord, first performed February 13 in celebration of the 20th season of house concerts (program number 60). Meeting Glenn’s wife, violinist Kathleen Spring, at the Mize harpsichord dedication program, I invited her to join me in this anniversary season, and inquired about possible violin and harpsichord pieces from her husband’s catalog. He responded by offering to compose something for us. Consisting of seven movements, the Images are inspired by short bits of Stevens’ poetry, so much of which evokes musical connections.

Tim Broege

Tim Broege’s score Songs Without Words Set Number Seven, composed for the SMU Wind Ensemble’s conductor Jack Delaney and me, had its first performance by the group and mezzo-soprano Virginia Dupuy on April 16, 2004. The most notable and prominent part for harpsichord is Broege’s reworking of the famous Lachrimae Pavan by John Dowland as each section is presented by the solo harpsichord, then reprised by the full ensemble, heard as the fifth of the work’s nine movements. (This setting may be extracted and played as a solo harpsichord composition).

Simon Sargon

My 35th annual faculty recital at SMU in September 2004 featured the first public hearing of composition professor Simon Sargon’s harpsichord reworking  of Dos Prados (“From the Meadows”), another lovely pavan, originally conceived for the single-manual 1762 Iberian organ in SMU’s Meadows Museum, and now, with a few changes of texture and tessitura, effectively adapted for solo harpsichord.

Involving composers in our performing lives is one of the most rewarding actions we can take. For us it provides the excitement of adding new pieces to our repertoire; for them, it is an affirmation of their necessary contributions to the ongoing vitality of our art; and perhaps not least, this is one pleasure that is neither life-threatening nor fattening! I urge each of you to join me in committing some sins of commission in the near future.

Sources

Calvin Hampton: Consonance remains unpublished; however an increasing number of his organ works are available from  Wayne Leupold Editions (available through ECS Publishing).

Neely Bruce: Nine Variations is available from <[email protected]> (or 212/875-7011).

Rudy Shackelford: Tombeau de Stravinsky is published by Joseph Boonin (B.319).

Recording: The Harpsichord Now and Then (Larry Palmer, harpsichord), MHS LP 3222.

Ross Lee Finney: Hexachord for Harpsichord is published by Edition Peters (67034).

Herbert Howells: Dallas Canticles, Aureole Editions (available from MorningStar Music).

For additional information about the commissioning of this work, see my article “Herbert Howells and the Dallas Canticles” in The American Organist, October 1992, pp. 60-62.

Gerald Near: Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings 1980 (Aureole Editions 149; performance materials on rental only) and Triptych for Harpsichord (Aureole Editions 02) are both available from MorningStar Music.

Recording (Triptych): 20th Century Harpsichord Music, vol. 2 (Barbara Harbach, harpsichord), Gasparo GSCD-266.

Vincent Persichetti: his nine Harpsichord Sonatas and Serenade 15, are published by Elkan-Vogel.

For additional information see my article “Vincent Persichetti: A Love for the harpsichord (Some Words to Mark his 70th Birthday)” in The Diapason, June 1985, p. 8.

Rudy Davenport: Scores are available from the composer at <www.RudyDavenport. com>.

For additional information, see my article “Rudy Davenport’s Harpsichord Music of the 1990s” in The Diapason, April 2004, p. 18.

Recording: Music of Rudy Davenport (Patti Spain, soprano; Stewart Williams, oboe; Larry Palmer, harpsichord), Limited Editions Recordings LER 9904.

Glenn Spring: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Tim Broege: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Simon Sargon: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Harpsichord Workshop IX: SMU-in-Taos

Dr. Nancy S. Ypma teaches organ at McKendree College, Lebanon, Illinois.

SMU's ninth summer harpsichord workshop took place at its Fort Burgwin campus near Taos, New Mexico, August 11-17, 1996. Fourteen registrants from California, Illinois, Missouri, New Mexico, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington participated in the week-long course led by Jane Clark and Stephen Dodgson (London) and Larry Palmer (Dallas).

Each morning Jane Clark's master class on the keyboard
music of François Couperin focused on the background to the pieces in
his Pièces de Clavecin. Clark's insights into society, royalty, and the history of the time helped to explain  the meanings for many of the titles and gave direction toward an effective interpretation. Participants performed many of the pieces for Ms. Clark, who guided them with comments on performance practices and technique.

Early afternoon sessions were led by Larry Palmer. During
the first four days Dr. Palmer concentrated on the eight preludes of Couperin's
L'art de toucher le clavecin. He emphasized articulation, ornamentation,
and the pedagogical value of these pieces. On the final day, he turned to some
of Bach's Little Preludes. Participants took turns playing for the class,
and Dr. Palmer worked with each student in such a way that all participants,
regardless of background, discovered something new about the music or the
composer.

Later afternoon sessions were in the hands of Stephen
Dodgson, who received his training at the Royal College of Music, London, where
he taught composition and theory for many years. He discussed his long-term
fascination with the harpsichord and his extensive repertoire of solo and
ensemble music for the instrument. Each student had been sent a set of
Dodgson's pieces prior to the class, so many participants opted to play
works for the composer. Dodgson gave special insight into his pieces through
liberal sharing of anecdotes, by the example of his own playing, and by both
coaxing and coaching players through these attractive pieces.

Single- and double-manual instruments by Dowd, Kingston,
Wolf, and Martin had been transported from Dallas for the workshop, so all
participants were able to practice on fine harpsichords in a variety of styles.
Because of the size of the class, everyone had an opportunity to play each
instrument.

In the evenings there was a variety of events throughout the
week. On Monday Larry Palmer gave a recital of works by Louis, François,
and Armand-Louis Couperin; Frescobaldi; J.S. Bach; Martinu; and Dodgson. On
Tuesday Richard Kingston, resident harpsichord maker for the week, lectured on
harpsichord styles as the class moved from Italian to French to German-style
instruments. On Wednesday many people chose to attend the Santa Fe Opera
production of Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress (which, fittingly
enough, includes harpsichord in its scoring). On Thursday evening Jane Clark
played works by François Couperin, Domenico Scarlatti, Frescobaldi, and
her husband Stephen Dodgson, whose Carillon for Two Harpsichords concluded her
program. Larry Palmer was her partner for this performance.

The week concluded on Saturday with a lunch and impromptu
harpsichord recital (by any participant who wished to play) at the home of
Charles and Susan Mize (outside the village of Tesuque, near Santa Fe).
Hummingbirds swooped to their feeders on the patio of this charming adobe
retreat while workshop participants enjoyed a gourmet lunch and music in a
relaxed atmosphere.

Harpsichord Workshop IX was an inspiring and invigorating
week of study for all the prticipants, amateur performers and professional
musicians alike.