Harpsichord News

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]>.

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?

On August 15, Sante Fe harpsichordist Virginia Mackie joins the very exclusive club of centenarian harpsichordists; indeed, the only other one known to me is retired Paris Conservatoire Professor Marcelle de Lacour, who turned one hundred on November 6, 1996, celebrating the event by playing a recital for the residents of her retirement home!

After earning her BA at Wellesley College (Phi Beta Kappa), Mrs. Mackie did her Master's work at Columbia University, and spent several summers in France studying with Nadia Boulanger. Her teaching career in music theory and performance took her to Kansas City Junior College (as head of the music department), Yale University, and to the University of Missouri at Kansas City (where she served as Haag Distinguished Professor of Music). When UMKC later conferred on her its first honorary doctorate given to a woman, in lieu of an acceptance speech Mrs. Mackie gave an acceptance harpsichord recital, as well as a series of master classes.

Following a stint at the University of Arizona, Mrs. Mackie moved to Sante Fe, where she has been designated a "Santa Fe Living Treasure." Here she continues to share her keen analytical skills and love of music with a small number of students. She is especially devoted to the music of Haydn, and, of course, to the masterworks of J.S. Bach, who, I am certain, is happy to share the kudos of his own high-profile year with such a distinguished colleague.

Thanks to Dr. Charles Mize for providing information used in this report.

Women, Men, and Harpsichords in Colorado

More than fifty registrants assembled in Boulder, Colorado, for the Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society's 16th annual meeting, May 18-20. Subtitled "A Conference in Early Music," program chair Theresa Bogard's agenda was much more than that, for it included Elaine Funaro's fascinating program of 20th-century harpsichord music by women (ranging from Wanda Landowska, 1951, through Sondra Clark, 1999), Susanne Skyrm's premiere of composer Sarah Dawson's new work for fortepiano, Dumuzi's Dream, and my own illustrated talk on Swiss patroness Antoinette Vischer's many avant garde harpsichord commissions. Denver resident Hal Haney, venerable editor of The Harpsichord, spoke about some of his experiences while interviewing major and minor figures of the harpsichord revival during the journal's years of publication, 1968-1976.

The conference theme was well served by two evening recitals: supremely communicative soprano Julianne Baird presented a concert of music from author Jane Austen's music collection, elegantly partnered by fortepianist Theresa Bogard, the program heightened by readings from Austen's novels presented by Baird's husband and the highly expressive Marion Paton. The closing concert, presented by Cecilia's Circle (Janet Youngdahl, soprano; Julie Andrijeski, baroque violin; Vivian Montgomery, harpsichord; and Julie Elhard, viola da gamba), consisted of a series of lovely excerpts from the music of Barbara Strozzi and Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre.

The conference opened with Elizabeth Farr playing all six of J.S. Bach's Trio Sonatas on her Keith Hill pedal harpsichord. Fleet fingered and footed, she dealt ably with a sticking pedal note, but as a program, this seemed to me rather like reading an encyclopedia; I lasted only through volumes A-L, the first three.

Novel scholarly presentations were given by Arthur Haas (suggesting that François Couperin's second Ordre for harpsichord might be a tribute to Elizabeth Jacquet de la Guerre); Catherine Gordon-Seifert (similarities between some melodic models in Louis Couperin's allemandes and those in the mid-17th-century French serious air); and Martha Novak Clinkscale (Women's Role in the Piano Business of the late 18th and early 19th centuries). Edward Kottick paid a sly tribute to John Barnes' tongue-in-cheek take on Italian harpsichords, in his paper "The ‘Specious Uniformity' of 18th-Century German Harpsichords."

Instruments by Thomas Bailey, Dana Ciul, Thomas Ciul, Douglas Maple, Peter O'Donnell, and Ted Robertson were demonstrated by Nanette Lunde and Max Yount, former presidents of MHKS. At the group's annual business meeting, Lilian Pruett, retiring editor of The Early Keyboard Journal (jointly published by SEHKS and MHKS) was honored for her twenty years of service; Carol Henry Bates was welcomed as the new editor.

Cool, sunny, and springlike, Boulder's weather was ideal, allowing inspiring views of snow-capped mountains. Social events, especially the evening receptions, provided good food and the all-important times to share talk with friends and colleagues.

From “A” to “Z”

A = Aliénor

On Saturday evening, May 12, 2018, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the closing program for the forthcoming 2018 conference of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA) is scheduled to be a “Retrospective Event” reprising representative contemporary harpsichord works selected from each of the nine Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competitions that have occurred, beginning with the first in Tallahassee, Florida, in 1982, and culminating with the ninth in Montréal, Québec, Canada, in 2015.

Founded in 1980 by George Lucktenberg, both the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society (SEHKS) and the Aliénor Competitions were developed under the same organizational banner, the contemporary emphasis providing an unusual added concept to the mission of the fledgling early music organization. As preparations began for a third iteration of the Aliénor Competition, Lucktenberg sent a letter (dated May 19, 1990) to the recently chosen Honorary Advisory Board of ten professionals, from whom he sought help and suggestions as he formulated the rules and requirements for publication in the printed materials to be sent to prospective participants.

Re-reading the names of these board members brought back memories of an especially vibrant time in the harpsichord’s 20th-century revival and demonstrated the remarkably broad geographical spread of Lucktenberg’s acquaintanceship! In alphabetical order: William Albright (Michigan), Frances Bedford (Wisconsin), Frank Cooper (Florida), Elaine Funaro (North Carolina), Derrick Henry (Georgia), Igor Kipnis (Connecticut), Linda Kobler (New York), Larry Palmer (Texas), Keith Paulson-Thorp (Florida), and Elaine Thornburgh (California), all of whom were deeply involved in writing, promoting, and/or playing contemporary harpsichord music. Lucktenberg wrote, “I’d like more music which is not impenetrably difficult to read and perform, yet is first-class composing, and identifiably late-20th-century, all at the same time. WHO can give us that? How shall we get it?” His words certainly gave the board a good idea of the parameters he hoped to put in place.

Eventually, after the addition of a harpsichord performance competition named in honor of its sponsors Mae and Irving Jurow, the SEHKS board of directors agreed that attempting the organization and facilitation of two major competitions in alternate years was too heavy an administrative burden for busy volunteer professionals, and the quadrennial Aliénor project and its endowment were reorganized as a separate entity, but one still welcomed as a cooperative program during SEHKS conferences. Elaine Funaro succeeded George Lucktenberg as artistic director of Aliénor, and after her most successful term in that position the gala Ann Arbor retrospective will be her last “hurrah” as Aliénor just recently has been returned to the control of its former sponsor, no longer SEHKS, but now the successor society, HKSNA, which, since 2012, has been merged with the formerly independent Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society to comprise one inclusive North American early keyboard group.

In addition to competition-winning works by Ivar Lunde, Roberto Sierra, Tom Robin Harris, Glenn Spring, John Howell Morrison, Penka Kouneva, Rudy Davenport, Asako Hirabayashi, James Dorsa, Graham Lynch, Ivan Božicevic, Dina Smorgonskaya, and Andrew Collett, the May program will include two newly commissioned pieces composed by Thomas Donahue and Mark Janello, heard in premiere performances by Donahue and retiring Aliénor artistic director Funaro.

Be sure to include this “once-in-a-lifetime” celebration on your “to-do” schedule for the fast-approaching spring of 2018.

Z = Zurbarán

If you are interested in unusual art exhibitions and reside closer to Dallas, Texas, than to New York City, you might wish to take advantage of the current presentation at the Meadows Museum on the Southern Methodist University (SMU) campus. The Meadows has scored quite a coup as it shows, for the first time in the western hemisphere, a complete set of thirteen life-sized paintings by the Spanish artist Francisco de Zurbarán (1598–1664). The only other venue for this exhibition will be the Frick Collection in New York.

The Meadows is home to one of the most comprehensive collections of Iberian art in the world. Current museum director Mark Roglán has forged an impressive relationship with Madrid’s Prado Museum, so we in Dallas have become accustomed to rare and rarer viewing experiences. One of the current showings, “Jacob and His Twelve Sons—Paintings from Auckland Castle,” is on view from September 17, 2017, through January 7, 2018. It follows another spectacular offering seen earlier this year: all the extant drawings (together with several remarkable oil paintings) by the esteemed Spanish artist Jusepe de Ribera (1591–1652) which, incidentally, contained the only portrayal I have ever seen of music’s patron Saint Cecilia at the clavichord!

From the press materials provided by the Meadows Museum: 

. . . Zurbarán was inspired by the biblical text Genesis 49, in which Jacob, Patriarch of the Israelites, gathers his twelve sons and delivers a prophetic blessing for each. [The series] consists of thirteen canvases with all but one remaining in the collection of a single owner at Auckland Castle, County Durham (UK) since 1756. [Bishop Richard Trevor of Durham extended the long dining room of his Auckland Castle residence to assure a suitable venue for these life-sized oil portraits.] This is the first time the majority of paintings in this exhibition have been presented in the Americas—indeed, it is the first time any such series of paintings by Zurbarán has been seen as a whole [on this side of the Atlantic].

But what, you ask, could be the reason that this artistic coup is featured in this column? I hasten to reassure you that there is a connection to early music! As one of many special events scheduled during this exhibition there is to be a brief collaboration utilizing another Meadows Museum acquisition, the Caetano Oldovini Portuguese organ (1762), which is rarely heard in a concert performance. As an aural “sorbet” to the afternoon segment of the daylong November 14 museum symposium devoted to discussion and reflections about the three major religions that trace roots back to the Twelve Tribes of Israel (Jewish, Christian, and Muslim), I was invited to fashion a thematically based program to play for the symposium participants.

I spent quite a lot of time attempting to find short pieces that might illustrate the various virtues and vices mentioned by Father Jacob as he made predictions and comments to and about his twelve sons. Considering the 35-minute time allotment, eventually it became apparent that such a set of pieces would require too many minutes, and that choosing an all-encompassing selection ranged from difficult to impossible, with impossible eventually tipping the scales.

Then, on one late-August morning, at last a burst of inspiration led to this playlist: from the time of the artist Zurbarán, a festive opener by Cabanilles (1644–1712) followed by the quiet and poignant Obra de falsas chromáticas from the Martin y Coll Manuscript (seventeenth century). Two pieces by John Bull (1562/3–1628) to celebrate the long-term British venue for the paintings: Coranto ‘Battle’ and Prelude and Carol: Let Us with Pure Heart. A work by my longtime SMU colleague, the distinguished Jewish composer Simon Sargon, who composed Dos Prados (From the Meadows) to fulfill my request for a work specifically made to fit the Caetano organ, his lovely Pavan with Variations (1997), expertly crafted to accommodate the organ’s bass short octave and its one treble Sesquialtera solo stop. Finally, two contrasting short pieces by later Iberian composers Domenico Zipoli (1688–1726) and José Lidon (1748–1827), the latter specifically chosen to close the recital with a short bit of avian warbling from the organ’s Rossignol stop.

The Meadows organ, originally housed in the cathedral of Evora, Portugal, is, as far as can be ascertained, the oldest playable pipe organ in Texas. The only possible rival for that designation might be the “Raisin” organ, now at the University of North Texas in Denton. A painstakingly researched and well-expressed 16-page history of this instrument, Raising the Raisin Organ, written by Susan Ferré in 2006, is accessible online by searching with the keywords Raisin organ and the author’s name.

For further information about the Zurbarán exhibition and the various special events being offered by the museum during its run, visit the website: https://meadowsmuseumdallas.org. And, should travels bring you to northern Texas this fall, consider a visit to Fort Worth, as well, where the Kimbell Art Museum currently hosts a popular art and artifact show based on the travels (and adventures) of the rake, Giacomo Casanova, Casanova: The Seduction of Europe (on view through December 31).

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Remembering Wm. Neil Roberts
(1929–2011)
Contemplating an invitation to play a harpsichord recital in California and not knowing where to find a suitable instrument, I turned to Gustav Leonhardt for some advice. His response, “You can’t go wrong with an instrument by William Neil Roberts and Anthony Brazier,” led me to that Los Angeles team of harpsichord builders and early music promoters. Diary entries show that my initial query to Roberts and Brazier resulted in their delivering a very fine small Flemish double harpsichord for the 1981 recital at Chapman College, south of the city, as well as an invitation to play the March 8 and 9, 1980 solo recitals for their Harpsichord Center series in Los Angeles.
Thus began an association that resulted in my inviting the more-experienced Neil to help with planning and to share teaching assignments for the first Southern Methodist University Harpsichord Workshop at the school’s New Mexico campus, the Fort Burgwin Research Center near Taos. In August 1988 Neil and Tony drove cross-country from the Pacific Coast to “the land of enchantment,” transporting not only two of their instruments to complement the ones being brought from Dallas, but also, in a bit of luck, serving as emergency transportation for Neil’s student Ed Petron, a participant in that and each subsequent workshop, whose aging Volkswagen had given up the ghost outside Albuquerque as he drove eastward, fortuitously noticed by Tony as the Harpsichord Center van nearly sped by the stranded motorist.
The instruments were, indeed, superb. So was the teaching. I particularly recall Neil’s inspired connection of the term “fringing” (a non-simultaneity of bass and upper chord notes) with a possible Anglicization of the word “frenching,” as indeed this technique for softening certain textures at the harpsichord is a particularly French one. After the lengthy closing recital given by students, Neil shared some memories of similar workshop recitals past, including the daunting recall of an already very long California program that morphed into a marathon when the final player decided she wanted to play the entire Goldberg Variations—with repeats! Both from experience and this anecdote we learned to put strict time limits in place for such closing events!
Invited back for the next summer offering at Fort Burgwin, Neil was sidelined by an attack of kidney stones only days before the event, but hoped to be able to travel. It was not to be: an early morning call from Tony on day one of the summer program relayed the bad news that they would be unable to make the trip. I was fortunate to find Susan Ferré as an immediate replacement, but with the largest enrollment of all the seventeen workshops, and only the two harpsichords that we had brought from Dallas, this extremely wet week proved a challenge for all of us. The Roberts-Brazier duo was sorely missed.
Neil and Tony did have one subsequent summer outing at the Fort during the first segment of a two-week workshop scheduled in July 1990. I did not observe Neil’s insightful interaction with the small group of students, since he had made it clear that he did not want me to attend his classes, but I remember the sensitive French works on a duo flute and harpsichord recital with Tony as the highlight of the week’s faculty concert offerings. I had assumed that most of the students would find the opportunity—to learn both from Neil’s teaching and from a second week in which Susan Ferré would coach them in continuo playing with her Texas Baroque Ensemble artists—an irresistible package deal. But, in reality, half of the class enrolled in either one or the other week, meaning that our expenses doubled while our tuition income basically halved, and we closed the books deeply “in the red.” A double session was not offered again.
The national convention of the American Guild of Organists was held in Los Angeles in summer 2004. It served as a focal point around which to organize pre- and post-meeting stays with Neil and Tony, memorable both for the vocal interjections of Gus, their parrot, and for the opportunity to observe Neil’s new interest in non-harpsichord-related painting. During our visit Neil was frequently to be found in the studio, working on his evocative watercolors. We departed Burbank’s Bob Hope Airport that July with new purchases for the Palmer-Putman art collection: the framed sketch of a friend relaxing with his three dachshunds, and a limited edition signed photograph of Neil’s Portrait of Dr. Bell, violinist Joshua Bell’s psychologist father Alan, a work that continues to elicit strong reactions from those who see it. If the eyes truly are the gateway to the soul, Neil’s concentration on the upper part of Dr. Bell’s face is certainly apt, striking, and unexpected. The unique 2002 painting belongs to Los Angeles collectors Kay and Jack Lachter; thus, the rest of us, including Dr. Bell’s family, must remain satisfied with a print edition of ten numbered examples.
Neil was born in Iowa on June 2, 1929. He succumbed to lymphoma in Los Angeles on April 7, 2011. Concerts had taken him to central Europe, Taiwan, Tahiti, Mexico, and the Casals Festival in Puerto Rico, in addition to the continental United States. Memorable career moments included frequent appearances on American Public Media, especially those on Bill McLaughlin’s “Saint Paul Sunday.”
Roberts’ musical growth was influenced by harpsichordists Alice Ehlers, Ralph Kirkpatrick, Gustav Leonhardt, and the many artists sponsored by the Southern California Baroque Association, of which he was president. His solo harpsichord recordings covered a wide range of composers and styles: Byrd to Bach, Scott Joplin rags (“even before they were discovered by E. Power Biggs,” Neil pointed out), and his beloved French repertoire, including period transcriptions from Lully and other solo keyboard works by D’Anglebert, played stylishly on two then-recent Roberts & Brazier instruments for a 1981 Nonesuch disc. Obviously, it is extremely rare for a professional player to build his own harpsichord. (I can recall only the young Tom Pixton doing a similar thing.)
Penning a laconic dedication on my complimentary copy of that long-playing record, Neil wrote, “I’d better get a good review!”
Accomplished, dear friend!
Finally, to complete an arch form of associations, my May 2011 harpsichord recital in Santa Rosa, California, was played on the 1988 Franco-Flemish double instrument belonging to Concert Artist Cooperative founder and director Beth Zucchino. It seemed appropriate to add one of the most intensely moving commemorative pieces from the 17th-century solo repertoire to this program, Louis Couperin’s ineffably beautiful F-major Tombeau de Mr. Blancrocher, as my way of remembering Wm. Neil Roberts.
Among Neil’s gifted students, two outstanding ones, now professionally active in the San Francisco Bay Area, are Gilbert Martinez (attracted to that first Fort Burgwin Workshop through Neil’s influence) and Katherine Roberts Perl (who continues Neil’s rare combination of distinguished harpsichord performance and skillful technical expertise in the maintenance of the instrument), both of whom have contributed to this memoir. Further information was offered by David Calhoun of Seattle; Elaine Funaro, through the Aliénor Newsletter for Spring 2011, viewable at www.harpsichord-now.org; and by Neil’s business and life partner, Anthony Brazier, who survives him. 

Comments and news items are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275. E-mails to [email protected].

March 16-17, Charlottesville, Virginia

The main site of this year's Southeastern Historical
Keyboard Society Conclave was the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
Appropriately, then, many presentations were centered around the musical and
intellectual life of our third President, Thomas Jefferson.

The first session, Thursday, March 15, opened with James
Holyer's presentation of "A Survey of the Literature on Thomas
Jefferson and Music" in the University of Virginia's Alderman
Li-brary. Representing a new generation of scholars, Holyer is pursuing a
master's degree in sacred music at Southern Methodist University where he
studies organ with Larry Palmer. He provided us with a complete bibliography of
publications on Jefferson and music, and guided us through a review of this literature,
describing the extent to which individual biographers discussed
Jefferson's musical life.

Following this session, University of Virginia librarians
Jane Penner and Heather Moore showed items from the Special Collections
Department. The ninth edition of the Bay Psalm Book, published in the
seventeenth century, was of particular interest since it represents the
"earliest printed music in Colonial America." We were also able to
view portions of the Jefferson family's Monticello Music Collection.
Unfortunately, the music composed by Thomas Jefferson has been lost. On
Thursday evening, the conferees enjoyed a private tour of Monticello.

The Friday morning sessions on March 16 opened with a
presentation by Karen Hite Jacob--"Thomas Jefferson: Finding
Inspiration Beyond Our Borders." In her paper and accompanying handout,
Dr. Jacob focused upon Jefferson's lifelong interest in learning. While
he always took an active part in his family's and friends'
education, Jefferson became interested in public education only later in his
life.

It was great to see harpsichordist and musicologist David
Chung again; we missed him at the SEHKS Conclave 2000 in Greensboro, North
Carolina. Having completed his doctoral work at Cambridge University a couple
of years ago, David returned home to Hong Kong where he is currently assistant
professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University. "The Development of French
Overtures in French Keyboard Music c. 1670-1730" was the topic of
his paper. Composers such as d'Anglebert made transcriptions for
harpsichord of Lully's overtures, including the "Ouverture
d'Isis" and the "Ouverture de Cadmus." An extensive
handout showed the progression of d'Anglebert's various methods of
arranging a Lully overture. Chung also discussed post-Lully (original)
overtures for harpsichord by Dieupart, Siret, Dandrieu and François
Couperin. In summary, he noted several important elements in the French
overtures for keyboard: the union of French ornamentation and Italian harmonic
progressions and counterpoint; the art of accompaniment from a figured bass;
and composers' incorporation of virtuosic writing.

Joyce Lindorff, associate professor of keyboard studies at
Temple University, presented a lecture-recital: "Perfect Vibrations:
Pasquali's 'Art of Fingering' and the New Keyboard Aesthetic."
Pasquali's compact treatise (Edinburgh, 1758), published after the
composer's death in 1740, dealt with fingering, ornamentation, technique
and tuning; it reflected the newly emerging keyboard aesthetic--namely,
the preference for legato performance.

The ideas of Domenico Alberti (1710-1746), one of the
first composers of keyboard music to adopt the new Classical texture, impressed
Pasquali. He agreed that, in order to produce a full tone on the harpsichord,
one must not release the key too soon; further, the harpsichordist must play
with legato fingering. While C. P. E. Bach still re-ferred to the detached
style as the usual one, Pasquali insisted that it should be used rarely. Dr.
Lindorff rounded out her lecture-recital with selected passages from Handel's
Concerto, op. 4, no. 1, and Alberti's Sonata I; she played each example
twice, first in a more detached style--secondly, in the newer legato
style. Most of the audience concurred with Pasquali that the harpsichord gains
power of sound when played with more legato.

Friday morning's second session started with Sarah
Mahler Hughes (associate professor of music at Ripon College in Ripon,
Wisconsin) who presented a paper on "Two 18th-Century Keyboard Settings
of 'Adeste Fideles' from London and Philadelphia." After
tracing the origin of the tune "Adeste Fideles," which turned up in
Portugal, France, and later in London, Dr. Hughes contrasted two settings by
Veronika Dussek Cianchettini (1769-1833) and Rayner Taylor
(1747-1825). The former, a Bohemian pianist/composer, was the younger
sister of well-known pianist/composer Jan Ladislav Dussek (1760-1812).
Both Dusseks moved to London where they taught and performed; Veronika
eventually married the publisher Cianchettini. Rayner Taylor (1747-1825)
emigrated from London to America in 1793. Taking the post of organist and music
director at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Philadelphia, he was also a
composer and teacher and one of the founders of The Musical Fund Society. Dr.
Hughes found both Cianchettini and Taylor's settings of "Adeste
Fideles" "pleasing and diverting," but noted important
differences between them. While Cian-chettini's version, composed for a
pianoforte with an expanded range, is more technically demanding than Taylor's,
the latter's setting was meant to be played in church, on the organ with
a limited compass.

Once again, Dr. Larry Palmer (Southern Methodist University)
amused, entertained and educated his audience by taking a fresh new ap-proach
to historical material. Assuming the role of French organist and composer
Balbastre (1727-1799), he sent us an E-mail message in the form of a
memoir --"Claude-Benigne Balbastre: From Dijon to Citoyen."  In keeping with
the Jeffersonian theme of this SEHKS Conclave, Palmer à la Balbastre
recounted his meeting Jefferson's wife Martha and daughters Patsy and
Polly during their stay in Paris. In fact, Balbastre owes his fame not only to
Charles Burney, who also met him in Paris, but largely to Polly Jefferson, an
accomplished harpsichord pupil. And Mrs. Jefferson, also a devotée of
the harpsichord, copied out the composer's pieces "La Canonade" and "War March," as well as Rameau's "Les Sauvages." Dr. Palmer informed us that these pieces by
Balbastre can be seen on microfilm at the University of Virginia Library.

Balbastre reminisced about the turbulent cultural, political
and musical changes he witnessed in the late eighteenth century, including the
waning and subsequent eclipse of the clavecin by the new pianoforte. The
composer endured the worst insult--seeing his Pascal Taskin
clavecin's innards re-moved and replaced by a pianoforte mechanism! Dr.
Palmer's lecture was enhanced by tape recordings of his performance of
several of Balbastre's clavecin pieces.

On Friday afternoon the conferees enjoyed an excursion to the
Hebron Lutheran Church in Madison, Virginia, for more presentations and
concerts. Judy Ann Fray, docent of the historic church, told us about the
historical background of the building and the organ. The original organ, made
by David Tannenberg in Lititz, Pennsylvania, was hauled by ox cart to Madison
and installed in 1802; it has been in use ever since. In 1970, when the organ
was refurbished by George Taylor and Norman Ryan, all parts were documented.

MANUAL (54 notes) (Stop names perhaps not original.)

                  8'
style='mso-tab-count:1'>            Principal
dulci (#1-12 quintadena                                                                basses)

                  8'
style='mso-tab-count:1'>            Gedackt
(All stopped wood)

                  4'
style='mso-tab-count:1'>            Octave
(All open metal)

                  4'
style='mso-tab-count:1'>            Flute
(All open wood)

                  22⁄3'
style='mso-tab-count:1'>     Quinte (All open metal)

                  2'
style='mso-tab-count:1'>            Octave
(All open metal)

                  13⁄5'
style='mso-tab-count:1'>     Terzian (breaking to
31⁄5' at middle c)

                                    Mixture
II (#1-24: 19-22; #25-54: 8-12)

We were then treated to a recital on the Tannenberg organ by
Joseph Butler (associate professor and associate dean of the College of Fine
Arts, Texas Christian University). His program included works by Froberger,
Pelham, Handel, J. S. Bach, Böhm, Brahms and Muffat.

Andrew Willis, immediate past president and current
secretary of SEHKS, then introduced George Lucktenberg, founder of SEHKS almost
21 years ago. In his address, entitled "The Southeastern Historical
Keyboard Society--An Idea Whose Time Had Come," he looked back over
his career as a harpsichordist and founder of SEHKS and pondered the future of
our organization. "We're at another turning point," stated
Lucktenberg. Now that the specialty of early music has established itself, he
cautioned against undermining its progress with an "earlier than
Thou" attitude. He shared his many thoughts about how SEHKS can continue
to be a significant force in the musical world. SEHKS President Peter Dewitt
then presented an award to Dr. Lucktenberg.

After the group was treated to a wonderful catered buffet in
the Hebron Lutheran Church Parish Hall, Peter Dewitt presented awards to Karyl
Louwenaar Lueck and Karen Hite Jacob, past presidents, for their many years of
significant contributions to the organization. The evening's concert of
German Vespers was provided by Zephyrus, a Charlottesville-based vocal ensemble
directed by Dr. Paul Walker, professor of organ and harpsichord at the
University of Virginia. Joined by Brad Lehman at the Tannenberg organ, Jennifer
Myer and Eva Lundell, violins, and Sarah Glosson, viola da gamba, Zephyrus
performed music by Böhm, Schütz, Buxtehude, Scheidt, and Praetorius.

The Saturday morning session opened with John Watson,
conservator of instruments at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, whose paper
ad-dressed "America's Only Surviving Harpsichord and Other Glimpses
of Jefferson's Keyboard Milieu." Although Jefferson was neither a
harpsichordist nor a composer, he sought the best available keyboard instruments
for his wife and two daughters throughout his life.

Vera Kochanowsky and Thomas MacCracken, duo harpsichordists
and forte-pianists from Washington, D.C., then performed Mozart's only
sonata for two fortepianos, K. 448 in D Major. MacCracken played an instrument
made by John Lyon in 1986, modeled on a Walther; and Steve Dibbern made
available a fortepiano he constructed from a Zuckerman kit (Stein replica) for
Kochanowsky.

The next presentation, "Once Again: Expressive Devices
on Eighteenth-Century Harpsichords," was given by Edward Kottick,
musicologist and retired professor from the University of Iowa. He challenged
the widely-held opinion that the devices added to harpsichords by late
eighteenth-century French and English builders, in order to accommodate the
growing desire for dynamic gradations, were "accretions or
encrustations." Builders created devices such as machine stops, swells
and the peau de buffle, not to compete with fortepiano makers, but rather to
meet the needs of a changing aestshetic. 
Perhaps it is only the twentieth-century
viewpoint--"anti-pedal and anti-dy-namic," even with regards
to late eighteenth-century keyboard music--which misunderstands the raison
d'etre of these "improvements."

Judith Conrad, an active keyboard performer and technician
from Fall River, Massachusetts, evoked "Tranquility at Home" in the
late eighteenth century with "A Bit of Musick upon the Fretted
Clavichord." She performed music by Handel, Balbastre, Alexander
Reinagle, John Snow and William Boyce on a clavichord made by Steve Barrell
(Amsterdam, 1990).

Stan Pelkey, an assistant professor of music at Gordon
College in Wenham, Massachusetts, presented a paper on "Approaches to
Sonata Procedures in British Keyboard Music from 1760-1820." He
focused mainly upon the contributions of Samuel Wesley and Charles Wesley.

Conferees were able to rotate among three
"No-fear" instrument repair workshops Saturday afternoon: Edward
Kottick, changing a plectrum; Ted Robertson, changing a string; Ed Swenson,
leathering a hammer. At the annual Builder's Instrument Showcase,
conferees had a final opportunity to view and hear instruments exhibited by
Steve Dibbern, Ted Robertson, Ed Swenson, Steven Barrell, Richard Abel, and
Willard Martin. Joyce Lindorff's demonstrations were all the more
effective because she selected repertoire appropriate for each instrument.

The afternoon session concluded with a performance of Madame
Brillon's "Trio en Ut Mineur a Trois Clavecins" (1780) by
Virginia Pleasants, David Chung and Joyce Lindorff. Intended for one English
fortepiano, one German fortepiano and one harpsichord, Brillon's Trio was
played in 2001 on a fortepiano made by Steve Dibbern from a Zuckerman kit, a
harpsichord built by Willard Martin, and an 1855 Erard grand pianoforte restored
by Ed Swenson.

The beautiful Dome Room of the Rotunda at the University of
Virginia was the site of the Conclave's final event. This building, like
many others on the campus, was designed by Thomas Jefferson. Harpsichordist
Charlotte Mattax Moersch played an unmeasured prelude by Jean-Henry
d'Anglebert and three pieces by Lully arranged by d'Anglebert.
Karyl Louwenaar Lueck performed harpsichord pieces by An-toine Forqueray, four
of which were arranged by his son Jean-Baptiste Forqueray. Andrew Willis, fortepianist,
played works by J.G. Albrechtsberger, C.P.E. Bach and Georg Benda. After
enjoying J.S. Bach's Concerto in C Major for Two Harpsichords (BWV 1061),
played by Mattax and Louwenaar, the audience was treated to a hilarious
performance of "Das Dreyblatt" by Wilhelm Friedrich Ernst Bach, a
grandson of J.S. Bach. All six hands negotiated, or attempted to negotiate,
their way around a single fortepiano!

The SEHKS Conclave 2001 was successful in all respects, from
excellent presentations and recitals to terrific hospitality; the experience
was enhanced by the rich historical setting of the Charlottesville, Virginia
area. Thanks to Vicki Dibbern for making all the local arrangements, to builder
liaison Steve Dibbern, to the program committee (Ardyth Lohuis, Ed Kottick and
Andrew Willis), to Karen Hite Jacob for the program book, and to Dr. Paul
Walker for making arrangements at the University of Virginia.

Dana Ragsdale is professor of harpsichord and piano and
director of Southern Arts Pro Musica at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Having played her New York debut harpsichord recital in 1977 in Weil Recital
Hall, she has also been a guest artist on the Winterfest Concerts and with the
Fiati Chamber Players in New York City. A participant in the Performing Arts
Touring Program, Dr. Ragsdale has also made numerous appearances at Piccolo
Spoleto USA in Charleston, South Carolina. Promenade, the Baroque ensemble in
which she performs, can be heard on a compact disc, "Music from the Court
of Versailles."