Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Peter Watchorn plays Bach’s WTC I
“It makes us feel spiritually spic and span.” These words kept coming to mind as I spent a musically intense afternoon listening to the entire first book of J. S. Bach’s Das Wohltemperierte Clavier [The Well-Tempered Keyboard] played on the pedal harpsichord by Peter Watchorn (Musica Omnia MO 0201). The quotation, from the American harpsichord duo Philip Manuel and Gavin Williamson, came in response to an interviewer’s question as to why they preferred 18th-century music. [For the complete text and citation, see Palmer: Harpsichord in America, page 74].
“Bach’s 48” contains an infinite blend of musical ideas and contrapuntal ingenuity. Part one, comprising 24 preludes and 24 fugues in each of the 24 available chromatic tonalities, is commonly regarded as one of the keyboard player’s loftiest summits. This first set, from the year 1722, is paralleled in the literature only by the same composer’s second book, containing a similar group of preludes and fugues assembled in 1744.
Complete traversals of either set are comparatively rare, and, excepting performances by truly remarkable players, are best avoided by listeners. Australian-born Massachusetts resident Peter Watchorn’s two-CD set (recorded in 2005) documents one such exceptional presentation, and makes a case, both compelling and satisfying, for hearing the entire two and one-half hour work in sequence. “In the final stages of preparing this recording,” he writes, “for over a month I played the ‘48’ from beginning to end every day, sometimes twice. Rarely in my experience has time passed so quickly.”
The instruments employed for this musical journey are from the American harpsichord shop of Hubbard & Broekman: a two-manual copy (1990) of the 1646 Andreas Ruckers instrument, expanded in two 18th-century rebuildings by Blanchet and Taskin; and a pedal instrument (also from 1990) based on tonal concepts of the Hamburg Hass family of instrument builders. Both harpsichords possess remarkable beauty of sound, as well as long-lasting sonorities. The discreet addition of pedal tones (including a 16-foot register) to some pieces is tastefully conceived: indeed for the Fugue in A minor, such a pedal clavier provides the only possible solution for all the widely spaced notes of the ending to be negotiated by one player.
For a cycle utilizing every tonality available to the keyboardist, the choice of temperament becomes a vital part of the musical equation. Bradley Lehman’s 2004 “well-tempered” tuning, deduced from calligraphy atop the WTC manuscript’s title page, does seem, in its gentle yet colorful chromatics, to give credence to J. N. Forkel’s comment in the first Bach biography (1802), “He knew not, or rather he disdained, those sudden sallies by which many composers attempt to surprise their hearers. Even in his chromatics the advances are so soft and tender that we scarcely perceive their distances, though these are often very great . . .” (More of Forkel’s comments are quoted in the booklet to the CD recording. See also Lehman’s articles in the journal Early Music [Oxford University Press], February and May 2005.)
In “Thirty-five Years with Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier,” personal and intimate notes to his recording, Watchorn acknowledges the guiding influence of our mutual teacher Isolde Ahlgrimm, another of the artists who created unforgettable musical drama in her frequent complete presentations of both “48” volumes, from memory, often on consecutive evenings. Following these recorded performances with my Henle WTC score, rich in copious annotations added during Ahlgrimm’s Dallas masterclasses from February 1972 and June 1974, I heard many of her suggestions used to masterful effect. However, these are not slavish imitations of a mentor’s style, but rather the independent interpretations of a thoughtful, musical player.
With a logic based on Bach’s own practice in the Goldberg Variations, the artist ends his traversal of tonalities by repeating the opening C Major movement as an “Aria” (or more exactly, a “Prelude”) da capo. Dr. Watchorn, noting that the recording was made in strict chronological order, gives even more heft to his visceral need for closure, for tonal destination, thus achieved by this salutary repetition of the WTC’s opening measures.
It occurred to me that there could be yet another reason for doing so: with this repetition of the C Major Prelude the formal design of the set achieves an implied Bach signature. There are only two five-voice contrapuntal compositions in the cycle, the first of which is the C-sharp Minor Fugue, eighth piece from the beginning. With the C Major Prelude as finale, the other five-voice movement, the B-flat Minor Fugue becomes the sixth piece from the end. Eight plus six gives us Bach’s signature number fourteen (B+A+C+H = 2+1+3+8 as letter positions in the alphabet). Since the WTC survives in manuscript copies rather than in printed form, who knows what the mathematically adept composer would have done had he prepared the work for publication?

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275;
<[email protected]>.

Isolde Ahlgrimm, harpsichordist, scholar, master teacher, died in Vienna on October 11, 1995. Born July 31, 1914, Ahlgrimm was recognized internationally as a major interpreter of the harpsichord repertoire, particularly the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Her virtually complete Bach cycle was recorded between December 1951 and May 1957 for Philips of Holland. A frequent member of competition juries in Bruges and Leipzig, Ahlgrimm was known for her brilliant concerts and for her teaching at the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Vienna Hochschule für Musik, and in guest professorships at Oberlin and Southern Methodist University.

These notable facts concerning Ahlgrimm’s career are the stuff of biographical dictionaries. But there was so much more! In my article Isolde Ahlgrimm as the “Widow Bach” (The Diapason, June, 1968), I attempted to convey some sense of the lovable human being behind the public figure.

“Frau Ahlgrimm, you are so much at home in the Bach style that I sometimes think you knew Johann Sebastian personally. Are you sure that you’re not Bach’s widow?” I once asked jokingly at a harpsichord lesson in Vienna. Her eyes twinkling, Isolde Ahlgrimm responded, “As I once said to my husband Sebastian . . . ” From that moment she has been the “Widow Bach” to me.

Ahlgrimm had reason to be in a merry mood that morning. Her performance at the pedal harpsichord of Bach’s Art of Fugue had been a resounding triumph the preceding evening. The capacity audience in Vienna’s Mozart-Saal had risen and burst into spontaneous applause as she finished playing the sixth Counterpoint in a fiery, French Overture style. At the conclusion of this monumental work, which she had played from memory, the audience would not allow her to leave the hall without playing an encore. We were all amazed at her sheer endurance as she began the Chromatic Fantasy! Questioned later as to why she had chosen that particular work, she responded simply, “But of course—it is in the same key.”

The Viennese critics were unanimous in their praise of her playing. I chuckled as I read in the New Austrian Daily News: “Isolde Ahlgrimm is deeply immersed in the world of Johann Sebastian Bach,” for she was, at that very moment, demonstrating to Max Yount just what pieces she might one day play on the harpsichord in musical revenge against those pianists who insist on playing the harpsichordist’s repertoire: Debussy, Granados (which sounded very well on the guitar-like sounds of the lute stops), and even a snatch of Kitten on the Keys! . . .

In May 1983 Ahlgrimm gave her last public concert in Vienna, two weeks before she underwent an operation for cancer. She wrote the following January:

I am so thankful, I did not know, that my little concert in May was the last! But to play with the feeling it IS the last, I could not do it. . . In December 1983 it was fifty years that I started officially to play . . . (piano of course) . . . So, I did not make it with the day, but at least with the year [to fifty years of concertizing].

Ahlgrimm continued to teach in Vienna until 1987; her successor, Gordon Murray, was appointed in 1986, but she completed her work with four continuing students from her studio. Her retirement years were not easy ones, for she was increasingly afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. In 1992 she moved from her apartment in the Strudlhofgasse to a pensioner’s room at Türkenschanzplatz. Because of limited space in this small room she gave up her library and her instruments.

Hoping to send something to help in this unsettled time of her life, I found a miniature harpsichord, crafted in exacting detail by Art Bell of Arlington, Texas. We sent this model instrument to “Ille” (the diminutive name by which Ahlgrimm was known to her close friends). Her response (in a letter of July 22th [sic], 1992) was typical of the expressive, if idiosyncratic, way in which she wrote:

How can I thank you? The package has arrived and you should have seen me, the packing was put aside, I started to cry! Having my harpsichord back means so much to me. It was the worst moment of my moving, of the whole moving! I just felt, what it means to say goodbye forever (when I gave my harpsichord to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. . . ) As it is now, [the model harpsichord] has a place of honor in my bookshelf, and I feel as if [the real instrument] would have come back, telling me, that I should not be unhappy, it always will keep me in memory . . . I do still hope to get a place on the side of my harpsichord, somewhere on a nice cloud, [with] the little one holding my hand as a little baby.

What a family with which to contemplate eternity: Sebastian (apologies to Anna Barbara and Anna Magdalena Bach!), the hundreds of students who are Ahlgrimm’s “children,” and both double-manual and model-sized harpsichords! And for us who say “goodbye” (or better, “Auf Wiedersehen”), we do so with profound gratitude for the beauty of the music and the beauty of spirit she shared with us. Thankyou, and peace . . . Professor, Frau Ahlgrimm, Widow Bach, Ille, . . . beloved teacher and friend.   

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.

By Larry Palmer 

Celebrating Scott Ross

The Diapason for October 1971 (62nd year, number 11, whole number 743) featured a non-organ event on the front page for the first time in the magazine’s venerable history. Under a bold headline that read “Bruges International Harpsichord Competition and Festival,” the article was my several-page review of the triennial event that had taken place in Belgium during the previous summer, July 31 through August 6.  

The text began: A First Prize

At 1 o’clock in the morning, a weary, but exhilarated audience applauded an extraordinary winner: Scott Ross, born 20 years ago in Pittsburgh, Pa., and now a resident of France, became the first harpsichordist ever to be awarded a first prize in the Bruges International Harpsichord Competition. Ross had been an electrifying personality since the opening round, when, playing next-to-last on the third afternoon, he gave flawless and illuminating performances of the Bach Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Minor (WTC II) and of the William Byrd Fantasy III. He received so much applause from a heretofore soporific audience that the secretary of the jury had to ring the bell for order.

The seven-member jury for the 1971 competition certainly highlighted the international scope of the event, comprising Kenneth Gilbert (Montreal), Raymond Schroyens and Charles Koenig (Brussels), Colin Tilney (London), Robert Veyron-Lacroix (Paris), Isolde Ahlgrimm (Vienna), and Gustav Leonhardt (Amsterdam). This distinguished panel had selected five finalists and ultimately ranked them in this order: following Ross’s triumphant first, second place went to John Whitelaw (Canada), third to Christopher Farr (England), and fifth place to Alexander Sung (Hong Kong). No fourth prize was awarded, but a finalist’s honorable mention was presented to the French contestant, Catherine Caumont.

During my long tenure as harpsichord contributing editor, a position to which I was appointed in 1969 by The Diapason’s second editor, Frank Cunkle, there have been other issues with non-organ cover art and quite a few featured articles celebrating harpsichords and harpsichordists. Festive issues dedicated to Wanda Landowska (1979) and William Dowd (1992) come to mind most vividly. But in claiming the surprising novelty of a first-ever cover position, I am relying on the historical acumen of Robert Schuneman, the editor who succeeded Mr. Cunkle. Although I have bound copies of each year of The Diapason beginning with 1969 (and some single issues prior to that), I cannot claim that I have perused every one of the magazine’s copious publications. If any reader knows of a prior non-organ event that was featured on a first page or cover, I would appreciate being informed.

Scott Ross and a Prélude Non-Mesuré

It has been true in many instances that I have learned a great deal from my students, and now that my studio comprises only two adults, each of whom visits for a monthly harpsichord lesson, I am still the beneficiary! One of these delightful individuals surprised me with a two-page unmeasured prelude composed by Scott Ross. Notated entirely in whole notes in the style of a French baroque composition, Ross’s short piece was created as a sight-reading exercise for one of the Paris Harpsichord Competitions. As far as we can ascertain, the work has never been published, but there are at least three performances posted on YouTube, and a computer-generated score may be followed. An Internet friend alerted my student to this work, provided her with his photo-montage of the score, and she generously shared a copy with me.

I am absolutely entranced by this modern adaptation of a French genre in which all the notes are present but grouping and shaping of the musical ideas is entirely up to the performer. In this case Ross’s Preludio all’Imitazione del Sig. Vanieri Tantris Soldei is a wickedly clever evocation of chromatic harmonies to be found in Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde (as revealed by the acrostic Tantris Soldei, obviously a slight scrambling of the opera’s title). This prelude should engender smiles of recognition from any operatically savvy listener, and it gains a most lofty status among clever recital encores, so far as I am concerned.

Not the least of pleasures is that Ross’s clever addition to our repertoire brought back such vibrant memories of his Bruges triumph and reminded this writer of what we lost when Scott Ross succumbed to AIDS-related pneumonia and died at his home in France, at the age of 38. The Prélude joins Scott’s recorded legacy of French claveçin pieces and his complete recording of the 500-plus Keyboard Sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti to remind us of what was silenced by such an early demise.

From a Letter to the Harpsichord Editor:

Beverly Scheibert comments on the March and April harpsichord columns:

Re the Italian trill: In all Italian sources I have seen, it begins on the main note, except from those who were working abroad (and one of these illustrates in another writing a long trill beginning on the main note). My article in The Consort 64 (2008: pp. 90–101, by Beverly Jerold) documents that the upper-note trill was confined primarily to perfect cadences, where it forms a dissonance against the bass. Most other trills are simply an inverted mordent.

Re Couperin’s petites notes: You are perfectly right, except that many are to be played on the beat, but with “no value,” so that the main note seems to retain its rightful position. I have located six French sources that describe this ornament as having “no value whatever,” eight that say it “counts for nothing in the measure,” and fourteen that illustrate it as falling before the beat. Because of all the harmonic errors created, D’Anglebert’s illustration (and that of his four copiers) cannot be taken literally. Notation standards 300 years ago were not ours, as confirmed by two French (and several German) sources whose explanatory text contradicts their musical example. There is no accurate way to notate a realization of an ornament that has “no value whatever.”

Our thanks to Ms. Scheibert for these musicologically supported and eminently sensible observations.

Early Keyboard Journal

Early Keyboard Journal Volume 30 (2013) is available at last. After many publishing delays the intriguing and extensive article, “The Other Mr. Couperin” by Glen Wilson, is finally in print, as is David Schulenberg’s “Ornaments, Fingerings, and Authorship: Persistent Questions About English Keyboard Music circa 1600.” It is available from the Historical Keyboard Society of North America:

http://historicalkeyboardsociety.org.

Remembering Isolde Ahlgrimm on her birthday (July 31)

Born in 1914 in Vienna, my first harpsichord teacher Isolde Ahlgrimm was truly a citizen of the musical world, which lost a major figure of the harpsichord revival when she died in 1995. However, her legacy lives on, well documented in Peter Watchorn’s Isolde Ahlgrimm, Vienna and the Early Music Revival (Ashgate Publishing, 2007) as well as in the pedagogical gem Manuale der Orgel und Cembalotechnik (Finger Exercises and Etudes, 1571–1760, Vienna: Doblinger, 1982) in which Ahlgrimm presents a collection of useful technique-building examples from the heyday of our instrument. Her descriptive texts are printed in parallel columns of German and English, so there is no need to fear this book if German does not happen to be a comfortable language.

Of particular interest are the pieces I plan to play in celebration of Frau Ahlgrimm’s natal day: three single-page fugues (pages 54–56) designed to be played by one hand only (with the choice of right or left to be decided by the player). These pieces were composed by Philipp Christoph Hartung for his Musicus-Theoretico-Practicus, published in Nürnberg in 1749. As the composer wrote, “(These three numbers) are to be played by the right hand or left hand alone. From this one gains an ability which can be put to good use at times when it is necessary to take one hand or the other away from the keyboard.” Ahlgrimm always laughed at the suggestion made by some keyboard teachers that Baroque composers did not use exercises. Her levity is proven to be deserved: she made her point with these 78 pages of period examples and her explanations. Those who use the Manual will surely be more technically secure for having done so.

Seeking Haydn

A recent compact disc of compositions by Joseph Haydn performed on the harpsichord has provided novelty for the ears as well as provoking a lot of thought as to which keyboard instrument best serves this great composer’s creations. This conundrum occurs rather frequently for music of the later eighteenth century, especially since the extensive recording of classical sonatas by Haydn has been achieved most frequently by pianists, and similar endeavors seem to have been somewhat lacking from those of us who play instruments that pre-date the nearly-ubiquitous eighty-eight-keyed instrument.

Recorded early in 2017 by Finnish harpsichordist Pierre Gallon (born 1975), the compact disc Joseph Haydn per il Cembalo Solo is a recent release by l’Encelade (ECL1701: information available at www.encelade.net). Playing a 2004 harpsichord built by Jonte Knif (based on mid-eighteenth-century German instruments), Gallon has selected a varied repertoire of rarely heard Haydn works, including these five multi-movement compositions­:

Partita, HobXVI:6 (Divertimento per il Cembalo Solo): Allegro, Minuet, Adagio, Allegro molto [before 1766];

Sonata per Clavicembalo, HobXVI: 27: Allegro con brio, Menuetto, Presto [1776];

Divertimento, HobXVI:12: Andante, Menuet, Allegro molto [before 1766];

Sonata per Cembalo “a Principe Niccolo Esterhazy,” opus 13, HobXVI:24 [ca.1773];

Capriccio, HobXVII:1: Theme and Variations “Acht Sauschneider müssen seyn” [1765], a humorous popular folksong about the eight persons required for castrating a wild boar[!], a charming example of Haydn’s legendary sense of humor.

Interspersed with these large-scale compositions are three short pieces from the second set of 12 Lieder für das Clavier (1781/84): Geistliches Lied [#17], Minna [#23], and, as the compact disc’s final track, a gentle benediction: Auf meines Vaters Grab (At my Father’s Grave) [#24]­—each serving as a sonic “sorbet” to clear the listener’s aural senses.

Pierre Gallon displays a secure and brilliant technique, sometimes too much so, perhaps. Allegro (“happy”) and Presto (“fast”) frequently seem to be identical tempi, thus presenting a jet-fueled interpretation of music originally conceived in a horse and oxcart age. Occasionally I wished for more vocally inspired phrasing that would allow slightly more time before forging ahead to the next musical idea. There is, however, much sensitive and beautiful playing in the slower and gentler movements, and overall the disc is recommended as a welcome introduction to these rarely heard Haydn works. 

Some relevant Haydn research

So: which should it be? Harpsichord or piano? If I may quote myself, “The best answer is ‘Yes,’” as I stated in the notes to an edition of Samuel Wesley, Jr.’s Sonata in F Minor (published in 2007 by Skyline Publications, Eau Claire, Wisconsin). Wesley’s 1781 autograph manuscript was acquired by the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University. To honor the 300th anniversary of the birth of the senior Charles Wesley, the library mounted an extensive exhibition celebrating the musical Wesleys. I was asked to play the modern premiere of the sonata, for which Clyde Putman prepared a more legible “Finale” performing score that subsequently served as the basis for the modern publication. It is a beautiful edition that also includes full-sized facsimiles of the entire previously unknown manuscript as well as the essay from which I continue to quote:

The manuscript indicates that Wesley’s Sonata is “per il Cembalo,” the Italian word for harpsichord, an instrument not much associated with carefully calibrated dynamic changes, even in our own time. It is true that Cembalo (as a broader generic term for a keyboard instrument) was retained on title pages of keyboard publications well into the 19th century (notably by Beethoven, and continuing as late as several early piano works of Liszt!). However, dynamic indications alone do not negate harpsichord performance, especially since some late 18th-century British harpsichords could offer quite a range of volume and color. Larger instruments by Shudi, Kirkman, or Broadwood might include machine stops operated by foot pedals, thus allowing a player to change from the softest to full registrations, and back again, in an instant. A few harpsichords even had organ-like louvers, placed above the strings and soundboard, and also operated by a pedal. . . . With minor adjustments the Sonata works well as a harpsichord piece; but, given the rapidly changing aesthetic of the time, and the performance indications in the manuscript, there should be no deterrent to a performance on the piano, or, for that matter, the clavichord!

Returning to research specifically about Joseph Haydn, a fortuitous find in my personal library was a single copy of the magazine Harpsichord & Fortepiano for June 1998 (Volume 7, number 1: ISSN 1463-0036) in which Richard Maunder’s article “Keyboard Instruments in Haydn’s Vienna” details a fascinating overview of some choices that must have been available to our composer of the month. Originally delivered as a lecture for the British Clavichord Society, Dr. Maunder’s six-page, amply illustrated article offers information designed to refute three common myths: (1) that harpsichords were out-of-date by about 1770; (2) that the piano was well established by 1770, and that all of these pianos were made by Viennese builders; (3) that the clavichord was most prevalent in north Germany, but was rarely used in south Germany and Austria. Citing existing instruments, eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements, and documentary evidence from some Mozart family letters and the Eszterháza archives, the author successfully rebutted all of these assumptions. Known as a brilliant mathematician as well as a prominent musicologist, Maunder subsequently published a 288-page volume amplifying his premises (Keyboard Instruments in Eighteenth-Century Vienna, Oxford University Press, 1998; ISBN 0-19-816637-0). This information is the result of an online search using the author’s name. I have not seen the full text, but noted that used copies of the book are available, starting at $136.

The front cover of the June 1998 magazine cited above is graced with a lovely portrait of my first harpsichord mentor, Isolde Ahlgrimm, which, I believe, must be the reason I received the single issue, most likely from Ahlgrimm’s biographer Peter Watchorn, whose fact-filled Ahlgrimm discography, list of chamber music colleagues, publications, and instruments, plus three additional period photographs of the superb artist make this a periodical to cherish. It also reminded me of two important comments from our dear teacher—the first, describing an invitation she had received to perform music on Haydn’s own harpsichord in a Viennese museum: “It was, of course, a great honor, but I would have preferred less honor and a better instrument that did not sound like clacking false teeth!”

The second vignette is my grateful memory of “Ille’s” counsel as I prepared for my first performance as continuo harpsichordist for the recitatives of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation in Salzburg during spring 1959. “Check the ‘Applausus,’” she told me. I had never heard that word before, so she explained that it referred to a letter that Haydn sent to the performers of his cantata of the same name when he was unable to attend its premiere. Comprising ten specific items to observe in the performance, the most important for me at this time was number three, which stated “In the recitatives the instrumentalists should come in immediately after the vocalist has finished, but on no account is the vocalist to be interrupted, even if such a procedure were prescribed in the score.” (For a complete translation, see Karl Geiringer, Haydn—A Creative Life in Music. I note that a third edition, 1982, is one of the options available; my own paperback copy is the second edition [1963].)

Incidentally, I became a lifelong fan of Haydn after the soul-searing conclusion of the first chorus in his Creation oratorio: the quiet recitation, “And God said ‘Let there be light,’” segued into “and there was light”—surely one of the simplest, but most arresting choral/orchestral explosions in all of the oratorio literature! 

Two further volumes of great interest are both by A. Peter Brown. The larger volume is Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Music: Sources and Style, published in 1986 by Indiana University Press. At slightly more than 450 pages, it is the most comprehensive collection of information about its subject. Brown’s second publication, also from Indiana, 1986, is Performing Haydn’s The Creation (Reconstructing the Earliest Renditions), 125 pages.

Also recommended is “Haydn’s Solo Keyboard Music” by Elaine Sisman, published as the eighth chapter of Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music, edited by Robert L. Marshall as a volume in the Routledge Studies in Musical Genres series, second edition, 2008.

As I draw this column to its conclusion, I share with you a slight possibility that I have recently observed in Haydn’s Sonata No. 60 (Hob. XVI/50 in Volume Three of Christa Landon’s Complete Wiener Urtext Edition, UT 500029). In the first movement of this Sonata in C Major, dating from c. 1794–1795, I note that the indication “open pedal” is printed several times. Landon suggests this might mean “with raised dampers,” and would thus assign the piece to the piano. I wonder if it might refer instead to the harpsichord louvers I mentioned many paragraphs ago? Haydn had experienced several long visits to London by this time . . . . Hmmm. The possibilities continue to expand and excite. Seeking Haydn is a continual exploration, as are the mysteries of his genius and the joys to be found in his many contributions to our keyboard literature. The search for enlightenment never ends; therein lies its beauty.

Lessons from Couperin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Memoriam: Paul Wolfe 

(1929–2016)

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

Notes

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