Harpsichord News

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.

Italian Christmas: 

Fiesole Revisited

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

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

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

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

Paul Wolfe Remembered

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

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

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

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

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

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

Masterful Froberger by Glen Wilson

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

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

A Recital Program by J. William Greene

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

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

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

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

Pedaling the French: 

A ‘Tour de France’ of Revival Harpsichordists 1888–1939

I. Near-death and slow rebirth

“Make what you want: this upstart piano will never replace the majestic claveçin!” Thus began my 1989 book Harpsichord in America: a Twentieth-Century Revival with these combative words from the composer Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799). Looking back from our historical perspective, we all know how that prediction turned out! Even for Balbastre himself: his capitulation was a work for the new “upstart” keyboard instrument, a Marche des Marseillois, “arranged for the Forte Piano by Citizen Balbastre, and dedicated to the brave defenders of the French Republic in the year 1792, the first of the Republic.” At least Citizen [Citoyen] Claude-B B survived!

Following a very few antiquarian-inspired appearances throughout the piano-dominated 19th century, the harpsichord’s return to the musical scene as a featured instrument occurred during the Paris Exhibition of 1888 at the instigation of Louis Diémer (1843–1919), a piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Diémer was able to borrow a 1769 Pascal Taskin harpsichord to play in several concerts comprising concerted works by Rameau and solo pieces by various French claviçinistes. Of the latter the most popular composer was Louis-Claude Daquin, whose Le Coucou became one of the most-performed works during the early harpsichord revival period.

Diémer and his concerts must have inspired the salon composer Francis Thomé (1850–1909) to write a Rigodon for this most recent French harpsichordist, and thus provide history with the very first new piece for the old instrument. Inspired by Daquin, but also meant as a tribute to Diémer’s “legendary trilling ability,” Thomé’s pièce de claveçin was published by Lemoine in 1893. Around the middle of the 20th century this work was discovered and later recorded in 1976 by harpsichordist Igor Kipnis on a disc of favorite encores. After being captivated by its simple antiquarian charm, I too was able to acquire an original print of the work, thanks to my German friend and European “concert manager” Dr. Alfred Rosenberger, who found it at Noten Fuchs, Frankfurt’s amazing music store, where, apparently, the yellowed score had been on their shelves ever since its publication date. 

As a somewhat-related aside, the probable first harpsichord composition of the 20th century, or at least the earliest one to appear in print, is a Petite Lied by French organist/composer Henri Mulet (1878–1967). This aptly titled work of only 17 measures in 5/4 meter was issued in 1910. (See Harpsichord News, The Diapason, January 2011, p. 12, for a complete facsimile of the score.)

The solo harpsichord works of François Couperin, in a fine 19th-century edition by Johannes Brahms and Friedrich Chrysander, also found some popularity among pianists. From the musical riches to be found in Couperin’s 27 suites, came the lone musical example to be included in the 20th-century’s first harpsichord method book: Technique du Claveçin by Régina Patorni-Casadesus (1886–1961), a slim volume of only eight pages, most of them devoted to stop-changing pedal exercises (thus the genesis of my title—“Pedaling the French”). This one tiny bit of Couperin’s music is the oft-performed Soeur Monique from his 18th Ordre, a work admired and used by many church musicians—some of whom doubtless would be shocked to read in the authoritative reference work on Couperin’s titles, written by Historical Keyboard Society of North America honorary board member Jane Clark Dodgson, that “Sister Monica” may not be a religious “sister,” but refers instead to girls of ill repute, as in a “lady of the night,” according to the definition of the word Soeur by the 17th-century lexicographer Antoine Furetière (1619–1688), “our sisters, as in streetwalkers, or debauched girls.” (See Jane Clark and Derek Connon, ‘The Mirror of Human Life’: Reflections on François Couperin’s Pièces de Claveçin, London: Keyword Press, 2011, p. 170.)

II. Early recorded sounds

Beyond printed music and pedagogical writings, how did the classic French keyboard repertoire fare in the newly emerging medium of harpsichord recordings?

After giving a historical salute to the 16 rare 1908 Berlin wax cylinders that share surface noise with some barely audible Bach performed by Wanda Landowska, the earliest commercial recording of a harpsichord dates from about 1913 and was issued on the Favorite label. It preserves an anonymous performance of a work with at least tangential connections to France: the Passepied from J. S. Bach’s French Overture in B Minor (BWV 831). (See Martin Elste, Meilensteine der Bach-Interpretation, reviewed by Larry Palmer in The Diapason, June 2000.)

More easily accessible today are the earliest harpsichord recordings made in 1920 for the Gramophone Company in England by the Dolmetsch-influenced harpsichordist Violet Gordon Woodhouse (1871–1948). Her repertoire included Couperin’s L’Arlequine from the 23rd Ordre (as played on Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 3, Pearl GEMM CD 9242) and Rameau’s Tambourin, from his Suite in E Major. Mrs. Woodhouse became something of a cult figure among British music critics (George Bernard Shaw), upper-class society (the Sitwells), and adventurous musicians (including the avant-garde composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji [1892–1988]), who wrote of Violet’s powerful musical presentations that her playing was “dignified, moving, and expressive, and of a broad, sedate beauty, completely free from any pedagogic didacticism or stiff-limbed collegiate pedantry.” (Quoted in Jessica Douglas-Home: Violet, The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, London: The Harvill Press, 1966, p. 228.) This should put many of us in our rightful places, although Sorabji’s own excursions into keyboard literature lasting from four to nine hours in performance (example: a Busoni homage with the title Opus Clavicembalisticum) just might call his own authority into question.

Eight years younger than Woodhouse, the better-known Wanda Landowska (1879–1959) made her first commercial recordings for the Victor Company in 1923, just prior to her American concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. These six sides included short pieces by the three 1685 boys (Handel, Bach, and Scarlatti) as well as the Rigaudon and Tambourin from Rameau’s Suite in E Minor, and what might be considered the first recording of a contemporary harpsichord work, Landowska’s own Bourée d’Auvergne #1. 

Lesser-known players got recorded, too: Marguerite Delcour recorded Couperin’s Le Tic-toc-choc [Ordre 18] in 1924. The following year, 1925, one of Landowska’s Berlin students, Anna Linde, recorded the ubiquitous Rameau Tambourin and the even more ubiquitous Coucou by Daquin. If you recognize Linde’s name it might well be for her edition of Couperin’s L’art de toucher le Claveçin—with its translations into English and German offered side by side with the original French, and the printed music made unique by her Germanically precise “corrections” to the composer’s picturesque (but occasionally unmathematical) beaming of some quick roulades in his preludes. Both of Linde’s recorded legacy pieces sound amateurish enough that I seriously doubt that Sorabji would have enjoyed hearing these performances.

As a matter of history, however, it is quite possible that Anna Linde’s 1925 disc was the first harpsichord performance to be recorded electrically (rather than acoustically), and the difference in sound quality became even clearer in the years immediately following. A 1928 Woodhouse performance of Bach’s Italian Concerto sounds surprisingly present even today, and the performance shows—perhaps best of all her recorded legacy—what her admirers so rightly admired. Indeed her artistry is such that I have thought, often, that had Mrs. Woodhouse needed to earn her living as Landowska did, she could have eclipsed the divine Wanda as a concert harpsichordist. However, as the wife of a titled Englishman she could not make a career onstage for money . . . and that was that! It would have been fascinating to have had two such determined women competing for the title of “the world’s most famous harpsichordist.” 

Realistically, however, Landowska’s tenacity, as well as her superb musical knowledge and sensitivity, should not be denigrated in any way. The 1928 recording of her own second Bourée d’Auvergne (Biddulph LHW 016) especially highlights the rhythmic dimension of her exciting artistry.

In the United States, where Landowska was a welcome visitor during the 1920s, there were several earlier players of the harpsichord; and, not too surprisingly, all of them attempted at least some pieces by French composers. Some of these participants in harpsichord history are nearly forgotten: one of more than passing importance was the Princeton professor Arthur Whiting: a well-received artist in nearby New York City and a campus legend at Princeton, he was known for his ability to attract huge crowds of undergraduates for his popular recitals on both piano and Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. I have not located any recordings by Professor Whiting. The New York Times did mention his concert at Mendelssohn Hall (NYC) on December 11, 1907, which included a Gigue and Rigaudon by Rameau. The unnamed reviewer praised Whiting’s playing as “clear, beautifully phrased, and skillful in ‘registration’ if that term may be used to denote the employment of the different timbres that the instrument affords.”

Writing a letter to the editor of The Times on January 11, 1926, the prominent music educator Daniel Gregory Mason offered a response to a letter from Landowska in which she made the statement that she had “single-handedly [!] restored the harpsichord to its rightful position in the world of music.” In this correspondence Professor Mason called attention to some other “‘Harpsichord Pioneers’—among whom he named the Americans: Mr. Whiting, Miss Pelton-Jones, Miss Van Buren, and Lewis Richards.”

The two ladies differed greatly: Frances Pelton-Jones was one of those wealthy women who could afford to pursue her artistic ambitions (rather similar to the would-be soprano Florence Foster Jenkins). Her recitals in New York were of the club-lady variety; baffled critics most often mentioned the stage decoration and the beauty of Pelton-Jones’s gowns. Lotta Van Buren, however, was a thoroughly professional player and harpsichord technician whose work with Morris Steinart’s instrument collection at Yale was very beneficial, as was her association with Colonial Williamsburg and its program of historical recreations, including musical ones. 

As for Lewis Richards, Mason proceeds: “Mr. Richards, who has played the harpsichord throughout Europe as a member of the Ancient Instrument Society of Paris, was, I believe, the first to appear as a harpsichordist with orchestra (the Minneapolis Symphony) in this country, and contributed much to the interest of Mrs. F. S. Coolidge’s festival in Washington . . .” 

Richards did indeed precede Landowska as the first known harpsichord soloist with a major symphony orchestra in the U. S. He was one of the few American musicians to record commercially in the 1920s. His Brunswick 10-inch discs of The Brook by Ayrlton, Musette en Rondeau by Rameau, Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith, and the Mozart Rondo alla Turca were played for me by Richards’ daughter, whom I was able to visit in her East Lansing, Michigan, home (on the day following an organ recital I had played there). The sound is somewhat compromised, for I was recording a scratchy 78-rpm disc that spun on an ancient turntable in a garage; but one gets the impression that Mr. Richards was a charismatic and musical player.  

These discs went on to make quite a lot of money in royalties, and Richards actually taught harpsichord at the Michigan State Institute of Music in East Lansing, which almost certainly certifies him as the first formally continuing collegiate teacher of harpsichord to be employed in the United States in the 20th century.

All of these players played early revival instruments. All have, therefore, used their pedal techniques to obtain a more kaleidoscopic range of colors than we may be used to. Of great interest (at least to me) is the recent emergence of curiosity about, and interest in these revival instruments and their playing techniques, frequently demonstrated by questions received from students. One of the finest concert figures of the “pedal” generations was the distinguished Yale professor Ralph Kirkpatrick (now more knowable than previously, courtesy of his niece Meredith Kirkpatrick’s recently published collection of the artist’s letters; see our review in the April 2015 issue). In his early Musicraft recordings, especially those from 1939, we are able to hear the young player show his stuff, just before his 1940 appointment to Yale, displaying superb musical mastery of his Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. From Kirkpatrick’s program that included four individual Couperin pieces, culminating in Les Barricades Mistérieuses, and five movements from Rameau’s E-minor set, I ended this essay with the Rameau Tambourin (as played on The Musicraft Solo Recordings, Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 2, Pearl GEMM CD9245). Kirkpatrick’s mesmerizing foot-controlled decrescendo gives a perfect example of his skill in “pedaling the French.”

(From a paper read in Montréal, May 23.)

HKSNA 2015 International Conference in Montréal

Hosted by McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, the fourth annual conclave of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (May 21–24) offered lectures, mini-recitals, and evening concerts, far too many events for any single auditor to encompass. Two papers that followed mine, Elisabeth Gallat-Morin’s beautifully illustrated “The Presence of French Baroque Keyboard Instruments in New France” and Graham Sadler’s innovative “When Rameau Met Scarlatti? Reflections on a Probable Encounter in the 1720s” attested to the depth of innovative scholarship.

McGill’s instrument roster includes the superb Helmut Wolff organ in Redpath Hall and 15 harpsichords. One third of these came from the workshop of the Montréal builder Yves Beaupré; among the other ten instruments is a 1677 single-manual Italian instrument from the collection of Kenneth Gilbert. This unique historic treasure was available for viewing and playing for small groups of attendees.

The Vermont builder Robert Hicks was the only harpsichord maker who brought an instrument for display. Max Yount demonstrated this eloquent double harpsichord in a masterful recital presentation of Marchand’s Suite in D Minor. Clavichord took center stage for Judith Conrad’s program. Karen Jacob’s thoughtful memorial tribute to Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society founder George Lucktenberg was enhanced by several solicited remembrances from others whose lives had been touched by the late iconic early keyboard figure.

Evening concerts were presented by harpsichordist/organist Peter Sykes and six former students who organized a tribute to McGill organ professor emeritus John Grew. Saturday’s concert brought the final stage of the ninth Aliénor international competition for contemporary harpsichord music. Six winning works (selected by a jury from nearly fifty submitted pieces) were performed by HKSNA President Sonia Lee (Laura Snowden: French Suite), Larry Palmer (Sviatoslav Krutykov: Little Monkey Ten Snapshots), James Dorsa (Ivan Bozicevic: If There is a Place Between, and his own composition Martinique), Andrew Collett (playing his own Sonatina for Harpsichord), and Marina Minkin (Dina Smorgonskaya: Three Dances for Harpsichord). Following an intermission during which the audience submitted ballots naming their three favorite works, Aliénor presented world premieres of two commissioned works for two harpsichords: Edwin McLean’s Sonata No. 2 (2014), played by Beverly Biggs and Elaine Funaro, and Mark Janello’s Concerto for Two (2015), played by Rebecca Pechefsky and Funaro.

And the three pieces chosen by the audience? Smorgonskaya’s Three Dances for Harpsichord, Collett’s Sonatina, and Dorsa’s Martinique. Bravi tutti.

Comments, news items, and questions are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, e-mail: [email protected].

Buried Treasures: 

The Harpsichord Pages 

in Retrospect (2006–15)

Once upon a time (well, twice actually, in The Diapason issues of January 1974 and February 1979), we offered cumulative indices of harpsichord-related matters in the journal, from Philip Treggor’s first harpsichord column (October 1967), through December 1978. Treggor continued his responsibility for harpsichord news until December 1968. Following his resignation, harpsichord submissions were managed by the magazine’s Chicago staff until September 1969, at which point I took over at the invitation of Editor Frank Cunkle.

As it has been 36 years since we have offered a third cumulative listing of harpsichord-centered writings, it may be time to offer this “backward” look, covering the past ten years. I cannot begin to count the number of instances in which the previous retrospectives have been of use to me: so much so that I keep these indices filed next to my bound copies of the magazine. If this present list proves useful to you, please let me know. I could then plan to complete indexing the years 1979 through 2005. Our January issue includes the journal’s composite index of the previous year; this would be a logical target date for continuing such offerings.

In the following citations, the title or subject appears first, followed by the month and year of publication, page number(s) in parentheses, and author. My contributions are indicated by the letters LP; other, less-frequent contributors, by their full names. I have added a few articles not specifically published under the Harpsichord News rubric. Categories sometimes overlap, particularly those of Personalities
and Obituaries.

Instruments and Builders

William Dowd: An Appreciation, Jan 09 (22), LP; The Earliest Surviving English Spinet by Charles Haward [c.1668], July 09 (12, 14), Charles West Wilson; Harpsichord News: ARTEK Goes German, July 15 (13), LP; Autobiography of a Clavichord (Dolmetsch-Chickering 2006), Dec 15 (12–13), LP.

Repertoire and 

Performance Practice

Mozart and the Harpsichord: An Alternate Ending for Fantasia in D minor, K. 397, Nov 06 (20), LP; “Entartete” Music: Hugo Distler and the Harpsichord, Aug 08 (22–23), LP; Harpsichord News: Chris DeBlasio Dances, Soler, Scarlatti, Lully, the Borrel Manuscript, May 09 (14), LP; Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s English Suite at 100, Dec 09 (36–37), LP; The Chopin Bicentennial at the Harpsichord, Feb 10 (23), LP; Addenda to Chopin, Aug 10 (11), LP; A Harpsichord Piece by Henri Mulet, Aug 10 (11), LP; Mulet Petit Lied—a complete facsimile, Jan 11 (12), LP; Harpsichord Works of Asiko Hirabayashi, Nov 10 (12–13), LP; J. S. Bach’s English and French Suites with emphasis on the Courante, May 11 (24–25), Renate McLaughlin; Gathering Peascods for the Old Gray Mare: Some Unusual Harpsichord Music Before Aliénor, Dec 12 (27–29), LP; Soler’s Fandango: new edition from Ut Orpheus and recording by Diego Ares, Dec 13 (12), LP; Multi-Media Mozart—Words, Notes, and Sounds [Harpsichord News], Feb 14 (12–13), LP; Christmas Music for Harpsichord, Oct 14 (12), LP; Going [J. William] Greene—Music for Harpsichord, June 15 (11), LP; Pedaling the French: A Tour de France of Revival Harpsichordists 1888–1939, Aug 15 (10–11), LP; Harpsichord Plus: The Accompanied Harpsichord Music of Jacques Duphly, Nov 15 (10), LP. 

Personalities in the Harpsichord World

Helmut Walcha, Oct 07 (28–29), Nov 07 (21–23), Dec 07 (21–23), Paul Jacobs; Oscar Peterson, Feb 08 (12), LP; Gustav Leonhardt (anecdote, footnote 3 in AGO National Convention Review), Nov 08 (27), LP; Pavana Lachrimae: A California Tribute to Gustav Leonhardt, Aug 12 (18), Lee Lovallo; Crazy about Organs: Leonhardt interview from 2000, Nov 12 (20–22), Jan-Piet Knijff; Gustav Leonhardt—a Letter to the Editor from Hellmuth Wolff, Jan 13 (3); Mamusia: Paul Wolfe Remembers Wanda Landowska, Oct 12 (23–25), Craig Smith; Janos Sebestyen, May 12 (12–13), Robert Tifft; Harpsichord in the News: Mahan Esfahani, Jory Vinikour, Frances Bedford, and a 1615 quotation from Trabaci about the status of the instrument, July 12 (10, 12), LP; Remembering Irma Rogell (and a review of Martin Elste’s book Die Dame mit dem Cembalo), April 13 (11–12), LP; A Triptych for Rafael [Puyana], May 13 (11–12), Betina M. Santos, Jane Clark, and LP; Virginia Pleasants Turns 100, Feb 12 (11); Harpsichord Playing in America after Landowska, June 11 (19–21), LP; Ralph Kirkpatrick Centennial, June 11 (13–14), Gavin Black; Remembering Wm. Neil Roberts, Sept 11 (12–14), LP; Joseph Stephens—In Memoriam, Sept 14 (15), LP; Remembering Hilda Jonas, Dec 14 (11), Glendon Frank and LP; Remembering George Lucktenberg, Feb 15 (11), LP; Remembering Richard Rephann, Mar 15 (25), Allison Alcorn.

Pedagogy and Technique

Dear Harpsichordists: Why Don’t We Play from Memory?, Sept 11 (24–25), Paul Cienniwa; Continuo (On Teaching), Nov 11 (15–17), Dec 11 (11–13), Jan 12 (16–17); Gavin Black; Recital Programing, Aug 12 (13–14), Gavin Black.

Reports on Harpsichord Events

Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society 2006 Meeting in Rome, Georgia, June 06 (12), LP; Westfield Center 2006 Conference, Victoria, British Columbia (includes mentions of Colin Tilney and Edoardo Bellotti), Dec 06 (29), Herbert Huestis; Boston Early Music Festival 2007, Sept 07 (22–23), LP; East Texas Pipe Organ Festival 2012: A Harpsichordist in Aeolian-Skinner Land, Feb 13 (20), LP; Continuo: the Art of Creative Collaboration—Westfield Center 2013 Conference at Pacific Lutheran University, 2013, July 13 (20–21), Andrew Willis; Historic Keyboard Society of North America 2013 meeting in Williamsburg, VA, April 14 (10–11), LP; HKSNA International Conference in Montréal and Aliénor Competition, Aug 15 (10–11), LP; Broadening a Harpsichordist’s Horizons: Remembering 2014 ETPOF, Sept 15 (11), LP. 

Reviews of Books, 

Music, and Recordings

A Guide to Musical Temperament (Thomas Donahue), reviewed by G. N. Bullat, June 06 (16); Guilty Pleasures: Mark Schweizer’s The Soprano Wore Falsettos, Choices (a novel) by Paul Wolfe, CD of Landowska reissues, DVD: Landowska—Uncommon Visionary [Harpsichord News] Mar 07 (10), LP; Peter Watchorn Plays Bach’s WTC I [Harpsichord News] Aug 07 (12–13), LP; Fernando Valenti’s Scarlatti recordings, Feb 08 (12, 14), LP; Peter Watchorn’s Isolde Ahlgrimm, Vienna, and the Early Music Revival and a published score for Richard Strauss’ Capriccio Suite, June 08 (12), LP; The Best Medicine—a review of Schweizer’s The Diva Wore Diamonds, Aug 09 (10), LP; New Harpsichord Music, Oct 09 (18–19), John Collins; a new compact disc set of Bach’s Six Partitas, and the publication of A Medici Harpsichord Book from Ut Orpheus, April 12 (12), LP; Joys of Re-Reading: Blue Harpsichord, Early Music mystery series by James Gollin, and more, Aug 14 (11), LP; Harpsichord News: Words and Music—Ralph Kirkpatrick Letters and Frank Ferko Triptych, April 15 (12), LP. 

Obituaries

Daniel Pinkham (d. 2006), Feb 07 (8); A Pinkham Memoir, Mar 07 (20), James McCray; Albert Fuller (d. 2007), Dec 07 (10); Remembering Albert Fuller—Trombones in Dido and Aeneas?, Feb 08 (14), LP; Fenner Douglass (d. 2008), June 08 (8); Thomas Dunn (d. 2008), Mar 09 (10); Virginia Pleasants (d. 2011), Feb 12 (11); Gustav Leonhardt (d. 2012), March 12 (10); Christopher Hogwood (d. 2014), Nov 14 (10); Bruce Prince-Joseph (d. 2015), July 15 (10); Paul Jordan (d. 2015), May 15 (18–19); Roger Goodman (d. 2015), Sept 15 (10); Alan Curtis (d. 2015), Oct 15 (10).

Esoteric Ephemera

Nineteenth-century harpsichord citings: Bizet and a Chopin student [Harpsichord News], Feb 08 (12), information from John Carroll Collins reported by LP; Historic 20th-Century Harpsichordists in Hungary, Italy, and the Czech Republic [Harpsichord News], Feb 08 (12), Robert Tifft; Bytes from the Electronic Mailbag: Fandango, Misspellings of the Word Harpsichord, April 14 (10–11), LP; November Musings: Blessed Cecilia (In Honor of Isolde Ahlgrimm’s 100th Birthday), Nov 14 (12), LP; A mystery, a cautionary tale: Mark Schweizer’s The Maestro Wore Mohair and Simon Menges’ misadventure [Harpsichord News], Oct 15 (12), LP.

And Something New: Mysteries
with Musical References

The American expatriate author Donna Leon (born in New Jersey in 1942) has published 24 books in her series starring Commissario Guido Brunetti of the Venetian constabulary. Number one, Death at La Fenice (1992) introduces the soprano Flavia Petrelli who is singing Violetta in Verdi’s La Traviata at the venerable opera house. German maestro Helmut Wellauer dies before the final act of the opera, and Brunetti finds that he has a complicated bit of detecting to do before solving this clever crime.

For Acqua Alta, book five in the series, Leon brings back this soprano, a “favorite character because of her voice.” By the novel’s end Flavia is off to sing her first Handel opera, a plot twist chosen so that, should Petrelli return in future books, Leon would be able to write about her best-loved music. In real life the author became closely associated with American conductor Alan Curtis; together they created an opera company, Il Complesso Barocco, to perform rare works by Handel and other baroque composers. References to harpsichord are found on pages 201–2 of Acqua Alta, and again on page 229 when Flavia’s companion Brett chooses Mozart’s Jupiter Symphony for listening rather than harpsichord music, the “plunky sound of which would snap her nerves.”

Volume 24 of the Brunetti stories arrived in 2015: Falling in Love is set in La Fenice again, this time with Petrelli starring as Puccini’s Tosca. Music figures prominently, the plot is gripping, and I particularly enjoyed a comment on page 154, where Brunetti is reminded of a CD shop owner who opined that “the weirdest customers were people who liked organ music. ‘Most of them shop at night,’ his friend said. ‘I think it’s the only time some of them ever leave their houses.’”

Further “baroquery” is to be found in Leon’s standalone novel The Jewels of Paradise (2012) which features a musicologist and a plot driven by the legacy of Italian composer Agostino Steffani (1654–1728). Highly recommended for all fans of mystery novels and baroque music. Finally, dear readers, should you come across references to the harpsichord, please send me the citations! ν

Comments are always welcome. Please submit them to [email protected] or by post to Dr. Larry Palmer, 10125 Cromwell Drive, Dallas, Texas 75229.

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Remembering Irma Rogell

“Walks with Wanda,” the only English-language essay in Martin Elste’s lavishly illustrated volume Die Dame mit dem Cembalo [The Lady with the Harpsichord] published by Schott in 2010, consists of five pages—Chapter Four—from an otherwise-unpublished memoir by harpsichordist Irma Rogell, in which she reminisces about her four summers of lessons with Landowska, beginning in 1955 and ending with the pioneering harpsichordist’s death in 1959. The following year, at age 40, Ms. Rogell made her well-received solo recital debut at Boston’s Jordan Hall and during the next five decades she continued to pursue a solid career of recitals, recordings, and teaching. On February 9, 2013 Irma Rogell died in Newton, Connecticut, at the age of 94. 

Alerted to the news of her passing by the ever-vigilant harpsichord enthusiast Robert Tifft, I read Irma Rogell’s obituary, which, strangely enough, did not mention the harpsichord at all. At first a little uncertain that the subject of the notice was indeed “our” Irma Rogell, I checked several tributes written for the funeral home’s guest book; words from Teri Noel Towe and Peter Watchorn, both distinguished members of the harpsichord community, confirmed a relationship with our instrument, and led to correspondence with these gentlemen.

In notes to her recordings it was customarily noted that Rogell had remained faithful to Landowska’s preferred Pleyel concert harpsichord; her own Pleyel instrument built by the Parisian firm was acquired in 1958. However Peter Watchorn’s tribute to Rogell noted that “. . . shortly after arriving in [the USA] to join the staff of the Frank Hubbard Harpsichord Workshop in Waltham, MA . . . one of my first jobs was to work on a new instrument for Irma, and we came to know each other well over the next 25 years.” To my request for clarification about Rogell’s harpsichord(s), Peter responded: “We built a Hass copy for her in 1989—with seven pedals (like the Pleyel). She also had one of Eric Herz’s big Model F instruments—the one with 16-foot. She also had her Pleyel. I’m not sure how long she kept the Hass—she couldn’t tune, so it didn’t see all that much use, I think” [E-mail communication 25 February 2013].  

In an interview with alumna Rogell for the Harvard Magazine (May-June 2005), Emer Vaughn mentioned that “she is writing a memoir of her studies with Landowska . . . ,” the source, obviously, for the excerpt published in Dr. Elste’s book. Trying to ascertain just how much more of this memoir might exist led to correspondence with Teri Towe, Christine Gevert, and Martin Elste, who kindly searched his Landowska files and responded with an additional chapter not included in his published book.  

The first paragraphs from Rogell’s “Chapter Three” immediately show her to be a captivating writer:

“What is she like?” The question came unexpectedly that first time and I heard myself say spontaneously, “She is just like your grandmother—that is, of course, if your grandmother also happened to be Empress of the World.”  

That first imperious “madame” with which she had greeted me at our first meeting was the last such greeting. Always thereafter I was “little one.” She surrounded me with love, exactly, in fact, as my beloved great-grandmother had done. Which is why she was “Mamusia,” the Polish word for little mother, which is what she preferred to be called.

I hope this short excerpt will whet the appetite for further reading in the published chapter from Irma Rogell’s memoir. On her walks with Landowska many topics familiar to Landowska aficionados were covered. One puzzling bit of history—the story of Landowska’s husband Henri Lew and his sudden demise after being hit by an automobile—is set in Paris rather than the usually cited city of Berlin. The correct venue, Berlin, is listed in Martin Elste’s comprehensive chronology of Landowska’s life, so it must be that memory—whether Landowska’s, as she related an oft-told anecdote, or Rogell’s, as she remembered a conversation from fifty years earlier—simply transposed the site in which the event actually happened.

By all means, do not allow the lack of a reading knowledge of German to deter you from acquiring Die Dame mit dem Cembalo. The pictorial feast assembled for this 240-page, coffee-table-sized book includes 306 images, many not seen previously in print. These include record labels and album covers, two pages of finger exercises from a notebook belonging to St-Leu student Lily Karger, a Bach Invention score with Landowska’s fingerings, numerous witty caricatures, and, as an exceptional labor of love from Dr. Elste, his own recent photographs of the current state of places Landowska called home in Paris, Berlin, St-Leu-la-Forêt, New York, and Lakeville, as well as her final resting place in the cemetery of Taverny (France), where her urn is placed next to that of her brother Paul Landowski.

Of Landowska’s “last student,” Irma Rogell, Emer Vaughan chose these words to end his 2005 Harvard Magazine profile “A Musical Education”:

Now, after years of touring, recording . . . and teaching, Rogell again plays mainly for her own enjoyment .  .  .  she listens to her old tapes (“Hard work!”) for new recording projects, “because I’d like to share my belief that the harpsichord can be a very expressive instrument, which is at the core of what I learned from Landowska.”

To hear an example of Rogell’s keyboard artistry, access her performance of the Sarabande from Handel’s Suite in D Minor, HWV 437, as recorded on the 33-1/3 rpm disc La Tomba di Scarlatti (1982), the fourth item in the section illustrating the sounds of the Pleyel harpsichord on Robert Tifft’s website devoted to Janos Sebestyen and other 20th-century harpsichordists of note: http://jsebestyen.org/harpsichord/audio.html#Pleyel. 

If any reader has further information about Irma Rogell and her unpublished memoir, please share it with the Harpsichord Editor at [email protected] or write to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275.

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

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

Landowska and the first
recording of the Goldbergs

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

Landowska’s recording of the Goldbergs

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

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

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

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

A second thought-provoking set of program notes

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

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

My first public Goldbergs

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

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

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

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

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

The ultimate luxury of two collaborators

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

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

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