Harpsichord News

The Art of the Harpsichord: Two Texas Treasures

In mid-June 2017 the Dallas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists hosted its most recent regional convention, an event that attracted a record number of registrants. In addition to programs featuring the plethora of recent organ installations in the metroplex, the area’s most unusual harpsichord also made a stellar impression. I had not been aware that the Magnum Opus instrument was now at home in Texas, but its current owner, Jason Alden, graciously loaned it for a recital by Elizabeth Farr, whose choice of works by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, J. S. Bach, and Claude-Bénigne Balbastre proved to be the right vehicles for her skillful demonstration of the varied registrational possibilities made possible by this unique instrument.

The harpsichord’s builder wrote the following description of the 12-foot long instrument for publication in the convention program book:

The harpsichord was built in 1983 by Keith Hill and Philip Tyre. It is the largest harpsichord in existence having three keyboards, each of which has its own sweet-sounding 8-foot set of strings, plus a vocal 4-foot played on the middle manual and a robust-sounding 16-foot set of strings played only on the lowest manual. Called ‘Magnum Opus,’ this harpsichord was recently rebuilt by Keith Hill for the purpose of upgrading the acoustics, which involved replacing both soundboards. This harpsichord also has three buff stops (called ‘lute’ stops) in which pads of soft leather are brought into contact with the strings to dampen the bright harmonics of the plucked strings. Additionally, there are three pedals: one activates the 4-foot register for suddenly increasing the brilliance of the sound, another engages the 16-foot register for suddenly increasing the depth, breadth, and power of the sound, and a third pedal makes possible the coupling of all the three registers to be playable from the lowest manual for creating the loudest, strongest, richest sound of which any harpsichord is capable.

Owner Jason Alden is himself quite an addition to the metroplex’s musical scene: a Renaissance man who keeps busy with his Alden Organ Service Company and is also a top-notch organist whom I heard for the first time in concert as he played a superb recital at the most recent East Texas Pipe Organ Festival, thrilling us with a demanding program that culminated in the entire Vierne Symphonie IV. I subsequently invited Jason to relate the history of his involvement with the Magnum Opus harpsichord. He responded:

My association with the instrument was really a result of familiarity with Edward Parmentier’s studio instrument at the University of Michigan. I really still love that instrument because it sounds so colorful, warm, and transparent all at once. Also, it seemed well suited to a very wide variety of literature. You can imagine I heard just about everything played on it during Parmentier’s studio classes.

Once I was ‘out in the world’ I really longed for that kind of sound in my own instrument (a Hubbard double that had been built from a kit by my first harpsichord teacher, Bill Eifrig at Valparaiso University). The Hubbard ended up with a number of problems related to case stress and the collapsing of the gap spacers (which I had already replaced on my own some years before). So I decided to sell it even though I didn’t have another specific instrument in mind.

After looking at Keith’s website and having a couple of phone conversations with him, I quite resigned myself to the idea that I’d never be able to afford one of his instruments. I planned a trip to his shop anyway, hoping he’d take pity on my poor soul! So, I had a nice evening with him in Nashville, and played a couple of instruments he had recently finished. We got to talking about many things that night, and he mentioned that the Magnum Opus was ‘available.’ I was curious, but doubtful that it would work for my budget. After some lengthy discussions, I decided that it would, in fact, work as a home instrument.

Magnum Opus had been neglected for years, and Keith reported to me that when the instrument entered his shop the original soundboard had 17 cracks in it! It was irreparable! So, he began by replacing both soundboards. We decided that there should be decoration [on the soundboard] since the original was decorated. From there it required re-stringing and re-quilling. The result is as good as I could ever hope for as regards my preference for harpsichord sound. I find it not just thrilling to play (it is rather a harpsichord version of the Cavaillé-Coll organ at Rouen Cathedral), but the harpsichord remains intimate and inspires me each time I sit down to play it.

An Exception to
“Everything is Bigger in Texas”

A favorite trick question for visitors to our spacious music room is “How many harpsichords do you see here?” The most obvious answer is “four.” The usual complement of instruments on display comprises a William Dowd single, plus two-keyboard instruments by Yves Beaupré, Richard Kingston, and Willard Martin. A few inquisitive guests may have noticed an additional canvass-covered wing-shaped instrument stored behind the pipe organ: an Italian single by Tom and Barbara Wolf. But only a few very observant viewers give the exact correct total, which would be “six.” The omission of the usually overlooked harpsichord is not surprising, for it is only eight inches long and three inches wide: a handcrafted mini-harpsichord made for a dollhouse by Arthur Bell of Arlington, Texas.

Art Bell was a meticulous observer and connoisseur of miniature models, and his very rare specialty was the creation of exact scale replicas of historical keyboard instruments. My University of Texas at Arlington colleague Linton Powell was the proud owner of one of Bell’s model instruments. I first met the modeler himself at one of Linton’s annual faculty recitals, told Bell how much I admired his painstaking work in producing these scale miniatures, and asked him if I might commission one. A few letters back and forth ensued, his with pictures of several completed instruments that were available, and I opted for a French double with a decorated soundboard. Then came the biggest surprise of all: it was a gift! What a generous and thoughtful person!

Several years later when I learned that my first harpsichord mentor Isolde Ahlgrimm, now in an assisted-living apartment, had donated her David Rubio harpsichord to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, I turned again to Art Bell and requested another miniature instrument that could be sent to help her overcome the terrible sense of loss that not having her instrument any longer had engendered. For the second time Bell refused payment. However, we were both deeply touched and amply rewarded by Frau Ahlgrimm’s heartfelt response in the last typewritten letter I received from her, dated July 22, 1992. I have kept her idiomatic spelling and syntax in the following excerpts:

. . . 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 . . . . As it is now, [the model] has a place of honour in my bookshelf and I feel as if it 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 cloude, the little one holding in my hand as a little baby. Mr. Bell did a wonderful work . . .

He did indeed! I only wish that these minute instruments were playable; an 8-by-3-inch model would be a dream instrument to transport, but its key span assuredly would be too narrow for human fingers. Might there be a viable solution?

From the Harpsichord Editor’s mailbox

Four recent harpsichord scores 

Carson Cooman (born 1982) is a prolific composer who writes accessible music. He serves currently as Research Associate in Music and Composer-in-Residence at Harvard University’s Memorial Church. A surprise packet containing four elegantly printed scores by Cooman arrived in my mailbox recently. All are “for keyboard” (in the composer’s notes, appropriate instruments are listed as pipe organ, harpsichord, clavichord, lautenwerk, harmonium, reed organ, piano, or electronic keyboard). All are published by Zimbel Press (www.zimbel.com) and distributed exclusively by Subito Music Corporation (www.subitomusic.com).

All four are well-suited to the harpsichord: textures are consistently spare (ranging from two to four voices), and Cooman indicates that long-held notes should be restruck ad libitum on instruments that have a faster sound decay.

Of the four pieces my personal favorites are Three Renaissance Dances, op. 1079, and Prelude, Fughetta, and Allegro, op. 1064, both composed in 2014. The Dances—Pavane (Adagio), Tordion (Vivace), and Allemande (Andante espressivo)­—are faithful to the rhythms and chords expected in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the order of the movements guarantees both variety and interest. Comprising only five pages of music, these dances will not be boring to an audience.

Cooman’s Prelude, Fughetta, and Allegro is “loosely inspired by Johann Sebastian Bach’s Prelude, Fugue and Allegro, BWV 998—a late composition seemingly intended for harpsichord, lute, or most especially, the lautenwerk [a ‘lute harpsichord’]—apparently a personal favorite instrument of Bach,” to quote the composer’s introductory notes. Dedicated to the instrument maker Steven Sørli, these three movements in E-flat major, C minor, and E-flat major are beautifully crafted and could make an interesting pairing with Bach’s work. Use of the harpsichord’s buff stop would suggest the sound of the gut-strung “lute-harpsichord.” Cooman also mentions that “equal temperament is neither expected nor required” for this music.

The two additional scores in the packet are Ricercari, op. 1014 (2013), “inspired by the keyboard music of the early and mid-17th century.” The work consists of one page (3-voice texture) dedicated to Kimberly Marshall, two pages (2 voices) for James Woodman, and a final two pages (4 voices) for Peter Sykes.

Number four, Toccata sequenziale sopra “ut re mi fa,” op. 1063, dedicated to the New England instrument maker Allan Winkler, is a contemporary work inspired by the early Italian keyboard toccatas of Frescobaldi and his followers. In the style of the 17th century, this six-page piece is meant to be played freely, and it comprises both the longest and most harmonically adventurous of these Cooman compositions.

A musicological detective story

Knowing my deep appreciation for well-plotted mystery stories, dear colleague and longtime friend harpsichordist Jane Clark sent me the journal of The British Music Society (aptly named British Music, Volume 38, 2016, #2) in which John Turner’s article “Thank you, Norman Dello Joio! A Voyage of Discovery” appeared in print (pages 24–32). Turner traces the twists and turns that led to his finding of a major musical score by Alan Rawsthorne (1905–1971). The composer’s manuscript was destroyed together with many other pieces and musical instruments during the November 1940 Luftwaffe bombing of his lodgings in Bristol. Unexpectedly, a copy of Rawsthorne’s Chamber Cantata for Voice, Strings, and Harpsichord (1937) was found among the papers of Southern California composer Halsey Stevens (1908–1989), whose legacy is now archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

The link between the UK and the United States must have been the harpsichordist Alice Ehlers (1887–1981) who played the keyboard part at the premiere of the Chamber Cantata in 1937. Ehlers, an early student of Wanda Landowska, immigrated to the United States in 1938, where she was, for many years, a fellow faculty member together with Stevens at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Turner surmises that it must have been she who brought her copy of the cantata score to the United States, where, somehow, it became part of the Stevens Collection. (My quick look at Frances Bedford’s Harpsichord and Clavichord Music of the 20th Century provided the information that Stevens composed a two-minute solo harpsichord work for Ehlers—La quarte-vingtaine—in 1967, the year of her 80th birthday!)

There is much more concerning this exciting rediscovery of a “lost” Raws-thorne composition as well as a reference to Walter Leigh’s delightful Concertino for Harpsichord and Strings, which Turner posits may well have been familiar to the cantata’s composer. The connection to American composer Norman Dello Joio is also explained in his article, together with a reference to this American composer’s 1980 solo harpsichord work Salute to Scarlatti and the welcome news that “the first modern performance of the rediscovered Rawsthorne work took place on October 29, 2016, at the Royal Northern College of Music, with Harvey Davis at the harpsichord.”

Mark Schweizer’s 14th
liturgical mystery

It was The Diapason’s editor Jerome Butera who sent me a review copy of Mark Schweizer’s first liturgical mystery, The Alto Wore Tweed. It was, I suppose, not surprising since I had written several columns concerning “Murder at the Harpsichord” (citing mystery novels with a harpsichord connection, not referring to recitals by students or colleagues). My Schweizer review was published in the July 2003 issue of our favorite magazine (on pages 8 and 10), from which I quote:

Here is the answer to all your gift needs: buy a copy of this slim paperback for every person on your Christmas list. Any 144-page book that manages to include references to Charles Wood, Charpentier, Mendelssohn, Hugo Distler, bagpipes, an anthem text in which “Holy Jesus” rhymes with “moldy Cheeses” and “Martin Luther’s Diet of Wurms (the only Diet of Wurms with the International Congress of Church Musicians Seal of Approval)” gets my vote for book of the year.

Well, here we are, 14 years later, at liturgical mystery number 14, and I have read every one of the intervening volumes, each of which has produced a similar (or greater) sense of euphoria, merriment, and admiration for the author’s continued droll sense of humor, ability to create madcap plots, and sheer ability both to instruct and to entertain.

The newest, The Lyric Wore Lycra, which clocks in at 192 pages (like most of us, it has added a little extra heft around its middle), still maintains the Raymond Chandler sub-story set in distinctive typewriter script, is still replete with welcome musical references, and still displays the author’s ability to poke gentle barbs at liturgical matters, the current ones involving Fat Tuesday and Lent, all side by side with several dead bodies and, thus, enough crimes to be solved by sleuth Hayden Konig, police chief of St. Germaine, North Carolina, and part-time organist-choirmaster of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in that small village.

And yes, it is gift-worthy in the extreme, available directly from St. James Music Press (www.sjmpbooks.com). (Request an autographed copy if you wish.) My package of two copies arrived within three days, so the book accompanied me to Santa Fe, where I shared news of its July publication with my hosts, also devoted Schweizer fans. They rushed away from our dinner table to place their order immediately, and they, too, had their books in hand, ready to be read while on their vacation.

Christmas in August

For a Texan yearning to make a summer escape from the hot, humid city to the coolly refreshing mountains of New Mexico, generally an August reference to Christmas would signify the request for both red and green chile sauces as accompaniments to those very special New Mexican blue corn enchiladas! However, for a musically employed person, the same word well might serve as a reminder that it is high time to finalize those repertory choices for the fall and winter programs for which one is responsible.

Additions to our list of such musical possibilities may be found in a recent publication from Concordia Publishing House: volume two of Christmas Ayres and Dances: Sixteen Easy to Moderate Carols for Organ, Chamber Organ, Harpsichord, or Piano, by J. William Greene. (Greene is a name already familiar to readers of this column: for information about his first volume of similar seasonal keyboard arrangements, see The Diapason, June 2015.)

Probably the most popular of the newly published works will be “Antioch Carillon” (Joy to the World) and “Bell Fugue” (Jingle Bells), the two pieces that serve as bookends for the 43-page volume. Concerning the “Bell Fugue,” I contacted the composer to ascertain whether or not there might be two naturals missing from the score? He responded that indeed he did wish to have naturals before the Fs on the fourth beats of measures 25 (bass) and 33 (treble). So, dear readers, write these corrections into your own scores after you purchase them, and play what the composer prefers rather than the pungent cross-relationships indicated in the print.

Most extensive of the new pieces is the eight-movement Huron Suite (‘Twas in the Moon of Wintertime) known today as Huron Carol, a personal favorite song from my childhood days. As one begins to study this work I would suggest starting with the fourth movement, “Sarabande,” in which the melody is most clearly outlined in the top voice. Having this haunting tune in mind will serve the player well when confronting the unfamiliar appearance of the first four pages comprising the suite’s “Prelude.” Totally notated in whole notes without any metric indications (except for some slurs that aid in defining the harmonic groupings), this notation emulates 17th-century French lute (and sometimes harpsichord) notational practices—in a sense, presenting the player with a written-out improvisation on the melody and its implied harmonic structure.

Through the gracious generosity of our reader Thomas D. Orr, I had received a pre-publication copy of Dr. Greene’s Partita. It was particularly pleasing therefore to find that the composer had accepted (along with my accolades) the suggestion that an octave lowering of the right-hand notation in the score’s emotional highlight, its final segment, the “Tombeau de Jean de Brébeuf,” would allow the somber sounds to capitalize on the more resonant mid/lower range of the harpsichord, thus expressing sonically the elegiac intent of this “Tombstone” piece, a genre found in several 17th-century prototypes by composers Louis (or, perhaps, his brother Charles) Couperin and Johann Jakob Froberger.

This downward octave transposition also serves as an introduction for a general point to consider when performing these pieces: since they are designated for such a varied set of keyboard instruments it is quite possible, in some measures, to thin the texture when playing on a harpsichord (while observing the composer’s notations exactly as written if performing on piano or organ). Extended chains of parallel triads do not usually work well on our instrument since its sustaining “pedal” resides in our fingers. Thus, when a harpsichordist’s finger releases a key, the damper immediately drops down onto the string (unlike the piano’s ability to prolong the resonance that continues because the dampening felt remains suspended above the string as long as the damper pedal remains depressed).

The composer himself suggests some sonic adapting for the notation found in his spare and lovely setting of the chant Conditor alme siderum (Creator of the Stars of Night) in which the entire two-page piece is constructed above a sustained E-flat pedal point—perfectly suited to an organ, but requiring fairly frequent re-striking of the bass note when played on other, non-winded keyboard instruments.

The remaining tunes to be encountered in this new publication comprise Es kommt ein Schiff geladen (A Ship There Comes A-Laden—Passacaglia); Come Now, O Prince of Peace (Ososô Ayre and Sarabande); Personent Hodie (On This Day Earth Shall Ring), a rollicking Tambourin and Bourrée dedicated to the aforementioned reader Tom Orr. Although this listing does not total an exact 16 separate works, as the title indicates, if one counts the individual titles as printed, there are actually 17 individual movements. Should this added numerical disparity be disturbing in any way, perhaps one might simply count the Double of this final Bourrée as a requirement for a properly ornamented performance of the piece, thereby arriving at the eponymous given number. This solution almost certainly should provide a truly Merry Christmas to one and all, both literalists and free thinkers (even in August)!

For the gift list (including self)

The late British composer Stephen Dodgson (1924–2013) was particularly celebrated for his idiomatic writing utilizing plucked instruments, especially guitar and harpsichord (and, in one unique example, Duo alla fantasia for Harp and Harpsichord, composed in 1981 for harpist David Williams and me). That Stephen should write idiomatically for our keyboard instrument is scarcely surprising since his wife is the harpsichordist Jane Clark.

It is a particular pleasure to recommend the first complete recording of the first four books of Stephen Dodgson’s Inventions for Harpsichord, each set comprising six individual pieces, for a total of 24. A fifth book, also comprising six Inventions, is not included in this release, just issued by Naxos (9.70262) as the debut disc of the young Russian harpsichordist Ekaterina Likhina. Recording sessions took place in September 2016 at the Musikhochschule in Würzburg, Germany, where Ms. Likhina has been studying with Professor Glen Wilson (who served as producer for the project).

Playing throughout the 1:11:37 duration is first rate as each set of six displays its various moods. None of these individual movements exceeds four minutes, 58 seconds, with the majority of them timed between two and three minutes. The harpsichord, a resonant French double built in 2000 by Detmar Hungerberg of Hückeswagen, Germany, is based on a 1706 instrument by Donzelague of Lyon, France. (This information is not included in the material accompanying the disc; it had been submitted but there was insufficient space to include it, one of the few drawbacks of the compact disc format. I am grateful to Jane Clark and Glen Wilson for providing this addendum.) Both of these gracious colleagues also contributed the disc’s illuminating program notes brimming with unique information: Jane Clark shares her special perspective on the development of her husband’s affinity for the instrument, while Glen Wilson shares his rationale for the recording’s pitch level (A=415) and temperament (based on Neidhardt 1724), a well-tempered tuning that “reflects Dodgson’s instinctive sense of C major as the center of a natural tonal universe.”

You might wish to order multiple copies of this disc for distribution to friends who “already have everything.”

Reflections of an American Harpsichordist: Unpublished Memoirs, Essays, and Lectures of
Ralph Kirkpatrick

In a second book devoted to archival material written by her uncle, the iconic harpsichordist’s niece Meredith Kirkpatrick extends the scope of Ralph Kirkpatrick’s autobiographical materials included in her 2014 publication Ralph Kirkpatrick: Letters of the American Harpsichordist and Scholar, giving readers the first printings of her uncle’s own texts covering the period from the young artist’s teaching and performing at the Salzburg Mozarteum (beginning in 1933) and continuing with fascinating information about his affiliation to Colonial Williamsburg and his pioneering development of the musical offerings in that reconstructed historical venue. This new book gives us, in his own words, vivid vignettes of Uncle Ralph’s concert career in Europe, Africa, and the United States, his definitive and path-breaking scholarly work as he wrote the biography of Domenico Scarlatti, as well as organizing the catalogue of that composer’s extensive sonata output, which resulted in the “Kirkpatrick numbers”—those identifiers that are still in use.

These piquant autobiographical writings, now held in the Yale University Archives, further document Kirkpatrick’s outstanding Yale teaching career that began in 1940 (the same year composer Paul Hindemith joined the distinguished faculty) and continued until Kirkpatrick’s death in 1984 (although the written materials extend only through the year 1977). 

Meredith Kirkpatrick’s “Part Two: Reflections” presents the reader with soul-baring Kirkpatrick essays: “On Performing,” “On Recording,” “On Chamber Music,” and “On Harpsichords and Their Transport.” Part Three offers essays by RK: “Elliott Carter’s Double Concerto (ca. 1973),” an honest evaluation of this most difficult of contemporary major works for harpsichord (and its partner, the piano); “On Editing Bach’s Goldberg Variations,” “RK and Music at JE [John Edwards College at Yale],” “The Equipment and Education of a Musician (1971),” “Bach and Mozart for Violin and Harpsichord (ca. 1944)” [particularly illuminating because of RK’s long-time duo-partnership experiences with the violinist Alexander Schneider], and “The Early Piano” [as transcribed from a BBC Radio Broadcast of 1973].

Part Four presents texts of lectures given at Yale (1969–71): “Bach and Keyboard Instruments,” “In Search of Scarlatti’s Harpsichord,” “Style in Performance,” “The Performer’s Pilgrimage to the Sources,” and last, but not least, “Private Virtue and Public Vice in the Performance of ‘Early Music’.”

A generous selection of nine private photographs from the editor’s collection shows images I had not encountered previously, while four additional pictures credited to the Yale Music Library Collection, while not new, contribute effectively to a chronological visual portrait of Kirkpatrick, from early youth to elder status.

Appendices include a list of personal names in the text with biographical references, publications by and about Ralph Kirkpatrick, and a complete Kirkpatrick discography. Additionally, there is a comprehensive general index for the volume. 

Published in 2017 by the University of Rochester Press as part of its Eastman Studies in Music series, this 211-page hardbound book, in tandem with Meredith Kirkpatrick’s earlier publication, presents another pathway to understanding the stellar contributions of the most influential American harpsichordist of the mid-20th century after Wanda Landowska. Brava, Meredith Kirkpatrick, for your painstaking archival researching and editing. Here is a book to treasure, and another one to share with fellow lovers of the harpsichord and its history.

One more stocking stuffer

Do not overlook Mark Schweizer’s novella The Christmas Cantata, a gentle and heartwarming St. Germaine Christmas Entertainment, published by SJMPbooks in 2011. If you have not read this one, or, heaven forbid, not yet encountered the inordinately delightful world of Mark’s Liturgical Mysteries, you are missing 12 of the funniest and most enjoyable comedic offerings since Monty Python or Fawlty Towers!

Recital programming: Program notes

Seated one day at the harpsichord, I was weary and ill at ease because the mid-July deadline for this column was approaching too rapidly, and my mind, in its summer mode, seemed frail as a lily, too weak for a thought as I searched for a topic. And then, a miracle: the printed program from my harpsichord recital at the 2012 East Texas Pipe Organ Festival fell out of a score. Rereading it brought not only a wave of nostalgia, but also a sense of continued satisfaction at both the balance and variety of the chosen pieces, selected painstakingly to present contrasting musical styles as well as offering a bit of respite to the ears of the festival participants who heard a number of organ recitals each day.

Some vignettes about the unusual logistics required to present this program at Trinity Episcopal Church in Longview on my 74th birthday may be found in The Diapason’s Harpsichord News column published in February 2013 (page 20). If any readers are curious, I refer them to that issue, which also contains Neal Campbell’s thoughtful commentaries on the entire 2012 festival. What follows in this month’s column has not appeared previously in The Diapason. These are my “notes to the program.” I present them now as examples of brief word pictures intended to aid a listener’s understanding of music that, for many, was probably being heard for the first time. As for the selections, I specifically tried to choose at least some works by composers who might be familiar to organists, while offering a variety of musical styles, durations, and tonalities both major and minor. 

The program notes

Introduction to the Program: The Italian composer Giovanni Maria Trabaci wrote in the Preface to Book II of his Pieces ‘per ogni (all) strumenti, ma ispecialmente per i Cimbali e gli Organi’ [1615]: “the harpsichord is the lord of all instruments in the world and on it everything may be played with ease.” [“il Cimbalo è Signor di tutti l’istromenti del mondo, et in lui si possono sonare ogni  cosa con facilità.”]  

While I am not totally convinced of the ease of playing offered by some of these contrasting selections from the contemporary and Baroque repertoires, I do suggest that each one of them has musical interest. The pieces by John Challis and Duke Ellington are probably unique to my repertoire since they remain unpublished.

The program

A Triptych for Harpsichord (1982)—Gerald Near (b. 1942). In addition to writing a wonderful Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings for me to premiere at the American Guild of Organists national convention in the Twin Cities in 1980, Gerald responded to my request for a new work to play at a recital for the Dallas Museum of Art’s major El Greco exhibition in 1983. The three brief contrasting movements suggest bells (“Carillon”), an amorous dance (“Siciliano”), and a homage to the harpsichord works of Domenico Scarlatti and Manuel de Falla (“Final”). 

Sonate pour Claveçin (1958)—Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959). During the final year of his life, in response to a commission from the Swiss harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer, Martinů composed this compact, but major, Sonate. Essentially it is a piece in one movement with three sections: the first and last are kaleidoscopic, filled with brief colorful musical ideas; the second is gentle and nostalgic, as the homesick expatriate composer makes short allusions to two beloved iconic Czech works: the Wenceslaus Chorale and Dvorák’s Cello Concerto. While quite “pianistic” in its demands, the Sonate also allows brilliant use of the harpsichord’s two keyboards in realizing both Martinů’s magical sonorities and his occasional use of bitonality.

“Chaconne in D Minor” (Partita for Solo Violin, BWV 1004)—Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), arranged for harpsichord solo by John Challis (1907–1974). One of Bach’s most-often transcribed works, this particular setting for harpsichord by the pioneering American early instrument maker survives only in a manuscript submitted for copyright (on Bach’s birthday in 1944), now preserved in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Challis also was an early advocate of variable tempi in Baroque music, serving as a mentor in that respect to organist E. Power Biggs, who proudly owned one of the builder’s impressive large pedal instruments.¹

A Single Petal of a Rose (1965)—Duke Ellington (1899–1974), edited in 1985 by Igor Kipnis and Dave Brubeck, and by Larry Palmer in 2012. Edward Kennedy Ellington responded to Antoinette Vischer’s request for a piece by sending her a piano transcription of his A Single Petal of a Rose, a work already dedicated to the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II. When American harpsichordist Kipnis asked if I could point him to Ellington’s unique work for harpsichord, I referred him to the facsimile of Ellington’s manuscript published in Ule Troxler’s book Antoinette Vischer, which details the works to be found in the Vischer Collection at the Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. (See “The A-Team,” The Diapason, February 2017, pp. 12–13.) Years later, Kipnis sent me his one-page transcription for harpsichord, an arrangement made in collaboration with his friend, the jazz great Dave Brubeck. To fit my hands and harpsichord I have made some further adjustments to their arrangement of this lovely, gentle work.²

La D’Héricourt; La Lugeac—Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799). These are two of the most idiomatic of French harpsichord works from the eighteenth century, and none is more so than the one honoring M. l’Abbé d’Héricourt, Conseiller de Grand’ Chambre. With the tempo marking “noblement,” this composition stays mostly in the middle range of the harpsichord, a particularly resonant glory of the eighteenth-century French instruments. In contrast, the boisterous, “music-hall” qualities of La Lugeac suggest that it may be named for Charles-Antoine de Guerin, a page to King Louis XV. Known subsequently as the Marquis de Lugeac, the former page became secretary and companion to the Marquis de Valery, the king’s representative to the court of Frederick the Great. The American harpsichordist and conductor Alan Curtis, who edited Balbastre’s keyboard works, noted that “few Italianate jigs—Scarlatti not even excepted—can match the outrageously bumptious and attractive La Lugeac.”

“Lambert’s Fireside,” “De la Mare’s Pavane,” and “Hughes’ Ballet” (from the collection Lambert’s Clavichord, 1926–1928)—Herbert Howells (1892–1983). The composer was the next to youngest person pictured in a 1923 book of Modern British Composers comprising 17 master portraits by the photographer and clavichord maker Herbert Lambert of Bath. As a tangible expression of gratitude for this honor, Howells requested 11 of his fellow sitters each to contribute a short characteristic piece to be presented to the photographer. All acquiesced, but one year later, only Howells had composed anything for the project, so he wrote the additional 11 pieces himself. Issued in 1928 by Oxford University Press, Lambert’s Clavichord was the first new music for clavichord to be published in the twentieth century. Several questions regarding names found in the titles as well as a few printed notes that were suspect led me to schedule a London interview with the composer during a 1974 trip to the UK, a meeting that led ultimately to my commissioning the Dallas Canticles, as well as a respectful, unforgettable friendship with the elderly master.³

Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914—J. S.
Bach. The shortest of the composer’s seven toccatas for harpsichord, the E Minor consists of an introduction (with an organ-pedal-like opening figure insistently repeated six times); a contrapuntal   “poco” Allegro; a dramatic recitative (Adagio); and a driving, perpetual motion three-voice fugue. Musicologist David Schulenberg (in The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach; Schirmer Books, New York, 1992) noted the close similarity of the fugue’s opening and some subsequent passages to an anonymous work from a Naples manuscript ascribed to Benedetto Marcello. While it was not unusual for Baroque composers to borrow from (and improve upon) existing works, the amount of pre-existing material utilized in this particular fugue is greater than normal; however, as Schulenberg concludes, “[Bach] nevertheless made characteristic alterations.” I would add that in no way do these borrowings detract from the visceral excitement of Bach’s propulsive and dramatic conclusion.

Heads up: Registration for the 2017 ETPOF

According to the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival website there is still an opportunity to register (at discounted prices) for the star-studded programs planned for this year’s festival. But do not delay: the opportunity for savings expires on September 15. Visit: http://easttexaspipeorganfestival.com.

Recent losses 

Elizabeth Chojnacka (born September 10, 1939, in Warsaw) died in Paris on May 28. Celebrated for her virtuosic keyboard technique, Chojnacka was known primarily as an avid and exciting performer of contemporary harpsichord music. Her renderings of all three of the solo harpsichord works by Ligeti are highly lauded, and the composer honored her by dedicating the third, Hungarian Rock, to her.

Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini (born October 7, 1929, in Bologna) died in that Italian city on July 11. Organist, harpsichordist, scholar, and instrument collector, Luigi was well known to us in Dallas, having been a guest at Southern Methodist University on several occasions. Most memorably, he was part of the so-designated “Haarlem Trio” organized by Robert Anderson as a week-long postscript to the 1972 American Guild of Organists convention in Dallas. The three major European visiting artists for that event—Marie-Claire Alain, Anton Heiller, and Tagliavini—each gave daily masterclasses for the large number of participants who remained in Dallas for a second week of study with these annual leaders of the Haarlem Summer Academies in the Netherlands, resulting in what may be the only time in Southern Methodist University history that the organ department achieved a financial surplus rather than a deficit!

Two vignettes from that stellar week have become an unforgettable part of   Dallas’s musical history: Luigi’s chosen workshop topic was the organ music of Girolamo Frescobaldi, and he had assigned to the prize-winning finalists from the AGO Young Organists’ Competition all of the pieces contained in that composer’s liturgical settings for organ, known as Fiori Musicali. One of the finalists who had not won an AGO prize left Dallas in high dudgeon. Unfortunately, this participant had been assigned the very first piece in this set of “Musical Flowers.” Professor Tagliavini began his afternoon class with a brief overview of the work’s history and importance, and then peered over his glasses as he announced, “And now we will hear the first piece, Frescobaldi’s ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’.”

The total lack of response became embarrassing; there was no respondent. So our guest teacher moved on to the next piece. And thus it was that each afternoon session began with the same question from Luigi: “And who will play the ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’?”—always followed by total silence. A stickler for completeness, on the fifth and final day of the course Luigi made his same query, again to no avail. So with his usual smile and slight lisp he intoned, “Then I shall play the ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’!” And so he did with total mastery and grace. And all was well within the Italian Baroque solar system,  for Frescobaldi’s magnum opus was, at last, complete in Dallas!

The second vignette, equally Luigi-esque, occurred when Dr. Anderson, always volatile and energetic, and I were awaiting Tagliavini’s arrival to play an evening organ recital for the workshop audience. It was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. and by five minutes before that hour Dr. Anderson was pacing the corridor near the door to the Caruth Auditorium stage. With less than two minutes to spare, Luigi ambled down the hallway. Bob called out, “Luigi, hurry!” To which the unflappable Italian stopped walking, carefully placed his leather briefcase on the floor, and, with his characteristically kindly smile, said, “Why, Bob? Has the recital already begun?” ν

Notes

1. For further information see my essay, “John Challis and Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor,” in Music and Its Questions: Essays in Honor of Peter Williams, edited by Thomas Donahue (Organ Historical Society Press, 2007); and my CD recording of the Bach transcription on Hommages for Harpsichord (SoundBoard 2008).

2. Concerning Lambert’s Clavichord, see my chapter on Herbert Howells in Twentieth Century Organ Music, edited by Christopher Anderson (Routledge, 2012).

Autobiography of a clavichord: As told to Larry Palmer

I am known as “Number Nine”—a moniker bestowed on me because of my position in the handwritten logbook of instruments built by dedicated craftsmen of the Chickering Piano Company. This select group comprising the Early Music Department of the Massachusetts firm was led by Arnold Dolmetsch, a great visionary who supervised the building of all 34 of us clavichord siblings during that first decade of the 20th century. As clavichords go, I am big-boned: a large girl of five full octaves with a polished, unblemished mahogany body set on four sturdy legs. From 1906 until the 1911 financial depression made it necessary for Chickering to discontinue the building of such fascinating examples of past keyboards and bowed instruments, Dolmetsch and his skilled workers produced approximately 100 instruments—the first of their types to be constructed in the United States in modern times. 

Most of my fellow musical instruments would refer to their purchasers as “owners,” but in my more than 100 years of existence I have learned that these caretakers might be described more accurately as “keepers” since our longevity has proven to be more enduring than theirs! The first of my four keepers purchased me for $200 on November 1, 1906, and I was delivered to 14 Harris Street in Cambridge, where I began my active musical life with Miss Mary Phillips Webster. My mistress loved me dearly and took painstaking care of my needs: dusting, polishing, tuning, and best of all, playing gently on my delicate keys. In 1908 our family was increased by the addition of a large mahogany (with boxwood inserts) Dolmetsch-Chickering double-manual harpsichord—Number 52 in the logbook, and Miss Mary, an excellent pianist who had made her professional concert debut in 1884, continued her explorations of pre-Beethoven music with both of us, gradually giving pride of place to my louder younger brother, whose birthday, like J. S. Bach’s, occurred on March 21. Number 52 was particularly happy with his special connection to “ancient” music’s foremost representative.

Miss Webster (cited by Keeper Number Three as the first woman to study music at Radcliffe College), taught music theory and history privately from her home, as well as at the Perkins School for the Blind, where she headed the girls’ music division for three years. Later, during my years with her, she served on the music faculty of the Milton Academy. Politically active in the women’s movement to obtain voting rights, she was well known in New England as a lecturer, a published composer, and author. Our household was often a gathering place not unlike the French salons, and I became very accustomed to enjoying the gentle wit and intellectual bravura of the academic world: an ambiance that has continued to comfort and amuse me throughout the rest of my softly voiced life.

In 1917 (I think it was) Miss Webster’s harpsichord was returned to Chickering, who resold it to Smith College. Like many maiden ladies, Miss Mary never mentioned her actual age to me, but as is typical for musical folk, her love for this divine art kept her youthful in spirit. But, as she became elderly and housebound, my dear mistress continued the downsizing of her earthly belongings, so a few years later, I, like my harpsichord brother, was passed on to a second keeper, the young academic named Austin Warren (1899–1986). Young Warren took good care of me during his graduate student days at Harvard and Princeton, but he was far from the proficient musician that my dear Miss Mary had been. When he left Massachusetts in 1939 after thirteen years of teaching at Boston University to take a position as professor of English at the University of Iowa, he passed me on to his devoted friend, another younger professor, Wallace Fowlie (1908–98). Fowlie’s encomium to me in his 1977 book Journal of Rehearsals continues to cause me to blush and even to intensify my capacity for “Bebung” (the German term for one of the unique abilities that we clavichords have: the production of a gentle vibrato completely through finger pressure—since our tone producer, a brass tangent, actually touches our strings directly, the application of slight pressure causes them to go sharp, while the lessening of the pressure brings the string back to pitch—something that big brother harpsichord has never been capable of doing, to my great delight and his despair!).

But I digress! Wallace Fowlie, my dear third keeper, rented his first single-occupancy apartment at the beginning of 1940 while teaching at Bennington College. This domicile was in Old Bennington, and my presence in this, his first truly private space, led to my being described in his journal as the “one precious object of my possessions.” I also remember, with great nostalgia, the visit to Wallace’s home by the young harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick, who had been engaged to teach at Bennington during one semester. Dr. Fowlie asked RK if he could take some clavichord lessons with him, to which the skeptical Kirkpatrick fired back, “Do you own a clavichord?” It was Kirkpatrick who received the larger surprise when Fowlie replied that he did, indeed, possess a clavichord built by Dolmetsch as his ninth early instrument for Chickering. Kirkpatrick responded, “I had wondered where No. 9 was. You have one of the best clavichords—quite possibly the longest in the country.” 

Demanding a visit to see the instrument, RK touched me, tuned me carefully, and then sat down to play the first prelude from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier. Entranced, he continued with the fugue, and, Fowlie reports, ultimately played most of the entire first book of the WTC during his visit. What glorious music we made together: it was definitely the acme of my artistic life thus far! 

You can see why I (as a modest middle-aged lady) would be moved to redness (or a darker mahogany) by these words. If I had my own copy of Fowlie’s wonderful volume (and if I could read it), I would surely pore over the special words about me on page 101 and concentrate even more on the ensuing description of the metaphysical effect my quiet musical tones had on my keeper, on the special aura of the room in which I resided, and on his abilities to play and hear more accurately the lovely notes that issued from my resonant sound cavity. 

Being family to Dr. Fowlie, a distinguished scholar of the French language and its literature, who eventually moved on to spend the major part of his teaching career at Duke University, I became especially nostalgic for my French-born maker Arnold Dolmetsch. Especially at Christmas time I would tremble with longing to have someone—anyone—play my favorites among the old French Noëls as a reminder of such delightful holiday music-making during my younger days.

And while he is not a speaker of French (or even a very good reader of that Gallic language) my fourth, and current, keeper (who writes these columns for The Diapason) has made certain that I occasionally get to make music with very proficient executants stroking my keys and stretching (and releasing) my strings. Dr. Fowlie’s “most precious possession” arrived at the Harpsichord Clearing House in 1992, and since “keeper four” had previously requested the opportunity to bid on the next Dolmetsch-Chickering clavichord to come through the HCH, he was not very pleased to learn, upon inquiry, that I was already “spoken for.” Responding with righteous fury, my present keeper caused a reconsideration of the prior sale and after some soothing and needed “spa-time” with a firm of furniture restorers who uphold the stellar reputation of New England’s craftspersons and their ability to clean and repair antiques, I was transported to my second southern home, Texas.

The clavichord specialist Virginia Pleasants, nearly as old as I, played a splendid recital on me during a joint conference of Southeastern and Midwestern Historical Keyboard Societies in Fort Worth and Dallas in 1998. What a pleasure to have such a sensitive specialist bring out wonderful music from my innards. But it surely must be that my most glorious Texas moment thus far was my 100th-birthday concert on October 27, 2006, when another splendid clavichordist, Gregory Crowell, joined Keeper Four in a program that culminated in J. S. Bach’s Concerto in C Minor for Two Keyboards, BWV 1060, played in partnership with my new younger brother at my Dallas home, a newly-acquired 1939 clavichord by John Challis. What a fun evening that was! And one overflowing with historic synchronicity—for Challis, in 1939, was not long-returned to Ypsilanti, Michigan, following his apprenticeship in Haselmere, UK, with my own maker, Arnold Dolmetsch. So we two instruments, separated by a generational 33 years, are both products of the USA, and both of us continue to survive and benefit from the skillful craftsmanship of these builders from those pioneering years of the early instrument revival.

This Christmas season we will be three clavichords at home, having welcomed Keeper Four’s “other” clavichord, returned from its longtime residency in his university office. This, the first he had acquired of us delicate, quiet keyboards, was a German portable instrument (“Reiseklavichord”) made by the Passau builder, his friend Kurt Sperrhake. It was a remarkable light-weight instrument whose prototype was originally designed for Isolde Ahlgrimm, the much-travelled Austrian artist who needed a carry-on instrument for practicing during her many concert tours. Late at night on Christmas Eve, when all should be sleeping, perhaps we will all break forth in Christmas arrangements by LeBègue, Edwin McLean, or J. William Greene, and express our communal wishes for other visitors to come and play us—preferably those who specialize in artistic clavichording. In our letter to Santa we’re specifically pushing for Massachusetts resident Judith Conrad, whom we hear is particularly adept at both playing and singing (just a hint to Keeper if he should read this).

As the oldest playable instrument in the house (yes, I know that I’m stored just in front of a 1797 Kirckman
fortepiano, but that one is not playable) I continue to keep the other clavichords in line. And, covered by warm layers of protective padding, I provide a soft, safe sleeping “shelf” for my oft-dozing companion, the indoor cat Mewsetta, who occasionally shares her resting place with feline number one, Walph Vaughan Williams. I am totally certain that Miss Mary Webster, Professors Austin Warren, Wallace Fowlie, and Keeper Four will all rest more comfortably knowing that all is under control and flourishing. (But I do wonder, quietly—with enhanced bebung—who will be my eventual Keeper Number Five?) ν

Sources 

Campbell, Margaret. Dolmetsch: the man and his work. London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd., 1975.

Dolmetsch, Mabel. Personal Recollections of Arnold Dolmetsch. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958; reprinted by DaCapo Press, 1980.

Fowlie, Wallace. Journal of Rehearsals. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1977.

MacCracken, Thomas G. “The Dolmetsch-Chickering Viols.” Journal of the Viola da Gamba Society of America, volume 48 (2013–14), pp. 25–66.

Palmer, Larry. Harpsichord in America: A Twentieth-Century Revival. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989. Second paperback Midland Book edition, 1993.

Personal correspondence with Richard Troeger, Thomas MacCracken, and Peter Brownlee, fellow aficionados of Arnold Dolmetsch and his remarkable legacy.

Comments or news items for these pages are always welcome. Address them to [email protected] or, via post, to 10125 Cromwell Drive, Dallas, Texas 75229.

Ennis Fruhauf holds Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees from the University of Michigan (1967, 1968), and a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Southern California (1973). He has held occasional church music positions, college and university teaching appointments, and is currently publisher, editor, music copyist, arranger, and composer for Fruhauf Music Publications (since 2004).

Ricercare (Ital.), “. . . ricercare is a verb, meaning to investigate, query, inquire, search out with diligence . . . testing the tuning, probing the key . . . .” (Johann Gottfried Walther, Musikalisches Lexikon, Leipzig, 1732);¹ and as a noun: “. . . Thus in Bach’s time it served almost exclusively for the title of a strict and, in its polyphonic texture, highly elaborate fugue.”²

Introduction

Ah, well, it is perhaps a tale to be retold yet once more, an instructive yarn well worth spinning anew, offered up here as an autumn fantasy, one with an exceedingly wry afterglow. The occasions and events in question took place some 300 years ago. And in spite of unexpected setbacks that overshadowed the final outcome, the adventure might after all be credited with having led to the creation of an unusual composition for organ, one that might otherwise have never come to light in the same context. 

The tale is of Johann Sebastian Bach’s trip to Dresden in the autumn of 1717, undertaken at the urging of the royal Saxon court chapel’s violinist-concertmaster, Jean-Baptiste Volumier. Bach was charged, in essence, with the mission of upholding the honor of his homeland’s keyboard music tradition against a figurative incursion launched by one of France’s eminent composers, Louis Marchand (1669–1732), Organiste du Roi. Marchand was on an extended leave from Paris at the time, touring Germany with a display of his keyboard and compositional talents, and currently seeking favor from the royal Dresden court. Bach also hoped to win favor and a remunerative purse, while at the same time pitting his skills against Marchand in an international venue. 

The composition in question is Bach’s legendary Pièce d’orgue (thus titled in more than one manuscript source), a three-section work, at the heart of which is a finely crafted extended fantasy for keyboard, presumably for pipe organ with pedals. It is a living time capsule—one of few words and many notes—that offers up a vibrant slice-of-life drawn from the travels of an adventurous composer in his early thirties, who was hard-pressed by circumstances on his home front, while also on a quest for recognition and honor abroad.

Bach’s arrival coincided with the day of Marchand’s tests, trials, and demonstrations. Concertmaster Volumier took the initiative of arranging for Bach to overhear portions of these recitals from a concealed vantage point. It has been recorded that by the end of his contest, Marchand had indeed won the day and would continue his sojourn victoriously, having received meritorious and remunerative recognitions.

What might have taken place in the course of the evening that followed is a subject for speculation, perhaps even for imagination. Is it possible that these two notable exemplars of Germanic and French keyboard artistry might have been able to escape the rigors of international diplomacy, that they might have found time to meet in one of the city’s spacious church sanctuaries, one where they might also find a pipe organ installation that would provide a viable proving ground for their dueling skills? Just imagine what could have been . . . .

A Fantasy  

(Extract from an anonymous personal diary, Journals, dated October/November, 1717)

. . . It was already past dusk when the two principal parties of the contest arrived at the door leading up to the organ loft. There were three of us surveying the scene from a distance, gathered together in a tight knot and hidden from view in the shadows of the front chapel. We recognized Concertmaster Wolumyer of Dresden as he entered, followed by Concertmaster Bach, who was accompanied by two of his Weimar students. The French King’s Organist-Composer, Louis Marchand, arrived soon after, in company with two attachés assigned to his visit. Apparently Bach was to launch the evening’s music-makings, and indeed, as we watched he turned to M. Marchand, greeted him cordially, withdrew a vellum music manuscript from his folio and held it out to his elder colleague. M. Marchand graciously received the score, opened it, and proceeded to peruse the contents. Although their conversing tones were lost in the acoustical ambiance of a lofty nave, it was apparent that Bach was to begin the evening’s music-making with his recrafted Pièce d’orgue, written and ornamented in the French manner. We would hear it now with the addition of two outer movements. 

As we watched, the trio from Weimar separated from the others, making their way up to the dimly candle-lit organ loft and taking their places at the console. Bach had been allowed time to familiarize himself with the instrument earlier in the day, and his two flanking assistants were well coached in advance. Soon enough the first notes of an arpeggiated tonic chord broke the silence, ever so light in touch and sounding out on clear stops: we heard a single line of dancing arpeggios and passaggios in a compound triple meter, falling and rising, rippling through the gamut of the keyboard. This was the newly added Très vitement, a sparkling warm-up exercise for the fingers, leading up to the five-voice Gravement. Contrary to the French tradition of a Grand plein jeu registration, tonight the Gravement began on one of the instrument’s gentlest registers. We heard a low tonic pedal note, then a G-major chord in the manuals, with the soprano tonic pitch suspended over to the first quarter-note of the next beat, and four descending scale notes in succession. This motivic pattern migrated from one voice to another, delicately ornamented internally, and at each successive cadential gesture. Also of note, at major cadences a new stop or set of stops would be added by the two flanking registrants. By shifting from one manual to another and progressively engaging manual and pedal couplers, a tightly imitative ricercar with a brief compound motif for a subject was being transformed into a majestic paean, echoing gloriously through the nave’s acoustical environment. This was Bach in his native setting, ‘testing the lungs’ of a church’s instrument as he had done from year to year in the course of his many investigative journeys. In the final line of the Gravement, we heard a new voice enter in the manuals, further intensifying the texture and leading up to an abruptly dramatic pause on an unresolved deceptive cadence. After a momentary silence, the Lentement resumed on foundation stops, beginning with arpeggiations of the Gravement’s closing chord, sounded over a bass line that descended step by chromatic step to an extended dominant pedalpoint and final closing cadence in G Major.

There was a stillness and silence that followed the last chords as they faded into the upper reaches of the nave. We sat quietly, awed and deeply moved by the music we had just heard and calmed by its lingering aura. Within moments it became evident that Bach was preparing registrations for his next selection. Even though we had been advised in advance that he would likely play one of his newest keyboard compositions, a single-movement fantasy in D minor for clavier, nothing could have prepared us for the intense drama that was to follow . . . . 

[End of Journals extract.]

Who could fathom what might or might not have transpired in the course of such an evening? If it had even taken place, who might possibly divine what Bach would have played, or what selections Marchand could have chosen from his repertoire. There is no indication that the two of them resorted to swordplay—whether improvising with epées, or instead on keyboards, each of them with assistants in alert attendance. Nor is there evidence to suggest that Marchand carried an inked copy of Bach’s Fantasy with him back to Paris and the royal library. And if fate had denied Bach an opportunity to perform his recently penned chromatic Fantasy in D Minor³ for Marchand at an organ console, it could well have been included in his harpsichord recitations on the following day.

Varied accounts of Bach’s letter of invitation addressed to Marchand in which he proposed a public contest indicate that the two of them were to meet at the private mansion of Count Joachim Friedrich Flemming for a public display of their musical prowess. Alas for Bach, his competitor—perhaps wisely—chose to bow out of the tentative commitment, traveling on to his next port of call in the early hours of the designated morning. In spite of Marchand’s unanticipated absence, the public hearing was to take place after all: Bach’s impressive solo performance on that day won him royal recognition as hoped, and his meeting with Count Flemming would prove invaluable in the coming years. Alas, his prize purse of 500 talers was waylaid in the course of its delivery. And in the event Bach had traveled to Dresden with a hand-copied score of the Fantasy in G in his possession, it rode back with its composer on the return trip. More importantly though, a doorway had been opened that would offer future return visits, valuable musical associations, activities, and honors.

Discussion

Could it be that the middle movement of the Fantasy, as we know it today, might have evolved from on-the-spot improvisations performed on some of the various church organs Bach visited in his many travels? Could the music of an earlier version of the mid-section have offered an idealized means of “testing the lungs of an instrument”—a ricercare, or a seeking-out—by starting with quiet stops and gradually adding registers at subsequent cadential breaks and convenient moments? It is easy enough to imagine that a far more sophisticated end product, impeccably written in five- and six-voice tightly imitative counterpoint in the manner of a classic ricercata, was eventually honed for solemn occasions and processionals and found its way to ink and paper. An earlier manuscript of the central movement, one with French markings and an abbreviated ending, is cited as a possible compositional byproduct of Bach’s exposure to French keyboard music studied and copied in Weimar’s music library.⁴ Could Bach have added the improvisatorial framing introduction and closing sections (with their French titles) at a later date, in anticipation of his supposed meeting with Marchand? 

The Gravement is written in common meter with alla breve note values (i.e., two half-notes per measure). The quasi-motivic subject that serves to generate 157 measures of tightly knit counterpoint is generically no more or less than a suspended quarter- or half-note, followed by four descending pitches, the two units serving interchangeably as a head and a tail. It is freely imitated in tight succession, as well as in multiple paired overlapping entries. A secondary structural event can be found in the fantasy’s numerous staircase-like scalar progressions of whole-note pitches in the pedal line, employed with dramatically telling effect.⁵ Overall, the Gravement is neither fugue nor fancy, rather it is a one-of-a-kind ricercar-like construction, albeit perhaps an imitative fantasy, but one that is uniquely imbued with un esprit français.

There are additional elements throughout all three movements that hint strongly at Bach’s emulation of a classical hexachord fantasy, a formalized contrapuntal structure emanating from sixteenth-century practices. Hexachordal elements are present freely in the six-note groupings of the Très vitement’s compound meter,⁶ in the six diatonically related keys traversed in the course of the Gravement’s tonal excursions, and finally in the hexachordal arpeggiations of the Lentement.⁷ It is worth noting that the title, Fantasy, would appear to have been applied by cataloguers of subsequent generations, but not by the composer. Above and beyond formalized or traditional concepts, and viewed as a single entity, Bach’s storied BWV 572 is in essence a grand tone poem, a broadly proportioned triptych of three contrasting sections—two linear outer panels framing an impeccably woven central tapestry. 

Coda

In support of a progressive registrational plan for the Gravement, there are numerous authentic and half cadences throughout the contrapuntally textured movement that facilitate the addition of stops and couplers, or shifts from one manual to another.⁸

There is the anomalous presence of a low pedal B-natural (measure 66), a note not normally found on Germanic pedalboards but occasionally present in French manual and/or pedal dispositions. While such an insignificant deviation could easily be glossed over, it is cited here in support of a Francophile leaning and interpretation, one that is already abundantly apparent in the French titles of the opus and its individual movements. 

There is also the matter of a quasi-legendary pedagogical lineage to be considered in the course of these closing words. A multi-generational succession of teachers—one of many that can be traced from Bach into the 20th century—extends from a late Leipzig organ student, Johann Christian Kittel (1732–1809, Erfurt), through Christian Heinrich Rinck (1770–1846, Darmstadt), to Adolph Friedrich Hesse (1809–1863, Breslau); and from Hesse continuing through Jacques Nicolas Lemmens (1823–1881, Belgium, Paris), to Alexandre Guilmant (1837–1911, Paris), and to Charles-Marie Widor (1844–1937, Paris); passed on in turn by Guilmant and Widor to Marcel Dupré (1886–1971, Paris). Notable from Dupré—and relevant to this discussion—is his recorded version of the Fantasy, registered and performed in an accumulative and glorious manner on the Cavaillé-Coll instrument of St. Sulpice, Paris, during his tenure as titular organist.⁹

And now, to end this autumn reverie of what-ifs—much in the same manner as it began—on an inquisitive note: Is it possble that the tradition of a broadly romantic and accumulative interpretation could have been passed on and survived intact in its passage through such a fragile and tenuous teaching tradition, spanning over six generations from 1750 to the latter twentieth century, and onward?

Notes

1. Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician, Christoph Wolff (W. W. Norton & Company, 2001), p. 330. 

2. Ibid., p. 329.

3. Eventually Fantasy in D Minor, S. 903 (without Fugue).

4. Notably Nicolas de Grigny’s Livre d’orgue (1699, Paris, reissued 1711), Bach’s hand copy dating from ca. 1713.

5. See Example 2.

6. See Example 1.

7. See Example 5.

8. See  Examples 3 and 4.

9. See http://www.marceldupre.com/ CD: Mercury Living Presence recording of Marcel Dupré: Bach (Six Schübler Chorales, Fantasy in C Minor, Fantasy in G Major) Saint-Sulpice, 1959, available in CD reissues.

A Selected Bibliography

David, Hans T., and Arthur Mendel, ed. The Bach Reader, A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1945, 1966.

_____________. The New Bach Reader, A Life of Johann Sebastian Bach in Letters and Documents, revised and expanded by Christoph Wolff. New York & London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.

Gaines, James R. Evening in the Palace of Reason. New York: Fourth Estate, Harper Collins Publishers, 2005.

Gardiner, John Eliot. Bach, Music in the Castle of Heaven. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013.

Geiringer, Karl. Johann Sebastian Bach, The Culmination of an Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Griepenkerl, Friedrich Conrad, and Ferdinand Roitzsch, ed. Johann Sebastian Bach, Orgelwerke, Vol. IV. New York: C. F. Peters Corporation, 1950.

Widor, Charles-Marie, and Albert Schweitzer, ed. Johann Sebastian Bach, Complete Organ Works, Vol. III. New York: G. Schirmer, Inc., 1913.

Wolff, Christoph. Bach, Essays on His Life and Music. Cambridge (MA) & London: Harvard University Press, 1993.

____________. Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001.

An apologia and acknowledgements

In order to provide a degree of continuity and to avoid undue interruptions in the flow of the text, end notes have been kept to a minimum. All details and factual accountings have been extracted from the sources cited above; they are often repeated in more than one source, sometimes with degrees of variation that have required editorial pruning. The Journal entry is a fictitious creation, a work of imagination. In his Evening in the Palace of Reason, James R. Gaines offers an exemplary format for overlapping multiple perspectives and layers of narration, and for combining recorded facts with speculative premises and intuitions to produce an animated account of historical events. His model has provided a structural guidepost for the essay featured here, offered informally as an example of speculative musicology. There are sure to be lacunae great and small in these words, for which all due apologies are offered.