Harpsichord Notes

Larry Palmer

2019 East Texas Pipe Organ Festival features a harpsichordist

The genial genius who founded and organizes the annual East Texas Pipe Organ Festival in Kilgore, Texas, engaged a brilliant young artist to present a recital on Wednesday, November 13, as the first music on what happened to be my birthday. John Walthausen, a name new to me, opened the musical festivities of this mid-festival day with a splendid recital, the first half of which was played on my 1987 Willard Martin Saxon double instrument. When Lorenz Maycher telephoned to ask if I knew of an available German-style instrument I responded, “Yes, I was intimately familiar with an owner, and, yes, I would be happy to loan it to the festival for the recital.” Since a tornado had rocked the part of Dallas in which I live several weeks earlier causing immense damages tallied in the millions of dollars—including some lesser but still dramatic ones to my house—I had not intended to travel in November, but the harpsichord addition to the program as well as a Harold Lloyd silent movie to end that Wednesday schedule roused my interest, and I had decided, with the transportation help of a kind neighbor, to spend that one day in the organ capital of East Texas.

It was a pleasure to hear such a well-chosen program that the artist began by playing a magnificent rendition of J. S. Bach’s Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue in D Minor. It was a performance that I believe might have been greeted with favor by Isolde Ahlgrimm (what higher praise could I offer?). Following that work with Polonaise in C Minor by Wilhelm Friedemann Bach and two sonatas in D major by Domenico Scarlatti (K. 490, Cantabile, and K. 119, Allegro)—with superb control of the fiendishly difficult cross-hand top-of-the-keyboard notes—made for an exciting and jubilant conclusion to the first half of the concert.

Equally masterful was the ensuing organ half of the program, played on Roy Perry’s own instrument, Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company Opus 1173. It was thoughtful programming to follow the all-Baroque first half with an all-Romantic second half: Prelude and Fugue in G Minor by Brahms, two of the Sketches for the Pedal-Piano, opus 58, by Schumann, and a completely masterful rendition of Liszt’s magnum opus, Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen Zagen.

I was especially delighted to learn that the New York-born Walthausen was a fellow Oberlin alumnus (2011, only fifty-one years after I graduated) who furthered his education at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Paris, studying organ with Olivier Latry and Michel Bouvard, following that with a master’s degree in historical performance from the Schola Cantorum of Basel, Switzerland, where he studied harpsichord with Jörg-Andreas Bötticher and organ with Lorenzo Ghielmi. An amazingly widespread series of concerts performed all over the world followed for Walthausen, including a year in Japan as organist in residence at the Sapporo Concert Hall in Hokkaido. He is currently organist and choirmaster of St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Glenmoore, Pennsylvania. I, for one, look forward immensely to hearing this young artist again—and soon.

John’s inclusion of Friedemann Bach’s composition encouraged me to play through the complete set of twelve such pieces (found in my music library in six folios published as part of the Hausmusik series of the Oesterreichischer Bundesverlag Wien, on paper now as old as I am it seems, and equally crumbling, perhaps). Among these, several seem more suited to the fortepiano, but a goodly number of the earlier and shorter pieces sound wonderful on the harpsichord, and I encourage their inclusion in future recitals, both by John and the rest of us in the harpsichord community.

2019 Harpsichord Notes: topics and page numbers

January, page 8: Harpsichord Notes in The Diapason: A bit of history

February, pages 12–13: Jane Clark: “D’un goût nouveau:” The influence of Evaristo Gherardi’s Théâtre Italien in Francois Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin

March, page 11: A fascinating book by Beverly Jerold, Music Performance Issues 1600–1800

April, pages 12–13: The Diapason Harpsichord columns in history part 2: front-page features

May, page 11: CD review of Le Clavecin Mythologique; A major instrument collection (Hatchlands, Surrey, UK) and Claire Hammett

June, page 11: The Cambridge Companion to the Harpsichord; Replica of George Washington’s harpsichord returns its sounds to Mount Vernon

July, page 11: Scarlatti’s Cat in London, Vienna, and Texas

August, page 11: From A to Z Harpsichord Notes: A duo and The Harpsichord Diaries; Twentieth-century harpsichord concertos; One Hundred Miracles by Zuzana Ru˚žicˇková (with Wendy Holden)

September, page 11: Program planning

October, page 13: Celebrating Herbert Howells

November, pages 12–13: Giving thanks from A to Z, part 1

December, page 11: Giving thanks from A to Z, part 2.

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As we begin another year I have several questions for our readers. 1) Have any of you played one or more of the Friedemann Bach polonaises? 2) Does anyone know of a pedal harpsichord for sale (a separate unit with an organ-like pedalboard that is placed beneath the regular harpsichord comprising one or two manuals—the pedal unit consisting of independent registers? John Challis built several of these, most famously one for E. Power Biggs, and I am seeking such an instrument for a current student of mine). Meanwhile, best wishes for an exciting 2020 and the many musical adventures that surely lie before us during the coming months.

Michael Delfín

Prelude to Twilight

Dark Harpsichord Music, by Colin Booth. Soundboard, SBCD 203, 2023, $16.98. Available from 
ravencd.com.

Jean-Henri D’Anglebert: Prelude in G Minor; Armand-Louis Couperin: Allemande in G Major; Johann Mattheson: Air in G Minor; Louis Couperin: Prelude in F Major; Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach: “Andante” from Sonata in F Major, W62/6; D’Anglebert: Prelude in D Minor; Johann Sebastian Bach: “Chaconne in A minor” from Violin Partita in D Minor, transcribed by Booth; François Couperin: “Prelude in A Major” from l’Art de Toucher le Clavecin; Louis Andriessen: Overture to Orpheus; Louis Couperin: Passacaille in G Minor.

This album is the replication of a program that Colin Booth presented in the Great Hall at Dartington, England, on a summer’s evening in 1995, a performance involving gradually dimmed candlelight throughout the program until only twilight remained with birdsong accompanying. With such an evocative title, one may wonder what music will unfold and how, and Mr. Booth’s compelling album invites the listener to sit with and absorb equally compelling music. As one discovers throughout this album, the moving selection of harpsichord works is never truly “dark,” i.e., without light. Rather, Booth’s own note on the Andriessen work speaks to the theme of the entire program: “exploring at length, and in a limited range of tonalities, a mood of subtly varied introspection.”

Without question the objets d’art of this album are the prelude and postlude of sounds of nature, and the improvisatory links between works complement the atmospheric approach to programming. Booth’s brief improvisatory links guide the listener through both changes of key and of nuance between the works of Mattheson and Louis Couperin, and then C. P. E. Bach, D’Anglebert, and J. S. Bach. The shortest of links is a mere five seconds and opens an unmeasured prelude in a relative minor key to the piece preceding it. The other two links are over twenty seconds and are comprised of more elaborate improvisatory material.

After an atmospheric presentation of birdsong, the first sound of the harpsichord is a D’Anglebert prélude non mesuré in G minor. Booth gently acquaints the listener with this new timbre emerging from the twilight, and his pacing is a foretaste of the sweetness to come. Armand-Louis Couperin’s “Allemande in G Major” from the 1751 Pièces de clavecin smoothly follows the D’Anglebert and graces the listener with its richness and suave character. Couperin’s exploration of the lower, richer, and indeed darker register of the harpsichord renders Booth’s selection of the work highly appropriate. A graceful “Air” from the second of Mattheson’s two suites in G minor from the 1741 publication follows. It is an ambling piece and contains a blending of French and German styles common with Mattheson’s works. Booth tastefully changes registration between a single 8′ and the lute stop. (If one listens to Booth’s other albums, one will find considerable creativity in registration.)

The grander of Louis Couperin’s two préludes non mesuré in F Major follows a brief improvisatory link, and the listener is invited to sit with a soliloquy-like statement from the pen of the first remembered Couperin. Booth’s timing in works of this genre becomes somehow predictable, especially in ornamental gestures that contain repeated notes, which come across as accents more than graceful additions to texture. In the French dance movements, one may observe a similar predictability in Booth’s inegalité, occasionally preventing one from enjoying these magnificent dances as entire structures comprising significant harmonic events and flowing passagework between them.

The linking of French claveciniste repertoire to a German Rococo sonata movement may strike the listener as odd, but the suave nature of the C. P. E. Bach “Andante” movement follows the smoothness of the Couperin prelude well. Booth’s graceful ornaments and creative fermata improvisations serve the placement of this German andante between two French claveciniste works. The subsequent D’Anglebert prelude arrests the listener with its registration and its frequently breathless pacing. The agitation Booth brings to this performance perhaps prepares the listener for the scope of the Bach “Chaconne” to come, following an appropriately solemn link. Perhaps the pièce de résistance of this album is Booth’s transcription of Bach’s monumental “Chaconne in D Minor” for solo violin, transcribed to A minor in this rendition. Booth’s performance effectively highlights the dance element to this massive work and allows the listener to follow the natural unfolding of Bach’s writing. Rather than create a virtuosic transcription à la Busoni or merely replicate the backbone of the work à la Brahms, Booth both honors and amplifies Bach’s original harmonic and motivic structure, adding material idiomatic to the harpsichord’s sound and textural capabilities while leaving the core of the work intact. Booth also utilizes his harpsichord’s registration to great effect, thus showcasing contrasting sections and highlighting the work’s structure. This is among the most engaging performances on this album and worth the lengthy listen. (Interested harpsichordists may find Booth’s transcription in the key of D minor at https://www.colinbooth.co.uk/.)

From the darkness of the chaconne’s end, a gentle glimmer of light emerges in the François Couperin “Prelude in A Major” from L’Art De Toucher Le Clavecin. Some of the Bach’s energy may have carried over into this performance, as Booth takes a little time to settle into the differing affect of the work. The only contemporary piece on the program, Overture to Orpheus, comes from the pen of Louis Andriessen, a Dutch composer recognized for his early serialism and neoclassicism, and later for his minimalism. Booth’s performance emphasizes the score’s tranquillo markings, perhaps placing the mind at ease as twilight falls. Whether the piece ponders, dances, races, or waits, it must be experienced as Andriessen himself described it, “prelude-playing.” The number of improvisation-based works on this album lead up to this one piece, which surpasses them all in length and as such must not just be listened to, but absorbed, even accepted.

The final work on the album, a gentle Passacaille in G Minor by Louis Couperin, cleanses the palate and allows the listener a final respite before a night’s rest. The sweetness of the middle G-major section in particular lifts the spirit from the darker sonorities of this album, and the final G minor seems less heavy than the solemn register of the harpsichord may indicate. The final birdsong becomes all the more meaningful. Having listened to several of Colin Booth’s albums, I can confidently state that this is my favorite so far. From start to finish, its originality engages the listener, who is transported into a mysterious twilight and beyond.

Larry Palmer

Marches for March

March: the third month of the year in the Gregorian calendar—the only month with a name that has a musical connection. March: a ceremonial procession in 4/4 time. March: a title for a musical composition (unfortunately not found very often in works for harpsichord). While I was searching for a subject to explore this month these definitions popped into my mind. What follows are the titles and some comments about pieces that include the word “march” in scores that I found in my library of harpsichord music.

From Henry Purcell (1659–1695) we have three short examples to be found in his Miscellaneous Keyboard Pieces (edited by Howard Ferguson for Stainer & Bell, Ltd.): in the “Second Part” of Purcell’s Musick’s Hand-Maid (1689) numbers 2 and 4, each comprising sixteen measures in C major, and from A Choice Collection of Lessons (1696/1699), number 19 (also in C)—twenty-two more measures, all three entitled “March.” Ferguson’s second of the two volumes that present his scholarly edition of Purcell’s complete works for harpsichord does not offer a single march in the composer’s Eight Suites. I mention this because I had also perused a Kalmus reprint of the same Eight Suites edited by the Austrian musicologist Ernst Pauer (1826–1905) who took the liberty of adding one of the aforementioned marches as an addition to Purcell’s Suite No. 5 in C Major—a rather extended addition since Pauer also assured that each of the two sections would be repeated by removing the optional repeat marks in both A and B sections, and then making them seem obligatory by printing each section a second time.

From the 1725 Little Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach we find three short marches: numbers 16, 18, and 23. In order: twenty-two measures in D major and the same number of measures in G major, both credited to C. P. E. Bach; and twenty-eight measures in E-flat major, the composer unknown—all presented in the Henle Urtext Edition. Interestingly those three marches are vastly outnumbered by nine menuets in this iconic volume of Bach family favorites.

Moving on to France, the only François Couperin entry in the “Marche-Fest” is to be found in that great composer’s Fourth Ordre: “La Marche des Gris-vêtus.” I asked author Jane Clark if I might quote her description of this marching piece as it appears in the book (written with Derek Connon), The Mirror of Human Life. With her generous permission,

"A drinking song in honor of the famous regiment with grey uniforms, the words of which go: ‘Let us sing the glory of the grey coats; Let us sing their virtues when we drink, and pay respect to their strength.’"

[My thanks to the author who informs me that a third edition of this indispensable guide to Couperin’s harpsichord works is forthcoming from London’s Keyword Press.]

More French music: from composer Jean-François Dandrieu (1682–1738) we find “Les Caractères de la Guerre” as the final work in his Premier Livre of which “La March” (eighteen measures) is the second section of this suite (Edition Schola Cantorum, 1973, edited by Pauline Aubert and Brigitte François-Sappey). And finally, an inspired and moving composition by Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799), who signed his manuscript “le Citoyen [Citizen] Balbastre, 1792—the first year of the Republic”—obviously an astute survivor of the French Revolution and a patriotic one, as well: Marche des Marseillois et l’Air Ça-Ira. A wonderful, vigorous setting of the French national anthem with variations, it is one of my favorite recital pieces, especially during July. This march has Scarlattian hand crossings and a bass C with a downward squiggly line, marked “Canon” (for which I love to use my elbow to make it a thundering tone cluster, usually enough to wake any dozing persons among the listeners). Originally this work was designated for fortepiano, but it also works well as a harpsichord piece (Edition Le Pupitre 52, edited by Alan Curtis for Heugel, Paris).

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There is a paucity of American-composed marches for harpsichord. A careful perusal of the indices in Frances Bedford’s magisterial catalogue of twentieth-century works for harpsichord and clavichord did not include even one such work for the revived instruments. And so I turned my attention to the earlier history of music on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Eureka! At least our forefathers’ musical tastes will provide several entries for this month’s topic!

In W. Thomas Marrocco and Harold Gleason’s 371-page survey, Music in America: An Anthology from the Landing of the Pilgrims to the Close of the Civil War 1620–1865 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964), chapter nine includes both words and music for several delightful additions to our keyboard repertoire. First and foremost is the one-page gem “Washington’s March” from George Willig’s Musical Magazine (Philadelphia, 1794–1795)—eighteen measures of pompous musical delight that I have enjoyed playing on both harpsichord and organ. Early versions of our national anthem and other patriotic songs are also of interest, and at least two Civil War favorites could be adapted for keyboard use: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” (1863) and “Marching Through Georgia” (1865).

Although it does not have the “m” word in its title I think several voluntaries by William Selby (1738–1798) deserve to be mentioned. The composer, English born, emigrated to Boston, where he became organist of King’s Chapel from 1771 until his death. The beautiful Voluntary in A Major was published in London circa 1770 in a volume of pieces by a host of contributors—ten pieces in all “for the Organ or Harpsichord.” The Selby piece is also included in the book by Gleason and Marrocco and is also the second of two Selby Voluntaries edited by a more recent organist of King’s Chapel, the composer and early music enthusiast Daniel Pinkham (1923–2006). This edition was published by E. C. Schirmer Music in 1972.

Moving southward from New England, I can also recommend a delightful rarity that I purchased from a shop in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in 1975: A Little Keyboard Book: Eight Tunes of Colonial Virginia Set for Piano or Harpsichord by James S. Darling, who was, for many years, organist and choirmaster of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. During my seven years of teaching in Virginia (1963–1970) we met fairly frequently, and both of us had the good sense to purchase a harpsichord from America’s master builder William Dowd.

For Darling’s choice of pieces from Colonial Virginia he selected eight from the manuscript books of the Bolling family, plantation owners in Buckingham County. Following introductory material the first musical item is “Trumpet March,” and the last piece, “Lord Loudoun’s March.” Also of interest to historically oriented musicians is the publication here of the only known work (“Minuet”) by Peter Pelham, organist of the Williamsburg church and jailor for the municipality. This delightful small volume was published in 1972 by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (ISBN 0-910412-93-6).

Lastly, I recommend the volume Baroque Folk by Willard A. Palmer (1917–1996), “Moderately Easy to Early Intermediate Piano Solos That Teach”—sixteen familiar melodies arranged in Baroque style (Alfred Music Co., New York, 1969). Opening with three two-part inventions and two minuets, a single march is based on the Israeli National Anthem, Hatikvah. Only one page in length, it is cleverly constructed of imitative counterpoint, and I should think that quite a few of our readers may be organists for Jewish houses of worship as well as for Christian denominations and might, therefore, find special appreciation for their usage of this iconic tune. I will not disclose the other familiar melodies that are presented in new guises in this clever and charming volume. I use several of the arrangements quite often, especially for encores, and it is always a good way to send one’s listeners on their ways, chuckling and humming a favorite tune.And so, dear readers, enjoy the employment of marches in March, and, just perhaps, we might be able to encourage (or commission) one of our American composers to write a new march for use in the year 2021? I have my own particular favorite in mind—or perhaps if we cannot achieve that lofty goal we might just improvise or commit to paper or screen something that we invent for ourselves. Happy March!

Steven Young

Steven Young is a professor of music at Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, where he teaches courses in music theory and directs the University’s choral ensembles. He is also organist at St. Martin’s Episcopal Church, Providence, Rhode Island. Young has presented papers and performances for regional and national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society, and the American Choral Directors Association. He research interests focus on late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French organist/composers, and he has written several feature articles and reviews for The Diapason. He also wrote the liner notes for Christine Kamp’s series of recordings of the organ works of Louis Vierne on the Festivo label. Young has recorded several of the works of Boston organist/composer Henry M. Dunham on the AFKA label.

In October 1926, just a month before his death, Aloÿs Claussmann chatted with an old friend, Claude Nievre, a writer for La Montagne, a newspaper whose office was directly below the apartment where Claussmann lay dying. Nievre had written an article titled “Un grand talent méconnu, Claussmann, musicien et compositeur” (An underestimated talent, Claussmann, musician and composer).¹ Among other things, Nievre made the point that Claussmann’s many years of service to his community of Clermont-Ferrand should be rewarded by naming him to the Legion d’honneur, the highest civilian award given by the country to celebrate accomplishments given in service to one’s country. Claussmann had spent fifty years selflessly serving the musical and religious community of Clermont-Ferrand with little or no thought to promoting his own career as performer, teacher, or composer. Sadly, the award was never granted to Claussmann, despite the efforts of all his friends and colleagues. However, his tireless efforts bore many wonderful fruits in terms of quality students, artistic performances, and respected compositions.

A native of the Alsace region of France, born in Uffholz on July 5, 1850, Claussmann began piano lessons at age 11 with his uncle, a local musician and teacher. Following those lessons, Claussmann studied at the Petit Séminaire de La Chapelle-sous-Rougemont. Between 1868 and 1870, he studied with organ virtuoso Eugène Gigout at l’École Niedermeyer in Paris, during which time he was awarded the premier prix in both piano and organ.

Interrupting his studies, Claussmann returned to Uffholz to perform his military service in the Franco-Prussian War in 1870 and 1871. When Alsace was lost to Germany at the end of the war, Claussmann opted to retain his French citizenship. He returned to Paris to complete his studies, where he distinguished himself as both performer and composer, earning the grand prix de composition in 1872 from l’École Niedermeyer.

In 1873, the position of maître de Chapelle at the cathedral of Clermont-Ferrand became available. Claussmann applied and was offered the position. He accepted it, and remained in Clermont-Ferrand for the entirety of his career, possibly to his professional detriment. Nonetheless, according to one writer, Claussmann wasted no time in establishing himself as a first-rate musician.²

In 1877, shortly after his appointment, the cathedral acquired a new organ with three manuals and forty-eight ranks of pipes, built by the Merklin firm, one of the most respected in France. The dedication program featured Edmond Lemaigre, then titular organist of the cathedral, and Alexander Guilmant, renowned organist. Claussmann participated as well, conducting two motets, including a Salve Regina of his own, newly composed for the event, and performing two organ works, one by François Benoist and another new work, also written by Claussmann, Offertoire.³

Claussmann’s musical work was not limited to his position at the cathedral. In 1881, Claussmann established the short-lived Société Philharmonique. Though enjoying only a brief existence, this may have been the first orchestra to provide written critical program notes for its concerts, attesting to Claussmann’s scholarly inclinations.⁴ Shortly thereafter, in 1886, he assumed position as organist titulaire, following Edmond Lemaigre’s relocation to Paris. It was at this tribune that Claussmann remained until his death in 1926.

During his tenure he composed the majority of his works for the organ (approximately 350 pieces), nearly a hundred for the piano, a fair number of songs, and a few other works for chamber ensembles and orchestra.⁵ Claussmann’s next big success was the premiere performance of his commissioned drame lyrique, Pierre, l’Eremite, composed to commemorate the 800th anniversary of the First Crusade (the text of the work was by the Abbé Raynaud). Written in 1892, the work awaited its premiere for three years. According to the reports, it was a resounding success, performed at least two times (May 15 and 17, 1895). The reviewer, while admitting that one could not analyze such a large work on one hearing, admired its beauty in both composition and performance.⁶ The performance featured an orchestra of sixty, a chorus of 200, and soloists, all led by Claussmann. It must have been quite the tour de force!

In 1909, Claussmann was appointed director of L’École municipal de Musique, and he remained its director until 1918 when he suffered from a serious health crisis that disabled him for nearly three months, at which point he was named honorary director, and Louis Gémont assumed directorship.⁷ The formation of this school was fraught with difficulties. Prior to its founding, there were two competing institutes, the Petit Conservatoire, headed by Jean Soulacroup, and the École de musique, directed by Louis Gémont, both of whom were considered for the position of director of the École nationale de musique. After several years of contentious battles about the school, and once it was decided to move ahead with the formation of a national music school that would align itself with the Conservatoire nationale in Paris, a closed door meeting took place, and Claussmann was named as director to the pleasure of many community members, and the displeasure of others, including the mayor of the city.⁸ Claussmann accepted, but wrote, with apparent jocularity, that if the conservatory were to open as planned, the undertaking would be substantial, and it would force him to cut his annual vacation very short. He did exactly that, and served with distinction for many years.

Little is known of Claussmann’s personal life; there are few letters and no personal papers. In 1877, he married Marguerite Barthélémy, and they had a daughter, Madeleine, in 1878. It is presumed that his wife predeceased him, based on the eulogies given at his funeral.⁹ According to Joseph Desaymard, writer and critic, who was his pupil and friend, Claussmann possessed a gentle spirit, keen intellect, good sense of humor, and youthful attitude.¹⁰ He rode his bike to work every day, and until the final few years of his life, he appears to have possessed good health.

Unfortunately, little is known about the critical reception of his work, at least in France. The local newspaper of Clermont-Ferrand rarely commented on musical events. However, the Société nationale included his Sonate pour violon et piano on a concert in May 1906, and the composition and performance received an extensive review reprinted in the Revue pratique de Liturgie et de Musique sacrée. The reviewer praised Claussmann’s melodic gift, his interesting harmonies, and his well-crafted forms.¹¹ This seems to be the generally held view of Claussmann as a composer.

Claussmann’s vast output of organ works includes music for any number of occasions. The two large collections, Cent pieces pour orgue ou harmonium, opus 34, and Cent pieces pour grand orgue, opus 66, encompass smaller works designed for liturgical usage, such as Entrées, Communions, and Sorties.¹² Undoubtedly he used these pieces himself over his fifty-year career at the cathedral.¹³ Even in these smaller works, Claussmann demonstrates substantial contrapuntal skill. The Entrée in D Minor, which opens opus 66, is only 63 measures long, yet it displays Claussmann’s fascination with counterpoint and with Franck, as the theme appears twice, in related keys, and then, upon returning to the tonic, is subjected to canonic treatment throughout (Example 1). The ninth piece in this set provides further evidence of Claussmann’s meticulous craftsmanship. While only 29 measures long, it has a tripartite form in which the return of the opening A section receives a new accompaniment with the melody moved to the left hand. In terms of larger organ works, Claussmann penned two sonatas, a Suite pour orgue, and several Livraisons containing varying numbers of pieces likely intended for concert use. These include fantaisias, pastorales, marches, toccatas, and many others. In these works one sees Claussmann’s wide-ranging inventiveness with their well-developed themes and solidly crafted counterpoint.

While steeped in the style of the Romantic era, the organ music often displays surprising originality. From the earliest opera, Claussmann combines both French and German styles, which may be the result of his earliest influences in Uffholtz, an area of France that reflected a great deal of Germanic influence due to its shared border with Germany. For example, opus 16 is entitled Orgelstücke rather than Pièces pour orgue. In the music, one often finds well-crafted melodies, a staple of the French tradition, fused with the intricate counterpoint that is intrinsic to German composition, making Claussmann’s organ music unique for its time.¹⁴ Claussmann’s fusion of the aforementioned styles is evidenced in Scherzo in G Major, opus 33, no. 4. While making use of a rather extended model of the scherzo and trio form—ABA′CA′, which resembles more of a Rondo—the typical French scherzo would not make use of the extensive counterpoint found in the fugal exposition that comprises the B section (in B minor). The fourth section, which itself is a small three-part form in the key of E-flat major, has a very lyrical melody for the outer parts and, again, the composer briefly employs some imitative polyphony in the middle portion.

Though Claussmann’s music is influenced by the style of César Franck, as evidenced in the Allegro symphonique, opus 33, no. 2, whose opening recalls Franck’s Pièce heroïque (Example 2), Claussmann often moves into unusual areas of tonality through his inspired use of chromaticism, following on and expanding the chromatic harmonic language of Franck. One even finds an example of progressive harmonic movement in some of Claussmann’s works, such as Pastorale, opus 26, no. 3, which begins in E major and ends in A minor, delivering an unexpected conclusion.¹⁵

In the United States, as early as 1892, one finds references to performances of Claussmann’s music. A concert review in the Indianapolis Journal accorded the Scherzo in A Minor a favorable assessment.¹⁶ (One assumes that the reviewer had heard other Claussmann pieces.) Several of the pieces from opus 26 were dedicated to American organists, including Clarence Eddy and William C. Carl, both former students of Alexandre Guilmant. (It is possible that Guilmant helped make the connection by recommending the works to Carl. Guilmant participated in the dedication of the organ at the Clermont-Ferrand cathedral in 1887 where he would have heard Claussmann’s music. It is also possible that Gigout recommended his music to Carl.¹⁷) The first volume of opus 16 was reviewed favorably by Everett Truette in The Organ, 1893, who wrote, “Three extremely interesting pieces . . . which are written somewhat in the style of reveries, and contain many passages of striking originality.”¹⁸ (It was of this Fantaisie in C Minor that Gigout wrote his praise of Claussmann.¹⁹) It is likely because of the work of Carl and Truette, who published some of this music in The Organ and other collections, that Claussmann’s music achieved some measure of popularity in America. Early twentieth-century newspaper accounts indicate that several of Claussmann’s works were performed quite regularly, especially Easter Dawn and Grand Choeur for organ and his Magnificat for choir.

Among other comments on Claussmann’s works, Pierre Balme linked him to a progressive aesthetic:

In his day, Claussmann had difficulty with being a ‘pioneer,’ even in spite of the example of his co-disciple Fauré, who remained all through to the end of his time, as innovative as younger composers. But why not have others reported rather how much he (Claussmann) was, in his prime, so profoundly ahead of the taste and knowledge of audiences and even music professionals? Twenty years ago, he was not afraid of modifying his composing technique according to the latest developments of the impressionist school.²⁰

Connecting Claussmann to the Impressionist school seems to be a stretch, though examples of augmented triads and unexpected harmonic connections are evident, as is the use of non-functional harmony, as witnessed in the frequent use of the raised fourth and fifth scale degrees, creating the sensation of whole-tone harmony. If this is what Balme refers to, then it is possible to put Claussmann in that category. However, Claussmann’s music is thoroughly steeped in the chromatic harmony of the period, and he often makes unexpected harmonic connections, such as moving between C major and F-sharp major for the middle section of the Fantaisie in C Minor, opus 10. These unexpected relationships may also be seen in the transitional passages of Au Crépusucle from opus 33, where the dominant seventh chord of the tonic G-flat resolves to a D major sonority, which is then repeated whole step below, obscuring any sense of the tonic (Example 3). If this fluidity of key relationships is considered “impressionistic” by the writer, then the term applies.

Overall, Claussmann retains a consistent style throughout his other music; one finds equally challenging tonal relationships in most pieces. Additionally, his treatment of form does not necessarily conform to expectations of his era, but a clear structure is always evident and logical. One might apply musicologist Carlo Caballero’s argument about Fauré, who he claims maintained the consistency of style throughout his works, which Fauré believes was “a crucial property of any music that is truly original,”²¹ and apply that to Claussmann as well. Hervé Desarbre would agree, according to the liner notes to his recording of selected organ works, as he claims that Claussmann’s style did not change much over the years.²² Claussmann retained remarkable consistency in his technical style and tonal language beginning with the major organ works from opus 10 and continuing through the late opera.

Many of Claussmann’s works have been recently republished, some with needed editorial emendations, as the printed editions contain numerous errors (especially clef change indications).²³ As there appear to be no extant manuscripts, it is difficult to know Claussmann’s intentions. Both B-note Musikverlag and FitzJohn Publishing have reproduced many of his works. IMSLP (www.imslp.org) has a reasonable collection available, and France’s Bibliothèque Nationale Gallica site had started to digitize many other works.

Whether Claussmann would have enjoyed the success his contemporaries did had he remained in Paris is a question that can never be answered. He made his choice, apparently without regrets, and enjoyed the respect of the community he served for nearly fifty years. The music of this underestimated talent attests to the mastery of his craft and the fertility of his imagination, and deserves to be re-examined and given a place in the concert repertoire.

Notes

1. Claude Nievre, La Montagne, October 12, 1926, p. 2.

2. Th. Mourgue, “Profil d’artistes: M. Claussmann,” Le Moniteur, June 29, 1892, p. 2.
“. . .il vient s’etabilir chez nous où on ne tarde pas à reconnaitra en lui un musician de premiere ordre.”

3. J. Merklin, Le cathédrale de Clermont-Ferrand et ses orgues, Lyon: Impr. de A.-L. Perrin et Marinet (1878), p. 28. As with others, Offertoire served as a common title for works; Claussmann wrote several.

4. Joseph Desaymard, Avenir du Plateau Central, November 8, 1926, writing Claussmann’s obituary (No page citation as this comes from the Bibliothèque de la Patrimoine of Clermont-Ferrand collection MS 1654). Present research has yet to find concert announcements or programs presented. In 1885, another community orchestra was formed which enjoyed much success, directed by Jean Soulacroup.

5. Cataloguing the works of Claussmann has presented a challenge. Pierre Desaymard made an attempt at this in the 1980s but seems to have missed some pieces. Four of the works from opus 33 do not appear in any listing of his, possibly because they were published by the English firm J. Laudy and Co. See Desaymard, Bibliographie des oeuvres d’Aloys Claussman, Bulletin historique et scientifique de l’Auvergne, vol. 1.90, pp. 305–321 (1981).

6. Le Moniteur, May 16, 1895, p. 2, and May 18, 1895, p. 2. According to Louis Gémont, the work was performed again in 1925 (Le Moniteur, November 11, 1926, p. 2).

7. In a letter to Paul Dukas, Claussmann thought that he was close to death at that time (Bibliothêque Nationale, Paris, W-48).

8. Jean-Louis Jam, “Aux origins d’une succursale provinciale du Conservatoire de Paris,” Bulletin historique et artistique de l’Auvergne, vol. XCIX (1998), pp. 127–156. An excellent and somewhat entertaining chronicle of the events.

9. Le Moniteur, November 11, 1926, p. 2.

10. Joseph Desaymard, “Le Mort de Claussmann,” L’Avenir, Nov. 9, 1926, p. 2.

11. Alexandre Georges on “Aloys Claussmann,” Revue pratique de liturgie at de la musique sacrée, nos. 103–104 (1926), p. 169.

12. These sets appear to be based upon Franck’s L’Organiste, but Claussmann’s pieces are more technically advanced.

13. In one edition of Le Courrier Musical, opus 64 was listed among the pieces that an organist should play.

14. While the fugue was certainly not an uncommon form in French organ music of this period, it was used relatively infrequently. Franck composed one fugue for the organ; he relied on canon and melodic juxtapositioning as his preferred contrapuntal devices. In examining the Widor organ symphonies, with their numerous and varied movements, one finds only two fugues, and those appear in the earliest of the symphonies.

15. This work is dedicated to R. Huntington Woodman, an American organist who studied with César Franck in 1888.

16. Indianapolis Journal, March 11, 1894, p. 8, featured a review of an organ recital by
W. H. Donley. I believe this refers to the Scherzo in B Minor from the Deuxième livre de la première collection, opus 10.

17. Gigout wrote glowingly of Claussmann’s work and was pleased to be the dedicatee of one of his pieces. See Mourgue, op. cit.

18. Everett E. Truette, The Organ, vol. 1, no. 4 (August 1892), p. 95, reviewing the Fantasia in C Minor, First Meditation in B Major, and Andante in D Major.

19. See Morgue, op. cit.

20. Pierre Balme, “Aloÿs Claussmann,” L’Auvergne littéraire, artistique, et historique, January 1926 (vol. 85), p. 15–17.

21. Peter Cirka, A profound identity: evidence of homogeneity in Gabriel Fauré’s thirteen piano Nocturnes. Unpublished DMA paper, Boston University, p. 9, and p. 26 (2015).

22. Hervé Desarbre, Aloys Claussmann Organ Works, Disque Mandala MAN 4927, 1997.

23. An example of the need for good editing appears in the Sérénade for Cello and Piano, opus 49. The cello part and the piano score have completely different notes and keys in places.

Sally Gordon-Mark

Born in New York City, Sally Gordon-Mark has French and American citizenships, lives in Europe, and is an independent writer, researcher, and translator. She is also a musician—her professional life began in Hollywood as the soprano of a teenage girl group, The Murmaids, whose hit record, Popsicles & Icicles, is still played on air and sold on CDs. Eventually she worked for Warner Bros. Records, Francis Coppola, and finally Lucasfilm Ltd., in charge of public relations and promotions, before a life-changing move to Paris in 1987. There Sally played harpsichord for the first time, thanks to American concert artist Jory Vinikour, her friend and first teacher. He recommended she study with Huguette Dreyfus, which she had the good fortune to do during the last three years before Huguette retired from the superieur regional conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, remaining a devoted friend until Huguette passed away.

During Sally’s residence in France, she organized a dozen Baroque concerts for the historical city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, worked as a researcher for books published by several authors and Yale University, and being trilingual, served as a translator of early music CD booklets for musicians and Warner Classic Records. She also taught piano privately and at the British School of Paris on a regular basis. In September 2020, she settled in Perugia, Italy. In March 2023, Sally was the guest editor of the British Harpsichord Society’s e-magazine Sounding Board, No. 19, devoted entirely to the memory of Huguette Dreyfus. You can download the magazine here:  https://www.harpsichord.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/SB19.pdf.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series appeared in the March 2023 issue of The Diapason, pages 18–20; part 2 appeared in the April 2023 issue, pages 14–19; part 3 appeared in the July 2023 issue, pages 10–15.

She was life itself in her way of being and in her playing.²

Most of our colleagues—and we agree—consider Huguette Dreyfus the best harpsichordist of our time since Wanda Landowska. Why? . . . She is above all an artist, a musician who plays for pleasure. It is the way she has of expressing herself—with precision, ease, elegance, variety, and spontaneity. . . . She has a very great attribute: inasmuch as she takes what she does very seriously, she never seems to take herself too seriously.³

This press review was written in 1967, only five years after Huguette had given her first solo recital in Paris. Later that year, another critic referred to her as “the great lady of French harpsichordists, as she is called.”⁴ In that relatively short period, her concerts and recordings had catapulted her to the top of her profession in France.

Huguette’s life could have turned out quite differently. She and her family, being Jewish, lived in France’s “free zone” during the occupation by the Nazis until 1942. When it became necessary to leave, they crossed the Swiss border in December, most likely having traversed the mountains on foot as so many others did. The trip was made in glacial temperatures, for that winter would turn out to be one of France’s coldest in the twentieth century.⁵ She had just turned fourteen when she and her family sought shelter in Switzerland with relatives.⁶ After the war, they settled in Paris.

In 1953 Huguette was granted a scholarship at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena to study with Ruggero Gerlin, who would be her only harpsichord maître, for a total of six summers. In September of that year, Huguette played in the annual end-of-term concert in the Sala Bianca of the Palazzo Chigi-Saracini, which housed the Accademia. A critic was in the audience and spoke briefly of her performance in an Italian newspaper, using words like “grand perfection,” “great agility,” and “always brilliant.”⁷ There was another positive review the following year, when she performed again in the palace. However, she tumbled from her cozy nest in Siena when she participated in the Geneva international competition in October 1958.⁸ The only contestant remaining by the second round, she gave a public concert on October 1,⁹ receiving her first tepid review:

The young French harpsichordist has a very polished technique and animates her playing with an agreeable rhythmic cadence. Yes, all very proper—controlled and musical. Yet given the very impersonal character of the harpsichord, it should be forced to shake things up in a certain manner to be convincing. Yet Miss Dreyfus treats her instrument with very great respect.¹⁰

The reporter criticized her frequent registration changes as being distracting for the audience; Huguette had made five in each movement of the Bach partita, for example. For the third round, Huguette gave a concert in Geneva’s Victoria Hall on October 3, for which she received another lukewarm review, describing her playing as “prosaic.” However, Huguette took the criticism to heart and less than four years later, she received reviews like the following regarding her first solo recital in Paris:

Truly Miss Dreyfus is attached to her instrument, which she plays with exquisite art according to her nature, which is uncommon. What’s more, she captures, with her acute intelligence, the articulation of the phrases. . . .¹¹

This young harpsichordist has a way of playing that is very captivating! A balanced playing, precise, vigorous, as musical as you would wish for! . . . . Huguette Dreyfus knows the resources of her instrument. She exploits it wisely with rare talent, serving musical expression and formal clarity. Thus, the name of Huguette Dreyfus merits being remembered.¹²

In 1964 when the distinguished English musicologist Lionel Salter reviewed one of her Rameau LPs recorded in April 1960 and released in 1963, he praised her choice of registrations:

Huguette Dreyfus gives a whole string of admirable performances, never putting a finger wrong, with an unhurried sense of style and with every ornament convincing and clean as a whistle: her playing has vitality and strong rhythmic control, without ever becoming inflexible, and above all she has excellent taste. Her phrasing is musical, her touch varied, and her registration, while subtly varied, is an object lesson to harpsichordists with fidgety feet or who are afraid to let the music speak for itself. She uses 16-foot tone extremely sparingly, and then in entirely appropriate places.¹³

Never again would “prosaic” be used to describe her! Reviewing a concert she gave in Rome, an American newspaper there reported:

The vitality of Mlle. Dreyfus’s playing was, fortunately, equal to all tests, and she kept her audience in the palm of her hand to the very end. . . . Mlle. Dreyfus’s timing is as keen as that of a trapeze artist, and the arch of her phrase can be as breathtaking as his line of flight. Consequently she has no need of gaudy, tricky registrations. . . . Playing of this caliber is very rare.¹⁴

By the mid-1970s Huguette was on an equal par with the best musicians in Europe and was spoken of as “undoubtedly the greatest French harpsichordist”¹⁵ of her generation. It is evident from a review in 1976 that her personality was clearly integrated into her artistic persona:

. . . Huguette Dreyfus, always great. This musician is a model of sincerity and enthusiasm. She would not know how to be opaque and vague . . . .¹⁶

Parisian harpsichord-maker Reinhard von Nagel remembers:

Huguette on stage: certain harpsichordists have to win the heart of their public during a recital. Not Huguette! The few dancing and buoyant steps she took from coming offstage to the harpsichord on stage gained the audience’s attachment even before she touched the first note. And this even in the dark. In the summer of 1974, a concert was scheduled in Faro. The Portuguese dictatorship had ended several weeks earlier. Well, the night of the concert, an electrical black-out deprived the city of light. Never mind. Huguette played the sonatas by Seixas by heart, in the dark.¹⁷

A critic also spoke of the warmth she communicated to her audience:

Marvelous Huguette. When she sits at the keyboard, you feel her presence and availability immediately. . . . Huguette Dreyfus is warm and at ease from the beginning, which quickly puts the audience on her side. In action, she becomes totally a part of the instrument and a certain “aura” surrounds her, you feel her being a musician from her head—a pretty profile—to the tips of her fingers. Her style? Voluptuous, like her silhouette.¹⁸

For a lady of large renown, Huguette was small of stature, attractive and (bon vivant that she was) voluptuous in youth, plump in later years. She was immaculately groomed and stylishly dressed, often wearing clothes tailored for her. Although highly intelligent and cultured, there was nothing arrogant in her manner: she was confident, yet modest. Meeting her, the first thing that drew you to her was her luminous smile and the cheerful warmth in her eyes. Huguette inspired trust. She was entirely present when you spoke to her—focused, direct, engaged. Her keen wit was accompanied by an infectious laugh, which sometimes burst through her words before she could finish a sentence. She was even subject to uncontrollable giggles on stage, as described here by a British diplomat:

Eduard Melkus gave a most successful Bach evening with his cheery chum Huguette Dreyfus. The papers said how nice to go to an old music concert where the players were obviously enjoying making the music—we had a violin/harpsichord sonata, an unaccompanied violin partita, and two harpsichord concerti—with one instrument to each part instead of a whole orchestra—most enjoyable. The Dreyfus has very nimble fingers and appears to be an infectiously happy person: she soon had us all loving her. . . . Melkus broke a music stand when trying to make it higher: the Dreyfus got a fit of the giggles and the whole audience did.¹⁹

Huguette’s frequent performance partner, harpist Marie-Claire Jamet, recalls her having to leave the stage momentarily during a concert Huguette was giving with Marie-Claire’s husband, flautist Christian Lardé, and baritone Jacques Herbillon. She was on the brink of an uncontrollable fit of laughter, probably due to something Jacques, an impenitent prankster, said or did. Another time, when she and Marie-Claire were traveling by car, they laughed the entire way until they reached their concert venue.²⁰

Matthew Dirst, an American concert artist, teacher, and former student, remembers:

Huguette’s generosity and wicked sense of humor often worked in tandem: I enjoyed many a ride back to Paris in her car after a long day in Rueil-Malmaison, during which she would regale me with stories. Much laughter would ensue, and more than once we had to slow down so she could compose herself before continuing down the road. I also learned more than my fair share of off-color French slang during these commutes, thanks to her lively tutelage.²¹

Huguette loved to travel. It suited someone with her unquenchable curiosity and intense interests. After she acquired a car, she would take a month off to drive through France, Germany, Switzerland, and Italy on her way to Siena for Gerlin’s classes. With her foot on the gas (and she did like to drive fast),²² Huguette would tour the countryside, visit places of interest, see friends along the way. She made detailed notes in her tiny diary of everything from appointments, travel expenses, and phone numbers to recipes and fragments of melodies.²³

A self-proclaimed “chatterbox,” Huguette spoke quickly, her words tumbling out with enthusiasm. Her focus was clearly on her companions and on the outside world. She followed what other musicians were doing, which is why in May 1955 she travelled to the Netherlands just to attend a concert by Janny van Wering. Huguette’s energy seemed to know no bounds. From the beginning of her adult life, she rehearsed, performed, and taught during the day, then saw friends or attended concerts in the evening. If she was ever tired or sad, she did not let it show. As light as her demeanor was, however, it cloaked character traits of a tougher nature. As harpsichordist Jill Severs remembers:

When I first heard Huguette play in class, I was struck by her confidence and competence, and during the following magical years that we spent at the Accademia Chigiana in Ruggero Gerlin’s harpsichord class, it was clear that she possessed a steely ambition. Huguette had a keen wit and was always a kind and helpful friend.²⁴

Friendship occupied a very important place in Huguette’s life.²⁵ No matter how busy, she always maintained correspondence with friends and former students all over the world, often writing letters, postcards, and Christmas cards by hand. She kept up her friendships with classmates from the 1950s, i.e., Kenneth Gilbert, musicologists and radio producers René Stricker and Myriam Soumignac. Other friends included performers with whom she had worked from the early 1960s onwards: Eduard Melkus, Jacques Herbillon, Christian Lardé, Marie-Claire Jamet, Alfred Deller, Luciano Sgrizzi, and Luigi Fernando Tagliavini. Close friends she could see less frequently were Zuzana R˚užiˇcková and her husband, Victor Kalabis. When the Soviets marched into Prague, she offered them a sanctuary, imploring them to come live with her, saying everything she had was theirs, but Zuzana and Victor did not want to abandon their native land. Zuzana never forgot this kindness:²⁶

How could I not remember Huguette, charming, cheerful, and friendly Huguette Dreyfuss [sic], another great artist and friend. How many evenings we spent chatting over a glass of red wine in a cheese place in Paris at the corner of “rue de Londre,” how many competitions as the jury members we have suffered through with the help of mutual support, her wonderful sense of humor, and her generous musicianship. And then came August of 1968: “Come, come together with Viktor, everything will be provided—the apartment, piano, harpsichord.” Perhaps there is nothing to add, this speaks for itself about our Huguette, whom even my students (whom I love to send to her) adore as well as perhaps anybody who has gotten to know her.²⁷

Mstislav Rostropovich, who had moved to Paris in 1978, was another close friend of Huguette’s.²⁸ Sylvia Spycket, a harpsichordist and classmate in Paris and Siena, introduced her to her brother Jérôme and to her sister Agnès, whom Huguette would see frequently.²⁹ Jérôme, a singer in Nadia Boulanger’s ensemble for a time, was a musicologist and the biographer of Clara Haskil, Nadia Boulanger, and Kathleen Ferrier. Agnès was a distinguished author and archaeologist, specializing in the Orient. Sadly, Sylvie, who had also studied with Dufourcq and Gerlin, passed away in her 40s in 1960.

A singular and touching friendship was one that Huguette experienced with a French-Canadian Catholic priest, Abbé Pierre Raymond, whom she had met at a concert in his parish, Saint Boniface, in Manitoba, in February 1963. She was on tour for the first time, playing with the Paul Kuentz orchestra. Abbé Pierre was a cultured, attractive, and articulate man. During the 1960s he was known for his gifts in literature, music, and drama, in the exercise of his role as a teacher and also as an inspector of the schools in his region. He was a fervent supporter of classes being given in French and vigorously campaigned for the survival of the French language in Manitoba. The priest initiated a correspondence with her that would last until 1970.

In the summer of 1964, on a trip to Lourdes, he went to Paris where he had lunch with Huguette and her family in their apartment on the Quai d’Orsay by Pont Alma. Although they were repeatedly invited to visit him in Manitoba to explore the province and stay with his sister Noëlla, who was a nun, teacher, and organist, they never did. In a letter dated August 23, 1965, Abbé Pierre compared the life of an artist with the life of a priest:

I am not unaware that your life as an artist demands the utmost from you. When you have been breathed on by genius and want to make the most of yourself for the happiness of others, it means total dedication, the giving of yourself without half measures and without repentance. Truly a priesthood, neither more nor less. . . . it is music that brings man closest to the ideal, which is cohesion of the hearts of all living beings.

In October that year, he would write to her, the “dear little sister of his soul:”

Take care of yourself, be prudent. But continue to transmit your smile and that of your art. The blessing of the artist has something of that of the great priest! She has a mission to warm the earth by the most profound Love there be!³⁰

In the school year of 1966–1967, Abbé Pierre obtained his master’s degree in theology from the University of Strasbourg. In his letters he expressed his hopes to be transferred to Vienna, but his request would be denied. There are no letters after 1970 in Huguette’s archives, and it seemed at the end that she was trying to discourage their friendship; as he became more and more solicitous about her work pace, she was slower to respond. He would remain thereafter in Manitoba.

In Paris, Huguette and harpsichord maker Claude Mercier-Ythier (1931–2020) sustained a professional relationship for forty-five years that benefited them both. They enjoyed a constant and amical friendship for a total of fifty-four years. Huguette first called on his services in 1962, the year that Claude, a native of Grasse in Provence, opened his store and workshop, A la corde pincée, 20 rue Vernueil, on the west bank of Paris, the first of its kind since the French Revolution. Building, restoring, and renting harpsichords, he also represented the Neupert company when Pleyel stopped making harpsichords. He maintained Huguette’s harpsichord, and since she did not travel with hers, he supplied her with instruments for recordings, concerts, and masterclasses, including an original harpsichord by Henri Hemsch (1754), her favorite, that he had restored.

Being able to play and record on a historic instrument at a time when copies of historic harpsichords were not yet being produced in France was a definite advantage that Huguette had over her rivals. It also helped place her at the forefront of the revival of early music, as did her tendency not to rely on printed editions but to consult original manuscripts at the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris. After Huguette’s death, Claude wrote a tribute to her:

I was proud to have known Huguette. We worked together for 45 years and toured France. How many people discovered the harpsichord thanks to these tours? . . . In certain places, the French were discovering this instrument for the first time. How many beautiful instruments did we discover in fabulous places—castles and convents? And how many unknown artists, composers of past eras, did she bring back to life? She was a woman with an iron will: I saw her give a concert at Saint Paul de Vence with a high fever. She didn’t give in. She had signed a contract, she owed a concert.³¹

The person to whom she was most attached was her brother Pierre, eight years her senior and a surgeon. When he died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of forty-six in 1967, it was a hard blow that took years for her to get over. Later that same year, her mother, aged only sixty-five, passed away. She and her cousin, Nicole Dreyfus, began to see more of each other, eventually becoming very close. When Huguette was eight years old and Nicole twelve, they played piano duets every Sunday. As Huguette described it:

My mother and I went to her house because Nicole had lost her father when she was very young. She was taking piano lessons too. My other great pleasure was playing duets, to improvise completely. . . . Nicole preferred the bass part; me, I was up in the high notes. For us, it was a magnificent pleasure.³²

When Nicole and her mother moved to Nice in 1937, their paths separated. Nicole would become a famous lawyer in France. Once reunited, she and Huguette were often together and took their vacations in exotic places.³³ Nicole accompanied her to the Villecroze summer sessions and was a welcome guest at dinners and parties hosted by Huguette’s friends and students.

Huguette does not appear to have socialized with her first early music teacher, Norbert Dufourcq (1904–1990), but she did stay in touch with him and often attended his organ concerts and seminars. As for Ruggero Gerlin (1899–1983), their relationship remained friendly but formal over the years. He was very reserved, but still, in 1960, the first year since 1953 that she was absent from his class in Siena, he wrote to say that he missed her a lot. They did see each other often in Paris once he resided there.³⁴

The teacher with whom Huguette did develop a close friendship with was Alexis Roland-Manuel, born in 1891. He was very sociable, often inviting his students to his home. When he died on November 1, 1966, his wife asked Huguette to play at his funeral. When her friends passed away, she felt the loss deeply, as was the case with Luciano Sgrizzi (1910–1994), a “walking encyclopedia” according to Claude Mercier-Ythier. It had been an important friendship to her:³⁵

One of the things I appreciated the most in Luciano Sgrizzi was his immense culture. He had an extraordinary knowledge of literature, and you could speak with him on any subject. He always had something to bring to the conversation. I think that when you are a musician, you have to avoid only caring and speaking about your instrument.³⁶

As for Huguette’s preferences in music,

I’ve loved Italian opera since I was young. I’ve always had a special liking for singing—the voices of others, of course. I would have liked to have been able to sing, but that was a gift I wasn’t given.

Huguette especially enjoyed music by Rossini, who she said had the same “visceral joy of living” as Scarlatti did (and as she herself did). She also enjoyed listening to the music of Corelli, Vivaldi, Schubert, and modern music too—“You can’t separate yourself from your own era.”³⁷ She frequently asked her student Maria de Lourdes Cutolo to play Brazilian music for her after class.³⁸ Her favorite composers to play, according to interviews and concert programs, were Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin, and above all, Johann Sebastian Bach and Domenico Scarlatti.

In July 1985 she was featured in a five-part radio program presented by Rémy Stricker on Scarlatti, whom she described as “life itself.” Huguette felt that his sonatas fell into three periods. In the first, he is “extremely virtuoso, very brilliant. The sonatas are very hard to play and full of pitfalls.” The middle period is a transitional period, where he is “more self-assured in his ideas and there are more slow movements,” and in the last, “we observe that Scarlatti has completely mastered his instrument.” She goes on to say:

While hand crossings are rare, there are still many leaps, which are hard to execute. Scarlatti uses the full range of the keyboard. He wants to bring out the instrument’s richness. The last sonatas, more brilliant, show a quality of ideas that the first didn’t have: the virtuosity of the performer tends to disappear before the virtuosity of the composer.³⁹

In another radio interview, Huguette said:

Domenico Scarlatti was a phenomenon in the history of music. As far as I am concerned, he is not comparable to anyone. . . there are explosions in his music—very often of joy. . . . The fact of being dramatic is also important when you have a lot of vitality. You cannot always live joyfully. . . there are melancholy moments that he illustrates magnificently, and above all, very gay and rapid passages become suddenly gloomy, and then he recovers the joy, which is, after all, very dionysiac. . . . Sometimes he plays with equilibrium. He pretends to come back to a form already used, and then goes off another way.⁴⁰

Huguette’s repertoire included not only music from the Baroque and Classical periods, but also twentieth-century pieces by Bartok, de Falla, Stravinsky, Distler, Poulenc, and Dutilleux. Henri Dutilleux (1916–2013) composed a piece in her honor, Les Citations, for oboe, harpsichord, double bass, and percussion—a second part to an existing work (Diptych). In 1991, while teaching at Villecroze Academy in the summer, which harpsichordist Kristian Nyquist attended, Huguette received newly composed pages of the music, a few at a time, from Dutilleux. Kristian observed that she was under pressure to learn it quickly for the premiere, which would take place at the Festival of Besançon on September 9 in the Church of Saint Laurent. Filmed for television and also broadcast on radio, the premiere would be performed by Huguette, Maurice Bourgue, Bernard Balet, and Bernard Cazauran; a recording would follow later.⁴¹ Kristian turned pages for her, enjoying being in the midst of the concert.⁴²

As the curtain came down on the twentieth century, the pace of Huguette’s professional life decelerated somewhat. But her enthusiasm and high spirits did not lessen. She continued to give concerts in France and Europe. In 1994 Huguette resigned from her positions at the principal music conservatories in Lyon and Rueil-Malmaison, but continued to teach at home and in the summer sessions of Villecroze. In 1997 three important CDs that she had recorded came out: Mystery Sonatas, Rosencrantz Sonaten, Sonates du Rosaire (on which Eduard Melkus played violin),⁴³ Le Clavier bien tempéré I,⁴⁴ and Das wohltemperierte Klavier II.⁴⁵

Former students were welcome to come for tea or coffee, cake, and animated conversations on Sunday afternoons; those visiting from other countries found themselves invited to lunch. Huguette continued to travel and attend museum exhibits and concerts. From time to time, she gave concerts and masterclasses, granted interviews, and participated in symposiums. She visited friends in Italy and continued to perform in annual concerts with the chamber orchestra of her old friend Eduard Melkus⁴⁶ in Vienna’s Albertina Museum. No one who knew her could imagine her vibrant current of energy ever diminishing or even vanishing.

To be continued.

Notes

1. “The Queen of Hearts,” title of a harpsichord piece by François Couperin, Pièces de clavecin IV, Ordre 21ème. 

2. André Raynaud, The Sounding Board, Number 19, May 2023, page 7. The British Harpsichord Society.

3. “Cinq minutes avec Huguette Dreyfus,” Musica, Journal Musical Français, Number 154, February 1967, Coupures de presse, BnF VM FONDS DRE 5 (3).

4. Il Informateur Corse, March 14, 1967, Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

5. “Trois grands hivers: 1940, 1941, 1942,” Le corps, la famille et l’État, Hommage à André Burguière. Myriam Cottias, Laura Downs, et Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (dir.) Presse universitaires de Rennes, 2010.

6. “The Life of French Harpsichordist Huguette Dreyfus, Part 1,” The Diapason, March 2023, page 18.

7. Newspaper and date unknown. Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit. 

8. “The Life of French Harpsichordist Huguette Dreyfus, Part 2,” The Diapason, April 2023, pages 14–15. 

9. Programs in author’s collection: Concours finals publics, Salle de Conservatoire, 1 October 1958 and Concours finals publics, Victoria Hall, vendredi 3 octobre 1958.

10. La Suisse, October 2, 1958, Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

11. Maurice Imbert, Officiel des Spectacles, January 31, 1962, Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

12. Claude Chamfray, Journal Musical Français, February 5, 1962, Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

13. Lionel Salter, The Gramophone, London, June 1964, Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

14. Daily American, Rome. Undated, but according to her concert programs and agendas, the review was most likely written in 1965. Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit. 

15. Jean-Louis Gazignaire, Le Figaro, Paris, July 10, 1976, Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

16. George Gallician, Le Meridional—La France, July 15, 1968, Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

17. Reinhard von Nagel, Sounding Board, Number 19, page 7, op. cit.

18. René Geng, Mulhouse, undated but probably written in 1978, since she only performed there in 1958, 1978, and 2009. Coupures de presse, BnF, op. cit.

19. Extract of a letter dated November 22, 1978, from Theo Peters, former Consul General of the British Government at Anvers in Belgium, to Gordon C. Murray, who then sent it to Huguette Dreyfus on March 16, 1979. BnF, Correspondance non classée, 1967–1979, VM FONDS 145 DRE-1 (17).

20. Marie-Claire Jamet, interview with author, November 6, 2022, Flayosc, France.

21. Matthew Dirst, December 22, 2022, Sounding Board, Number 19, March 2023, page 23, op. cit. 

22. Eduard Melkus, interview with author, Baden, Austria, February 2022. 

23. Agendes, BnF, VM FONDS DRE-3 (5).

24. Jill Severs, video interview with author, January 18, 2023.

25. Huguette Dreyfus, interview with Valentina Ferri, Symphonia—I concerti per clavicembalo, April 1998.

26. Zuzana Ružicková, interview with author, February 2017, Prague, Czech Republic.

27. Královna cembala, page 106, Zuzana R˚užiˇcková with Marie Kulijevyová, Zentiva, Czech Republic. This extract was translated from Czech into English by Kamila Valkova Valenta.

28. Laurent Soumignac, telephone interview with author, October 6, 2022.

29. Agendes, BnF, op. cit. 

30. Letters from Abbé Pierre Raymond to Huguette Dreyfus from 1964 to 1970, BnF, Correspondance non classée, 1944–1969, VM FONDS 145 DRE-1 (16). 

31. Livre d’or, Clavecin en France, https://www.clavecin-en-france.org/spip.php?article288. 

32. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Marcel Quillévére, “Les Traversées du Temps,” part 1, France Musique, March 7, 2012.

33. Having mentioned to students that she liked elephants after seeing them on a trip, Huguette ended up with a huge assortment of plush and ceramic elephants in all sizes that covered her pianoforte entirely.

34. Ruggero Gerlin, letter to Huguette Dreyfus, August 4, 1960, BnF, Correspondance non classée, op. cit.

35. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Valentina Ferri, op. cit.

36. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Myriam Soumignac, “Huguette Dreyfus: Portraits en musique,” France Musique, June 9, 1988, INA.

37. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Myriam Soumignac, op. cit. 

38. Maria de Lourdes Cutolo, interview with author, May 13, 2018. 

39. “Domenico Scarlatti, 2/5: La vie en Espagne 1720–1757,” presented by Rémy Stricker, Radio France, July 9, 1985, INA.

40. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Myriam Soumignac, op. cit.

41. Huguette’s complete discography is available at www.sallygordonmark.com and www.dolmetsch.com.

42. Kristian Nyquist, interview with author, March 5, 2022, Karlsruhe, Germany

43. Codex (Archiv Produktion), 453 173-2

44. Denon CO-75638/39, 1997

45. Denon CO-18037/38, 1997

46. The Capella Academica Wien, which Eduard Melkus in his 90s still conducts.

47. “My dear Miwako, Here I am back from an excellent stay in Hong-Kong with memories of a marvelous trip to Japan, in part thanks to you. I warmly thank you for your great kindness, both in the preparation of my voyage and during my stay. I especially appreciated your going out of your way to remain in Kyoto the last night. You facilitated the task of departure very much. Here, I am plunging immediately into a sea of work, running late and with problems of every sort, but that’s par for the course. My little Miwako, I wish with all my heart that your future will happen according to your desires, but I advise you to be alert and very prudent. That doesn’t prevent optimism at all. Keep your head high and be full of courage. With an affectionate kiss, Huguette Dreyfus.” (For more about the trip to Japan, see part 2 of this series, The Diapason, April 2023).

Sally Gordon-Mark

Born in New York City, Sally Gordon-Mark has French and American citizenships, lives in Europe, and is an independent writer, researcher, and translator. She is also a musician—her professional life began in Hollywood as the soprano of a teenage girl group, The Murmaids, whose hit record, Popsicles & Icicles, is still played on air and sold on CDs. Eventually she worked for Warner Bros. Records, Francis Coppola, and finally Lucasfilm Ltd., in charge of public relations and promotions, before a life-changing move to Paris in 1987. There Sally played harpsichord for the first time, thanks to American concert artist Jory Vinikour, her friend and first teacher. He recommended she study with Huguette Dreyfus, which she had the good fortune to do during the last three years before Huguette retired from the Superieur regional conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison, remaining a devoted friend until Huguette passed away.

During Sally’s residence in France, she organized a dozen Baroque concerts for the historical city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, worked as a researcher for books published by several authors and Yale University, and being trilingual, served as a translator of early music CD booklets for musicians and Warner Classic Records. She also taught piano privately and at the British School of Paris on a regular basis. In September 2020, she settled in Perugia, Italy. In May 2023, Sally will be the guest editor of the British Harpsichord Society’s e-magazine Sounding Board, devoted entirely to the memory of Huguette Dreyfus. For more information: www.sallygordonmark.com

Read Part 2 here.

Obstacles cannot crush me. Every barrier only fires my firm resolve. He who is fixated on a star does not change his mind.

—Leonardo Da Vinci¹

Huguette Dreyfus, France’s grande dame de clavecin, the self-proclaimed “inexhaustible chatterbox,”² slipped away silently near midnight on April 16, 2016. She was a world-renowned concert artist and teacher and the most important harpsichordist of her generation in France. Exuberant, intelligent, and quick-witted, her attention was almost always turned outwards, keeping her personal world out of the realm of discussion. In conversation, this tacit barrier was intuitively respected. Being unassuming, she spoke little about herself and even less about her past. Therefore, extensive research, interviews, and access to her archives in the Bibliothèque nationale de France were required in order to bring to light her rich and vibrant life. Revealed were the energy, courage, strength of will, and discipline with which she conducted herself from an early age.

Her birth certificate reads “Paulette Huguette Dreyfus,” but her doctor had made an error. Her parents had actually named her Huguette Pauline when she was born on November 30, 1928, in Mulhouse (Alsace, France). Her first ten years as the adored little girl of an upper-middle-class Jewish family were secure and full of warmth. Her father, Fernand, owned two feather factories, one in Mulhouse, the other near Vichy. Neither Fernand nor her mother, Marguerite (née Bloch), were musicians, but they did love to listen to music.³

Pierre, Huguette’s twelve-year-old brother and only sibling, took piano lessons. Huguette, aged four, asked for lessons too, but her mother told her that she was too young and only wanted to copy Pierre. However, the piano teacher, Madame Rueff, convinced her mother to give it a try, and it was soon understood that Huguette was motivated by music, not by her brother. At the end of the first lesson, she could read the notes. Because of health problems, Madame Rueff eventually recommended that Huguette study instead with the distinguished pianist Pierre Maire, a professor at the Ecole Normale in Paris, who also taught in nearby Epinal.⁴ Comfortable playing in public from the very beginning, Huguette participated in two of his recitals, one in 1938, the other on July 2, 1939, when she performed the third movement from Beethoven’s Pathétique Sonata.⁵ She was ten. Two months later, World War II erupted.

The Alsace region on the border of Germany was the first to be evacuated. Huguette’s father took his family to Vichy, where they had friends. There she took lessons from pianist André Collard.⁶ Huguette entered the Clermont-Ferrand music conservatory under a pseudonym, since Jewish children were not allowed to enroll. There may have been a teacher in Strasbourg who had connections there and referred her. When the Nazis commandeered the University of Strasbourg, its professors had already moved to the University of Clermont-Ferrand, which would become a hotspot of resistance. The now-nomadic Dreyfus family also spent time in Montpellier, where her brother was studying medicine.⁷

After Nazi soldiers occupied all of France in 1942, Huguette and her family crossed the Alps on December 10, settling in Lausanne where her father’s sister lived. She enrolled in the Lausanne music conservatory for piano lessons at the “virtuoso” level. When the war ended, she received an attestation from the conservatory to be able to take her final exams in Clermont-Ferrand in March and June 1945, which she did, receiving first prizes.⁸

Pierre moved to Paris in 1945, and sixteen-year-old Huguette joined him, enrolling at the Ecole Normale de Musique to study with concert pianist Lazare-Lévy, whose illustrious students had included Clara Haskil. He had been a student of Louis Diémer, an important exponent of early music in the late 1880s. In 1920, Lazare-Lévy had been named professor at the Paris Conservatory, but he was forced to give up his position during the Occupation, because of German anti-Jewish laws. His teaching was widely respected for being innovative and original with respect to fingering, technique, and analysis of music. Huguette later acknowledged his influence on her, particularly his guidance with technique. She concluded her lessons with him in June 1948, obtaining a diploma at the superior level.⁹ She continued with counterpoint and solfège at the Ecole Normale in the fall and got a job there accompanying the vocal class of a Madame Kedroff, most likely the well-known soprano, Irene Kedroff, who had performed in a quartet under the direction of Nadia Boulanger.¹⁰ In 1949, her parents moved to Paris, where her father purchased a large apartment in a stylish building at 91 Quai d’Orsay, on the banks of the Seine by Pont Alma. The family would live there for the rest of their lives.¹¹

For the school year of 1949–1950, organist and musicologist Norbert Dufourcq chose Johann Sebastian Bach as the subject of his advanced music history course at the Paris Conservatory. While the conservatory had once owned period harpsichords, twenty-four of them were burned in 1816 and twelve sold at auction in 1822.¹² Fortunately, Dufourcq was able to obtain the use of a Pleyel harpsichord for his classroom. Huguette enrolled in his class that year, as did other future harpsichordists: Sylvie Spycket, Laurence Boulay, and Anne-Marie Beckensteiner. Conductor Jean-François Paillard and singer Jacques Herbillon were also among her classmates. This intense focus on Bach’s music surely made an impact on her: out of the 117 recordings she would make, thirty-six would be of Bach’s works. Dufourcq inspired his class with a fiery enthusiasm that comes across on his radio programs;¹³ she described him as “impassioned and lively.” This class would forever alter the course of Huguette’s life—it was the first time she would lay hands on a harpsichord. 

Huguette took an aesthetics and music analysis class with Olivier Messiaen and a pedagogy course while at the Paris Conservatory. In autumn 1950, attracted by his personality, she joined the musical aesthetics class of Alexis Roland-Manuel. She had been listening religiously to his radio program, Le Plaisir de la Musique, transmitted live every Sunday at noon. This erudite composer, music critic, and radio broadcaster recognized her gifts and would become her ally; if anyone acted as her mentor, it would have been him.¹⁴

There was no harpsichord class at the Paris Conservatory, so Dufourcq created an unofficial one (referred to in conservatory records as an “annex”), inviting a former student, Jacqueline Masson, to teach it. Accompanied by her mother, Huguette auditioned for the class and was accepted along with Anne-Marie Beckensteiner and Laurence Boulay, but the class lasted for only eight months. On June 15, 1951, Huguette passed her exam, playing the Bach Toccata in F-sharp Minor, with Aimée van de Wiele, a former student of Wanda Landowska, on the jury.¹⁵ Huguette had abandoned the piano for the harpsichord, but she did not know where to turn for the training she needed in order to play an instrument and a repertoire so uncommon at that time.

In the years following World War II in France, conditions for early music performers were quite different than they are now. It was difficult even to listen to early music; there were few recordings, and urtext and facsimile editions were not available. Most radio transmitters had been blown up during the war, and LP records and television did not exist. In order to hear the music they were studying, students had to sight-read manuscripts they found in French archives and libraries, write them out themselves, and attend any concerts they could. There were no copies of historic instruments being constructed in France; contemporary harpsichords were expensive. Aix-en-Provence hosted the only music festival in the country, created in 1948. Since early music was little known to the public and there were few harpsichords, impresarios were skittish about scheduling concerts. Certainly there were not today’s masterclasses, and only the Schola Cantorum and l’Ecole de Musique Ancienne offered early music courses in France.

Either Dufourcq or Masson recommended to Huguette that she take Ruggero Gerlin’s summer class at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, Italy. An audition there was mandatory, but she could not leave Paris. In October 1951, having survived the war, Huguette’s father was killed when he was struck by a truck in front of their apartment building. Her brother was temporarily replacing another doctor in the south of France, so it fell on Huguette to help her mother while she continued to work and pursue her studies.¹⁶ However, the following year she successfully auditioned for Gerlin. The Accademia granted her the first of three scholarships to assist with her travel and living expenses in Siena, there being no fees to pay.¹⁷

In June 1953, Huguette completed Dufourcq’s comprehensive course—studies in French and foreign vocal and instrumental music—as well as Roland-Manuel’s course, receiving nothing but the highest marks. On July 15, she arrived in Siena. Classes were scheduled annually from mid-July to mid-September. The Accademia had been founded in 1932 by Count Guido Chigi Saracini in the palace where he resided, because he “adored music but detested traveling,” according to Huguette. Operas and nightly concerts were given in the palace theater. The Accademia had a library, well stocked with books and music scores, a notable collection of musical instruments, and an important art collection. To Huguette, it was like being in a dream.

Having been granted the first of four scholarships, Jill Severs entered the class in 1953 along with Huguette, Jacqueline Masson, Françoise Petit, Sylvie Spycket, and Anne-Marie Beckensteiner. Kenneth Gilbert joined them the following year. The class remained small every year. Huguette audited classes by George Enesco and Andres Segovia. Students she met over the years from other classes included a twelve-year-old John Williams, Narciso Yepes, and Claudio Abbado. Jill remembers, “After the war, to discover Italy in the early 1950s was a revelation; a new world of warmth, beauty, colour, hope and optimism.”¹⁸ The summers spent in Italy affected Huguette deeply, as did the warm Italian temperament. Every morning she would go to the same bakery for coffee and the Siennese specialty, panforte. If she did not appear, it was assumed that she was ill, and the owner would bring her a tray of tea and sweets. Huguette would later say that with memories like that, she could never have been a pessimist.¹⁹

Ruggero Gerlin, born in Venice, had come to Paris to study with Wanda Landowska in 1920. He eventually served as her teaching assistant, and they often performed together on European tours. During the lessons at the Accademia, Jill Severs heard him sometimes refer to Landowska as “ma mère.”²⁰ Their close collaboration was cut short by World War II. Landowska, fleeing the Nazis, left for New York in 1940, and the following year, Gerlin returned to Italy. He settled in Naples, where he taught harpsichord at the prestigious Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella. After the war, he returned to Paris where he stayed until his death in 1983.

Although his “admiration for her was without limits,” Gerlin did not use or teach Landowska’s technique, which surprised Huguette. He also preferred a Neupert to a Pleyel, Landowska’s favorite, but Huguette did not ask him why. He was very sensitive, and if he thought his response could be construed as criticism of Landowska, Gerlin would withdraw into himself, according to Huguette.

Gerlin’s classes were held in French, and Huguette found them intense and tiring.²¹ There were three classes a week, lasting four hours each, during which the students remained silent.

I recognize, having taught a lot since, that he was absolutely correct in imposing this. Even if the students are talking about things concerning the class, it is very disturbing for the professor and very disturbing for the students’ concentration. So we were in prayer for four hours and we learned a ton of things. Gerlin was extremely meticulous. . . . He had an intelligent way of teaching fingering. . . . Above all, the fingering had to be adapted to the interpretation, that is to say, to the musical phrase.

The students generally worked on music by Bach, Rameau, Couperin, and Scarlatti, the quartet that would dominate Huguette’s concert programs later.

At first, the class shared a Cella harpsichord, “a sort of false copy of a Pleyel made by an Italian maker.”²² Jill remembers it being hard to play expressively on the Cella with its hard and unresponsive touch. It was later replaced by a Neupert, which was “extremely different from a Pleyel” and was for Huguette “a complete discovery,” an improvement on the Pleyel. The Neupert was “called the Bach harpsichord at the time, 8′ and 4′ above, and 8′ and 16′ below.”

Gerlin was extremely meticulous. . . . We could spend hours on two measures for the quality of the sound. Touch was extremely important, fingering, analysis of a work. . . . At first, the interpretation was left to the discretion of (the student), which was discussed at length. He did not always agree and if he didn’t, there was no question of arguing afterwards. . . . In the end, he always won.²⁴

But his comments were always respected. Jill Severs has kept her copies of music with fingerings he noted, all this time.

Although his manner was reserved and his moods not always easy to fathom, Gerlin was very gracious. According to Jill Severs, neither silence nor pieces were imposed. The silence came naturally as a result of the intensity of the lessons and the concentration they required, and students could choose to play the pieces that they had selected to prepare. To her, his lessons were a source of “discoveries and inspiration.”²⁵ If he was reserved in his expression of emotions, he always spoke passionately about music.

Anne-Marie Beckensteiner, who had married Jean-François Paillard in 1952, took the class the following year, while her husband searched for manuscripts in Italian libraries. She later wrote:

Gerlin’s lessons were exciting, and he noticed Huguette’s touch very quickly, her “pretty little round hand,” as he used to say, and had her show her hand position to us as an example. We began with the (Bach) inventions with two and three voices, and Huguette’s facility in playing them so easily, with so many colors, with such facility of expression and phrasing, overjoyed Gerlin. . . . He did not content himself with the inventions, very soon—Scarlatti. And what a school it was for us!!! The Count, all dressed in white, often proposed musical evenings. (Huguette) had an unquenchable thirst for music and the harpsichord was truly “her” instrument.²⁶ 

Each summer session ended with a concert in which Huguette, Jill, and Kenneth Gilbert were always invited to play. Count Guido Chigi Saracini was usually in attendance. As Jill Severs recalls, “Those chosen to perform in the beautiful white and gold Sala di Concerto were presented with an enormous bouquet of red or white carnations.”²⁷ Gerlin would be Huguette’s sole maître, and she attended his classes in Siena for a total of eight summers.

From 1954 on, Huguette worked tirelessly, playing continuo and accompanying other artists in concert. She also taught privately, an average of ten students a month. Although her days were filled with appointments noted in her neat, roundish penmanship without flourishes, her evenings were spent going to the opera and concerts. With virtually no teacher ten months out of the year, one of the ways she studied was by listening to music. 

Her day began at 8:00 a.m. at the Salle Pleyel, where she rented a practice room.²⁸ Huguette joined her first ensemble, the Quatuor Instrumental de Lutèce, in 1954. In January 1956, they recorded a disc, her first, of unpublished Boismortier and Naudot sonatas, fruits of the research encouraged by Dufourcq. She also played continuo in Robert Dalsace’s ensemble Fiori musicali, the Fernand Oubradous Orchestra, Maxence Larrieu’s Instrumental Quartet, l’Orchestre Lamoureux, and Le Collegium Museum de Paris, directed by Roland Douatte. 

On July 28, 1956, invited by Roland-Manuel, she played in a chamber group on his program, Le Plaisir de la musique, the first of 194 radio appearances. Wanting to learn more about performance practices, Huguette studied for three years with Antoine Geoffrey-Dechaume, an important figure in the early music revival. Having been initiated into early music by Arnold Dolmetsch, he studied period treatises and published an influential book at the time, Les Secrets de la Musique Ancienne. She liked him and thought him interesting, but stopped seeing him finally because she could not bear his “absolute fanaticism” with regard to historical performance practices.²⁹ Nevertheless, what she did learn from him, based on French music and texts, was important because it included basso continuo. She was also in frequent contact with the French musicologist Marcelle Benoît, another student of Norbert Dufourcq.

In November, she would turn thirty, the usual age limit for conservatory studies and harpsichord competitions. If she were to have a career, she would have to distinguish herself. She needed an instrument of her own. Ever since childhood, she had been determined to be a musician. Huguette was doing everything she could to lay the foundations for a career, but the clock was ticking.

To be continued.

Notes

1. Les Carnets de Léonard de Vinci (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1942), volume I, page 98 (translation by the author).

2. Huguette Dreyfus, radio interview by Marcel Quillévéré, “Traverses du temps,” France Musique, Paris, 2012.

3. Françoise Dreyfus, interview by the author, Paris, July 25, 2016.

4. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, Paris, December 8, 2008.

5. Recital program in the author’s personal collection.

6. Having studied with Paul Dukas, Alfred Corton, Yvonne Lefébure, and Nadia Boulanger, Collard became an eminent pianist, as did his daughter, Catherine Collard.

7. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit. 

8. Bibliothèque nationale de France, VM Fonds 145 DRE-3 (12). 

9. Ibid.

10. Ibid. Irene Kedroff and her family had emigrated from Russia to Paris in 1923, where her father formed the Quatuor Kedroff consisting of Irene, her parents, and her cousin Natalia.

11. Françoise Dreyfus, interview, op. cit.

12. Florence Gétreau, “Les précurseurs français: Moscheles, Fétis, Méreaux, Farrenc, Saint-Saens,” Wanda Landowska et la renaissance de la musique ancienne (conference in March 2009), under the direction of Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger. Musicales Actes Sud/Cité de la Musique, Paris, October 2011. 
citedelamusique.fr/pdf/insti/recherche/wanda/pdf_complet.pdf.

13. “Concerts de Paris,” Radiodiffusion Télévision Française, March 10, 1960, INA ID PHD88011289.

14. Huguette Dreyfus, video interview by Rémy Stricker, June 7, 2015. Youtube.

15. Olivier Baumont, “La classe de clavecin du Conservatoire de Paris,” La Revue du Conservatoire, 30/11/2016, URL: https://larevue.conservatoiredeparis.fr:443/index.php?id=913.

16. Françoise Dreyfus, op. cit.

17. Accademia documents in the author’s personal collection.

18. Jill Severs, “Tribute to Kenneth Gilbert,” Sounding Board xv, The British Harpsichord Society, https://www.harpsichord.org.uk/sounding-board-issue-15/.

19. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit.

20. Jill Severs, video interview by the author, August 24, 2022.

21. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit. 

22. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Wanda Landowska symposium, Paris, March 5, 2009. 

23. Jill Severs, video interview by the author, August 8, 2022.

24. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, op. cit.

25. Jill Severs, interview, op. cit.

26. Anne-Marie Beckensteiner-Paillard, her tribute to Huguette Dreyfus, https://www.clavecin-en-france.org; also her interview by author, Saint-Malo, October 23–25, 2016.

27. Jill Severs, “Tribute to Kenneth Gilbert,” op. cit.

28. Agendas (1955–1967), Bibliothèque nationale de France, VM Fond 145 DRE-3 (5). 

29. Huguette Dreyfus, interview by Denis Herlin, op. cit.