Harpsichord Notes

Program planning

I write this column just as July is about to give way to August; even as a retired academic, this autumnal month nurtures my urge to begin making plans for musical programs of the fast-approaching fall semester! It was my custom through all fifty-two years of university employment to present my faculty recital on the second Monday of September—one week after Labor Day. Sometimes I played both organ and harpsichord, occasionally only one or the other.

This past summer has been especially full of planning (and playing) organ recitals on two very special instruments. One is the 1762 Caetano-Oldovini single-manual organ housed in the Meadows Museum of Art, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, an instrument originally in Portugal’s Evora Cathedral, and, just incidentally, the oldest playable pipe organ in Texas. My two demonstration concerts for the Organ Historical Society during its first conference to be held in the Lone Star State and my tenth annual organ recital program in the TGIF Concert Series of Santa Fe’s First Presbyterian Church, a program and lecture that concluded the tenth anniversary celebration of the Fisk pipe organ, Opus 133, were two separate events that required differing repertoire to show the capabilities of these two very different instruments.

The choices that were made from the organ repertoire are no different than those I usually make when developing programs for harpsichord concerts. Thus, I hope that my thoughts on planning and audience reactions may be of some interest and use to our readers, no matter which instruments they may utilize.

First and foremost, I would suggest that lengthy programming of music by only one composer is generally best reserved for recordings (which allow the listener to choose from the selected repertoire and use the on/off switch if necessary). It seems to me that only a very few composers (such as J. S. Bach) are able to fill an entire program’s span and keep the audience’s attention without a danger of ensuing boredom. A lengthy work such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations is usually accepted with sincere affection and continued interest, especially if it can be done in my favorite form of performance for this monumental work: dividing the playing with another player, each of the two alternating variations on two different harpsichords. While I have only done this once with a brilliant graduate student, it seemed to me that the somewhat contrasting timbres of the two instruments and the respite it gave to each of us as players was beneficial in many ways.

As I was attempting to decide what I would want to play in Santa Fe this past July, I was inspired by an art exhibit that had been mounted earlier this year by the Meadows Museum, entitled Dali—Poetics of the Small, 1929–1936. It comprised a generous collection of works small in format that surveyed the great artist’s output during those early years of his career. The exhibition did not travel to any other venue, but an illustrated catalog is available from the museum, should one wish to investigate the visual stimulation that I tried to emulate with similarly shorter musical compositions from a wide variety of composers.

Thus Poetics of the Small did provide a program of short pieces in many styles and genres. Variety of this sort and careful attention includes choosing pieces both in major and minor keys (plus, perhaps, an occasional piece that detours to yet another idiom—maybe utilizing a mode), the variety of which may keep the ears free from boredom, open, and listening. Thus my Santa Fe program lasted about forty-five minutes (with the rubric that applause was to be withheld until the final chord was sounded), and it consisted of works by composers Healey Willan, César Franck (the program’s one lengthy piece, Fantaisie in C, which is made up of short sections), J. S. Bach, Herbert Howells, Dame Ethel Smythe, Germaine Tailleferre, Calvin Hampton’s Consonance for Larry (1957)—my first commission to the Oberlin classmate, for whom it was also his first commission—and Maurice Duruflé’s Fugue on the Bells of Soissons Cathedral, which I dared to end with a triumphant final major chord, rather than the repeated minor one.

The demonstrations of the 1762 organ were also presented within stringent time limits and with the necessity of including an audience-sung hymn, a requirement for every OHS convention program. Fortunately fulfilling my expressed desire for variety, it was possible to devise a twenty-five-minute program that did just that: a Tiento by Cabanilles was followed by my SMU colleague Simon Sargon’s Dos Prados (From the Meadows) composed at my suggestion in 1997—a stately pavane with variations that utilized every stop on the organ and showed, with particular beauty, the treble half-stop Sesquialtera that allows a melody to be played using the keys from middle C-sharp to the organ’s top C while playing an accompaniment using the notes from middle C down to the lowest C in a bass short octave. Also included were sonatas by Scarlatti and Seixas, the hymn Pange Lingua, and a rousing frolic by Lidon, using the full organ to give all the volume that one could possibly want.

So, I suggest that a wide-ranging variety of musical ideas can keep an audience interested in our historic instruments (or in the modern replicas thereof).

Another idea that I have been pursuing during my long career is the occasional introduction of quite unexpected works from the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century repertoires. I have mentioned some of these previously in various Diapason articles, but has anyone followed through with this idea? I would be interested in hearing from readers who may have done just that. Do not forget that Chopin composed a short Fugue in A Minor, found in his keyboard works; Schuman’s Fugue III on BACH from the organ works requires only a few pedal passages, all of which may be negotiated with the left hand on the harpsichord. Works by Herbert Howells, particularly his Lambert’s Clavichord, contain a selection of delightful pieces that may be played on any keyboard instrument (as I can attest to words that came directly from the composer’s mouth when I first queried him in his Royal College of Music studio in London), plus two volumes of Howells’s Clavichord that comprise many pages of beautiful music to be explored.

Of the Revivalist works, do not eschew Ferruccio Busoni’s Sonatina for Cembalo—not the easiest piece to adapt to the harpsichord, even though he mentions our instrument in the title, he manages to write as least several notes that do not exist on any harpsichord in my collection of instruments . . . . So rewrite a measure or two if needed, but enjoy the piquant harmonies and the very idea that this well-known musician felt compelled to write for our instrument. Francis Thomé’s Rigodon still ranks as one of the earliest pieces to be designated for harpsichord, as does Mulet’s Petite Lied, which has been published in all its small-format glory in an issue of this very journal.

For more recent works I return often to Duke Ellington’s A Single Petal of a Rose (dedicated to Antoinette Vischer, although it had been written earlier for Queen Elizabeth II). It is a piece that is, to my knowledge, unpublished except for the facsimile in a book about the Swiss patroness. I base my own performance copy on an arrangement sent to me in 1985 by Igor Kipnis, who credited jazz great Dave Brubeck as co-arranger. I make many adjustments to cope with wide hand stretches and to keep the feeling of a jazz improvisation, and I can report that it is always an audience toe-tapping favorite.

Among a host of contemporary composers I have my favorites such as Vincent Persichetti, Gerald Near, Neely Bruce, Glenn Spring, Rudy Davenport, Knight Vernon, Timothy Broege, and William Bolcom—all of whom write beautifully and knowledgeably for the harpsichord. To peruse the literally hundreds of possible twentieth-century works, see Frances Bedford’s magisterial catalog, Harpsichord and Clavichord Music of the Twentieth Century  (Fallen Leaf Press, Berkeley, California, 1993).

Celebrating Herbert Howells

Born on October 17, 1892, Herbert Howells lived until February 23, 1983. While he was seeking information needed to write his book on Domenico Scarlatti, Ralph Kirkpatrick found several Scarlattis listed in a Spanish telephone directory, phoned them, and discovered that they were, indeed, descendants of the great master. Imitating that search for knowledge, I found Howells’s address and phone number in the phone directory for greater London and made my telephone call to his Barnes home during a visit to the UK in 1974. I have often thought that Mrs. Howells, by this time hard of hearing, may have thought that I was Herbert’s biographer, Christopher Palmer, when she directed me to contact her husband in his studio at the Royal College of Music. I made an appointment for the next day, and, with the utmost delight, spent one of the most stimulating and memorable visits of a lifetime, one that initiated a foundation for several subsequent meetings, and ultimately resulted in my commissioning the Dallas Canticles for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas, the only set Howells composed for an American parish church. As our friendship blossomed he also transferred to me the copyright for his glorious Dallas “Magnificat” and “Nunc Dimittis,” and we had quite a prolific correspondence about the various legal matters involved.

One of my reasons for wanting to speak with Herbert was that he had never responded to my written questions about the persons named in each of the twelve pieces that comprise Lambert’s Clavichord, the first contemporary music for the instrument to be published in the twentieth century. I wrote about his generous answers in The Diapason issue of December 1974 (pages 7 and 8), but there have been some interesting addenda in various publications since that time, and what better way to celebrate the 127th occurrence of HH’s natal day than to share this information?

The first mention of Howells’s neo-Elizabethan keyboard works came during my very first year of harpsichord study with Isolde Ahlgrimm in Salzburg (1958–1959). In 1961 I acquired my first copy of Lambert’s Clavichord (Oxford University Press). It is a reprint in larger format of the original printing, which was a deluxe limited edition of 175 hard-bound copies autographed by Lambert (with a faint pencil signature below the photograph of Howells and the clavichord built by Lambert, who was a famous photographer, and autographed also by the composer, who numbered each volume and signed his name in bold black ink). I acquired my prized copy of this deluxe edition (number 8) at a London antiquarian bookshop in 1981. The hardbound volume is the perfect size for a clavichord’s music desk: 10 inches wide by 61⁄4 inches high, exactly one half the height of the later trade print edition.

Very briefly, the reason that Howells composed all twelve of the keyboard pieces was that, in gratitude for his being the next-to-youngest composer photographed and included in Lambert’s 1923 publication, Modern British Composers (from Elgar, born 1857, to Howells and Goossens, born 1893), he wrote the first piece (“Lambert’s Fireside”) while at the photographer’s home and decided to invite his fellow composers to create a similar gift for Lambert and his clavichords. All of them responded in the affirmative, but a year or more later, no other musical offering had been received, so Herbert decided to write the remaining eleven pieces himself. Each is dated, and each has a designated musical figure in the title (not necessarily one of the photographed composers).

All of the identities spoken to me by Dr. Howells are confirmed by the “other Palmer,” Christopher (1946–1995), who died at age 48, but left an amazingly large list of compositions and studies of musical figures. In his 1978 Novello small book, Herbert Howells: A Study, CP’s listings of the Lambert’s Clavichord titles agree with my 1974 verbatim ones from the composer himself, except for one: the dedicatee of “Sargent’s Fantastic Sprite.” Howells told me that it was meant for Sir Malcolm Sargent, the conductor; however, in Christopher’s copy of the score (as quoted in the Novello volume) Howells wrote: “There never was another Sargent save the painter.” So one might choose a favorite, or mention dual remembrance, since both the composer and author have passed on. I rather think the music could suggest the painter, but . . . who knows?

Music by Howells is never far from my various music desks, and much of the inspiration for this column was through a chance finding of a score that I had forgotten: Six Pieces from Lambert’s Clavichord, arranged for oboe and piano. The half of the collection chosen—“Lambert’s Fireside,” “Fellowes’s Delight,” “Hughes’s Ballet,” “My Lord Sandwich’s Dreame,” “De la Mare’s Pavane,” and “Sir Hugh’s Galliard”—are my favorites, too, and I hope to program them, using harpsichord, later during the 2020 season. (The pieces are published in one volume by Oxford University Press; the arrangements are by Patrick Shannon.) That these pieces were favorites of the composer is evident, both from his own mouth, and from yet another source, thanks to Christopher Palmer. In his very comprehensive book, Herbert Howells: A Centenary Celebration (London: Thames Publishing), I noticed on page 458 a listing of three arrangements for cello and piano from the RCM Library Howells manuscripts: “My Lord Sandwich’s Dream,” “Sir Hugh’s Galliard,” and “De la Mare’s Pavane”—it might lead one to make some transcriptions of one’s own, should any of the other movements be special favorites.

And finally, two suggestions for those of us who play the organ: a gentle, lovely two-page “Cradle Song,” Howells’s contribution to the Organists Charitable Trust Little Organ Book: eleven pieces for solo organ from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, selected and edited by Martin Neary, published by Novello (2010). And, reminiscent of his close friendship with Ralph Vaughan Williams, Howells’s Master Tallis’s Testament, another ravishingly lovely creation, and another indication of how comfortable he felt dealing with the harmonies of Elizabethan music.

From A to Z: Harpsichord Notes

Seated one day at the computer, I was weary and ill at ease, and my fingers wandered idly over the noisy keys . . . oops, wrong setting. Or is it? I have just been searching a list of past winners of the quarterly Global Music Awards bestowed on independent musicians who submit their recordings for judging by a California company, and I have come across the welcome information that Asako Hirabayashi, harpsichordist and composer, won a first prize medal in the year 2018.

Thus, belatedly, I wish to congratulate Asako for the recognition that has been bestowed on her for the compact disc The Harpsichord in the New Millennium (Albany: Troy 1180) that I have mentioned previously in these columns. Asako, who also won first prizes for her submissions to the Alienor Harpsichord Composition Competitions in 2004 and 2012, is a current member of the Historic Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA), and she continues her career as a virtuoso player as well as a celebrated composer. Brava, Asako!

A duo and The Harpsichord Diaries

One of the highlights of the HKSNA meeting in Huntsville, Texas, this past May was the elegant presentation by Elaine Funaro and her husband Randall Love, “The Salon of Madame Brillon”—to my ears the most enticing of duos for harpsichord and fortepiano—a four-movement Duo in C Minor by Anne Louise Brillon de Jouy (1744–1824), a composer totally new to me. To introduce her, I quote from a brief program note, “Pupil of Schobert and friend of Boccherini, Mme. Brillon, (according to Charles Burney), one of the greatest lady-players on the harpsichord in Europe, and to this lady many of the famous composers of Italy and Germany, who have resided in France at any time, have dedicated their works.” Her music is a fascinating window into the cosmopolitan culture of pre-revolutionary France. Also of somewhat prurient interest was the declaration by the Love-Duo that the lady had also been a special friend of Ambassador Benjamin Franklin, whom she addressed as “mon cher papa!”

The finesse and delicacy of nuance displayed by Elaine at the harpsichord and Randall at the fortepiano provided some of the best music making of the entire meeting. The Love family is totally engaged in the arts, both aural and visual.

For some years now I have had the pleasure of a preview copy of the forty-four-page book, The Harpsichord Diaries: A Musical Journey, given to me by Elaine at the HKSNA conference in Montreal. Another brilliant event in Huntsville was an impromptu viewing of the video now completed to accompany this book, the purpose of which is similar to that of the recording “Said the Piano to the Harpsichord,” the first exposure to our instrument touted by so many prominent harpsichord aficionados and professionals such as master builder Richard Kingston, who claim that iconic recording as their first exposure to historic keyboards. With Haiku written by Elaine, who with her pianist husband made the compact disc that accompanies the written story, and narration by son Eric Love (a Broadway actor), plus the book’s illustrations by his twin sister Andrea Love, one may say accurately that this is a “family endeavor.”

The book itself is a musical tale about a girl named Elena who discovers a magical book in her grandmother’s attic. Transported through five centuries, Elena meets eccentric talking harpsichords that bring music and history to life. Check it out online at www.harpsichorddiaries.com, and be enchanted anew by a delightful musical and visual journey.

Twentieth-centuryharpsichord concertos

A most satisfying compact disc by the virtuoso harpsichordist Jory Vinikour is the latest offering from this artist for Cedille (CDR 90000 188, www.cedillerecords.org). Ably supported by the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Scott Speck, at long last one can hear Ned Rorem’s Concertino da Camera. Composed in 1946, the work provides seventeen minutes of legendary status, finally receiving its world premiere recording.

I had known of this concerto, but did not expect ever to hear it. With typical Rorem finesse, and the aid of a cornet that serves as excellent melodic foil to the virtuoso keyboard writing, this work, at least from my point of view, is the best reason for purchasing this disc.

The other concerti on this bountiful disc offer the three far too brief movements of Walter Leigh’s (1905–1942) hauntingly beautiful Concertino (three British pastoral beauties by a composer who died far too soon). I have performed this work for harpsichord and strings quite a number of times, and, together with my listeners, always wanted more of this pastoral beauty.

Two more bracing bits of modernism fill out the disc: Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings, opus 42 (just slightly more than twenty-eight minutes comprise its three movements: “Allegro,” “Andante,” and “Allegro vivo”) by Victor Kalabis and the Concerto for Amplified Harpsichord and Strings by Michael Nyman (twenty-one minutes). This is not for the weak of heart, but I suspect it grows on one with repeated listenings.

Jory Vinikour, who with his duo partner Philippe LeRoy performed the stunning duo harpsichord opening concert at the Huntsville HKSNA meeting, sought suggestions from Robert Tifft, friend and colleague at Southern Methodist University, when he began selecting the works for this recording. As I have said many times, Robert is indeed the person to consult. He is not only knowledgeable but extremely generous in sharing this information—another prince among harpsichord aficionados.

One Hundred Miracles: A Memoir of Music and Survival, by Zuzana Ružicková (with Wendy Holden)

This most remarkable book from Bloomsbury Publishing (London, 2019) is the great Czech harpsichordist’s autobiography as told to British author Wendy Holden in recorded interviews, completed shortly before Ružicková’s death in 2017.

It is dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach, to whom she devoted a significant amount of her career studying and performing. In fact, it was a small copy of one of Bach’s works that helped give her the stamina to survive three Nazi concentration camps during World War II.

With striking prose presented in chapters that are not ordered chronologically, but are arranged as a surprisingly effective back and forth narrative that begins with a 1960 post-war concert tour in Transylvania and continues with chapters about childhood and adolescent memories, these are interspersed with other chapters that detail Zuzana’s survival of her internment in three Nazi death camps, her happy marriage, and her very successful post-war life as a concert harpsichordist and teacher. Each of these units is titled simply with the name of the city, town, or other location in which the events occurred.

This memoir details a long and productive life made most meaningful by music and Zuzana’s prodigious musical abilities that included a fantastic memory for the works she performed. As I read the 327 pages of this amazing memoir, I became more and more awestricken with her incredible ability for survival, her deep love for her husband—the composer Victor Kalabis (who predeceased her in 2006)—and for her devotion to Bach’s sublime artistry as a composer.

The interviews with the Suffolk author Wendy Holden, who had previously written the book Born Survivors about three mothers and their babies who survived the Holocaust, were completed only a few days before Ružicková’s death in 2017. They are effectively utilized to tell the compelling narrative of a most important life: that of a person who realized the necessity for keeping these true events in the memories of succeeding generations to help insure that history does not repeat such horrors.

I was reminded how my driving instructor during high school days in Crestline, Ohio, shared photos that he had taken while serving in the armed forces that helped to liberate one of the German concentration camps. Even as early as 1952 there were those who insisted that the Holocaust never happened, but those of us who had seen these actual onsite photographs knew otherwise. This book should be required reading for each succeeding generation in years to come.

The organization into fourteen chapters struck me, as well, since fourteen is a symbolic Bach number. I wonder if that simply happened, or if it was another demonstration of Ružicková’s veneration for the great composer. (In case this bit of number symbolism is unfamiliar to some readers, fourteen is the sum of the alphabetical placement of the letters B-A-C-H
(2 + 1 + 3 + 8); once one begins to comprehend Bach’s love of numbers and clever hidden riddles, it becomes rather evident that he often incorporates his name in measures that are strategically placed in measure fourteen, or after fourteen notes, etc. And, of course, there is his musical signature: B-flat [the German B], A, C, and the H which is B-natural in German musical notation).

I recommend One Hundred Miracles as a book you will find difficult to put down once you have begun to read it; and I believe it might cancel any doubt about the importance of Ružicková and guarantee her a spot among the other great female players of the twentieth century. I do have one caution about the claim that she was the first to record the entire keyboard literature of her favorite composer. Isolde Ahlgrimm recorded thirty volumes for Philips of the Netherlands quite a few years before the Czech artist, and Ralph Kirkpatrick also made a number of German recordings earlier as well.

I checked these facts with Robert Tifft, who suggested that when a documentary was made about Ružicková the producers made the “first recording” claim so often that it is now considered to be a fact. He also agreed with me that, while she was definitely one of the earliest (and while she may have recorded a few obscure pieces that were not in other artists’ repertoire), she was definitely not the very first. However she belongs, without a doubt, among that revered group that includes the remarkable female players Wanda Landowska and Ahlgrimm—and neither one of them left us a written memoir of such brilliance and intensity!

Equally at home with historical keyboards and the piano, Michael Delfín is a top prizewinner of the Jurow International Harpsichord Competition and is a member of The Diapason’s 20 Under 30 Class of 2021. Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, he is artistic director of Seven Hills Baroque. For information: michaeldelfin.com.

Foes find friendship: Händel vs. Scarlatti

Händel vs. Scarlatti, Cristiano Gaudio, harpsichord. L’Encelade, ECL 2003. Available from encelade.net.

Georg Friederich Händel: “Toccata I in G Major,” “Toccata VI in C Major,” “Toccata IX in G Minor,” and “Toccata XI in D Minor” from the Bergamo Manuscript; Sonata in G Minor, HWV 580; Suite II in F Major, HWV 427; Chaconne in G Major, HWV 435; transcription of Violin Sonata No. 10 in A Major, HWV 372. Domenico Scarlatti: Sonata in F Major, K. 82; Sonata in F Minor, K. 69; Sonata in D Minor, K. 32; Sonata in D Minor, K. 64; Sonata in G Minor, K. 43; Sonata in D Major, K. 33; Sonata in D Major, K. 53; Sonata in C Major, K. 86; Sonata in C Minor, K. 84; Sonata in C Minor, K.58.

Competition very often follows musicians throughout their lives, sometimes in healthy ways and sometimes not, and competitive events often yield memorable outcomes. The Saxon Georg Friederich Händel and the Italian Domenico Scarlatti first met in 1708, and at the instigation of the patron of the arts Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni in Rome, the two engaged in a musical duel for an audience drawn from the nobility. Rather than speak critically of each other as Mozart did of Clementi, flee town in fear as Louis Marchand did with Johann Sebastian Bach, or storm out of the city as Daniel Steibelt did after losing to Ludwig van Beethoven, Händel and Scarlatti became friends and admirers of each other’s skill. Händel was declared the superior organist, while Scarlatti was deemed the superior harpsichordist.

Händel (who later Anglicized his name to George Frideric Handel) settled in England and composed in as many genres as he encountered on his travels, while Scarlatti settled in Iberia, eventually marrying into the Spanish royalty and composing over 550 keyboard sonatas, among other works. Although the musical program of this duel has been lost to history, harpsichordist Cristiano Gaudio captures the spirit of two twenty-four-year-old virtuosos vying for the public eye in an impressive and brilliantly played album entitled Händel vs. Scarlatti.

As we know from their careers, Händel and Scarlatti could not be more different as people and composers, but this album pits them together on the level playing field of the harpsichord. Both were lauded for their virtuosity, and both were highly skilled in the art of improvisation at the keyboard, and Gaudio’s album highlights both traits. His program selections stem from Händel’s younger years and most likely Scarlatti’s as well (as best as the Kirkpatrick numbers may yield). The variety of styles places the listener in the front row of the audience, hearing the two young composers show off their skill and challenge each other to more and more daring feats at the keyboard.

Händel starts the first round with a stirring toccata preserved in the newly discovered “Bergamo” manuscript. Händel’s toccatas in this album showcase his brilliant improvisations as an organist, and as this opening selection resembles the more sectional, improvisatory sonata movements of Corelli, perhaps the German Händel is showing his skill at a more Italian vein to impress his hosts. However, Scarlatti takes the Saxon to task and plays a fugue at a presto tempo, showing his mastery of a more German learned style! (Gaudio’s super-charged performance is especially breathtaking.) He then demonstrates a more sensitive, suave approach to the harpsichord that would highlight his slower sonatas to come. In Gaudio’s hands, this Bruce Kennedy Italian harpsichord sings sensuously, and Scarlatti’s Spanish flair enticingly emerges.

Back and forth the composers square off, with Gaudio refereeing the musical melee. Händel takes a turn at fugal style while Scarlatti pares back his fingerwork for a gentler approach. (Gaudio’s tasteful embellishments in the latter seem to emanate from within the sound of the instrument.) Händel produces multi-sectional toccatas, to which Scarlatti replies with paired sonatas. Händel then attempts a languid and suave sound through an organ sonata movement, but Scarlatti disrupts this aria with an allegrissimo in the same key. At this point the composers play off of each other, as Händel continues in G minor with another toccata, this time joined to a capriccio. Perhaps these mutual segues hint at the respect the two men gained for each other upon meeting each other in “battle.”

As the contest progresses, the virtuosi move more into their own worlds—Scarlatti into Spanish dance and keyboard pyrotechnics, and Händel into orchestral writing. K. 33 signals a Spanish jota, a vigorous dance in 3/8, but Scarlatti also takes time to improvise between phrases. Gaudio’s timing of these moments keeps the listener on edge as the movement seemingly halts, then precipitates into the dance once again. Although Scarlatti’s Spanish flavor would come later, its presence in this album makes his music contrast most spiritedly from Händel’s. K. 53 also signals guitar-like writing and more visually the hand-crossings that would make Scarlatti’s sonatas legendary across all keyboard instruments. Gaudio’s fiery virtuosity is so very enjoyable that one almost forgets the demands of this music!

Not to be outdone, Händel enters the fray again, this time with a gem from his first volume of suites. He steps away from the organ and becomes an orchestrator, perhaps attempting to outdo Scarlatti through his own use of the harpsichord’s sonority and register, which differs in each movement. Gaudio equally demonstrates the ability of the harpsichord to imitate orchestral voices in a concertante setting, both solo and grosso. The opening aria’s florid melodic line rivals that of the most beautiful aria-like sonatas that Scarlatti could write, and Gaudio captivates the listener from the very first note. Vigorous violin-like writing characterizes the second movement, which is similar in key and brilliance to the opening soprano aria of Partenope, an opera Händel would write in London some twenty years later. The shock of the third movement’s key paves the way for individual lines in a concerto grosso-like texture to permeate the aura created by this new solemn affect. Gaudio shapes each line elegantly and leaves the listener wondering what could happen next. The final ebullient fugue is a tour de force and features both Händel’s training in counterpoint and zest for flair at their best. Gaudio’s energy is relentlessly exciting, though one may wish at times for more articulated shape in each fugal line, not just pell-mell energy.

For the final stretch of performances, both composers offer their most personal craft. Scarlatti’s three sonatas treat the listener to memorable elegance, more fireworks, and one last demonstration of the learned style. Gaudio highlights the whimsical air of K. 86 with expressive elegance, shows off the brilliance of K. 84 with great freedom and edge, and holds together K. 58’s structure amid gnarly chromaticism. His freedom in timing sometimes detracts from the pieces’ architecture, but the elegance in K. 86 ensures that the listener is never lost in the weeds but is always at home in the flowers. Even though the sense of meter in K. 84 disappears in pauses and drastic tempo shifts, the listener is allowed a glimpse at the overtly brilliant keyboard writing that characterizes Scarlatti’s most difficult sonatas. In this sonata, Scarlatti snarls at his foe! He then continues one-upping Händel in a virtuosic, chromatic fugue, demonstrating both a command of the keyboard and the epitome of learned-style counterpoint, with a subject based entirely on the chromatic scale. Gaudio’s performance of K. 58 breathes more here than in Händel’s imitative writing, but one still might wish the fugue subject were crafted with a greater sensitivity to meter. However, even with occasionally blurred chromatic lines, the overall structure of the fugue is most convincing.

Händel’s wild last toccata and the great “Chaconne” cement his improvisatory prowess in the audience’s memory. Gaudio gives an elaborate and gripping performance of this incredible latter work, and his addictive energy holds the audience’s attention to the very end. His brilliant fingerwork at times relies more on speed and clarity than shape in the many running lines, but the rhythmic energy of the whole movement compels the listener’s attention and applause. Gaudio ends the album with a lovely encore in the form of a transcription from a violin sonata. One can imagine the two composers reading this movement together on separate instruments (or perhaps the same one!) before going their separate ways with newfound reverence at each other’s mastery.

So who carries the day? You be the judge, but Gaudio clearly gives a winning performance as the referee. The two instruments by Bruce Kennedy offer timbral variety, and one can imagine both composers taking turns at each instrument and even the same instrument. This brilliant album leaves the listener inspired, breathlessly excited, and eager for more, and Mr. Gaudio delivers the styles of the two giants with ease, taste, and exuberance.

The Art of the Fugue, II

For discussion in this the next two columns, I offer the program notes I wrote for my first performance of The Art of the Fugue in May 1985. This performance, on the Fisk organ at Westminster Choir College, was one of my two graduate recitals. I prepared these notes over more or less an entire semester and had some input and help from my teacher Eugene Roan and from William Hays, who was the advisor for degree recital program notes. I have been pleased with this essay, and I have used it as partial program notes for subsequent performances. It has an integrity to its overall structure—thanks in significant part to Dr. Hays’s assistance—such that I have not changed it or excerpted it. Despite that, if I were to write these notes today, there are a number of things I would phrase differently.

It could be fruitful to use some of those theoretical revisions to frame future columns about the learning process, the evolution of my relationship with this work, and the relationship between my own work on this piece and teaching. Some of what I wrote about the order of the movements was too cut-and-dried, rather too simple, failing to reflect some of the complexities of what we do and do not know about the piece. In later columns, I will discuss that, including some new ideas.

History and form

J. S. Bach wrote The Art of the Fugue during the last years of his life, probably beginning work on what turned out to be his longest and most complex instrumental composition in 1743, leaving the opus incomplete at his death in July 1750. It was published in 1751 in Leipzig in a poorly engraved edition, the preparation of only part of which had been supervised by Bach himself. The publication was not a commercial success, and the project was soon abandoned by Bach’s heirs.

Copies of The Art of the Fugue circulated among musicians, however, from that time on. In 1799 a scholar referred in print to the work as “celebrated,” and both Mozart and Beethoven owned copies. The Art of the Fugue was studied extensively by musicians throughout the nineteenth century, and nearly twenty editions or arrangements were published during those years. The first known public performance of the whole work took place in 1927 in Leipzig under the direction of Karl Straube, one of Bach’s successors as Kantor of Saint Thomas School in that city.

The Art of the Fugue is a work of well over an hour in length, consisting of eighteen movements all based in one way or another on the same musical theme. This theme occurs in something like one hundred different forms throughout the piece. The first and simplest form of the theme is shown in Example 1.

The theme is closely based on the tonic triad of the key of D minor, or, looking at it another way, on the interval of a fifth, and on the idea of filling that interval in. The first gesture creates a perfect fifth; the next gesture fills in that fifth, in the simplest possible way. The rest of the theme provides the remaining notes needed to fill in the perfect fifth, D–A, by step, and outlines a diminished fifth, C-sharp–G. In the tonal world of Bach the perfect fifth is the source of security and repose, while the diminished fifth is a source of tension, unrest, and striving. The two are antithetical to one another. This antithesis, with the one side represented not only by the perfect fifth as such but also by all diatonicism, and the other side mainly represented by the chromaticism implicit in the diminished fifth, is a major source of direction, growth, and meaning throughout The Art of the Fugue.

The opening theme also contains, in significant contexts, all the intervals from the semitone to the perfect fifth. This is in spite of the brevity, compactness, and apparent simplicity of the theme. The use of such a theme creates a situation in which any interval, either open or filled in by step, can be used by the composer as a motive significantly related to the main theme of the work. This possibility for motivic interrelation is an important source of unity and coherence in The Art of the Fugue in spite of considerable variety and diversity.

Most of the movements of The Art of the Fugue are fugues or are largely constructed through fugal procedures. Four movements are strict two-voice canons. Bach did not designate any of the movements as fugues, but rather as contrapuncti. (He may well also not have been responsible for the title under which the work is known, since the title page was engraved after his death.) He seems to have been concerned in his use of nomenclature to suggest that the movements were not autonomous fugues such as the organ fugues or the fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier (all of which are paired with non-fugal preludes), but rather stages in the working out of a musical idea, or a set of musical ideas, through a variety of contrapuntal techniques. Several of the movements, even apart from the canons, would probably not have satisfied Bach’s own definition of a fugue as such, because of serious irregularities in the construction of their opening sections. These irregularities, however, make perfect sense as stages in the contrapuntal development of the work as a whole. They serve invariably as responses to what has come before and as preparations for what will follow. These relationships are described in detail below in the comments on the individual contrapuncti.

The four two-voice canons (numbers 12–15) are lighter in texture and mood than any of the other movements and are simpler in construction. Coming after the most complex of all the contrapuncti, and before the movements in which contrapuntal ingenuity is carried to its farthest extremes, they provide for performer and listeners a moment of repose. This makes possible a renewal of energy and of momentum towards the climax of the final movement. Many individual Bach organ fugues contain within their structure a similar “relaxed” passage, which serves a similar function of providing a breathing space before the final climactic musical gesture. (Measures 121–139 of the Fugue in C minor, BWV 546ii, and measures 141–155 of the Fugue in E minor, BWV 548ii, are particularly good examples of this.) This suggests that The Art of the Fugue should be thought of not as a collection of fugues, but as one structure analogous to a single giant fugue. Further facts bear this analogy out (assuming it is not pressed into too detailed a form). The first movements of the work introduce the main musical ideas in a straightforward way, as does the exposition of a fugue.

The middle movements of The Art of the Fugue develop those musical ideas and others, with increasing complexity, contrapuntal and harmonic, and with increasing variety of texture. This is similar to the middle section (sometimes called “development”) of many fugues, especially, longer ones. The four canons fulfill the purpose described above. In the final three movements harmonic complexity is reduced, and anything even approaching the almost impenetrable density of Contrapunctus 11 is abandoned. In Contrapunctus 17, the original theme is reintroduced in a form closer to the opening of Contrapunctus 1 than anything that has been heard since Contrapunctus 4. This is analogous to the return of the initial subject that characterizes the final section of many fugues. The extraordinary contrapuntal ingenuity of Contrapuncti 16 and 17 (see below) is analogous to the increase in contrapuntal complexity that is found at the end of many Bach fugues, usually in the form of stretto.

Neither the first edition of The Art of the Fugue nor any of the eighteenth-century manuscript copies say on what instrument or instruments the work was meant to be performed. Over the years many different performing forces have been used, including piano, chamber ensembles of various composition, symphony orchestra, jazz combo, harpsichord, and organ. Many scholars believe that Bach actually meant the work for organ, some that he meant it for harpsichord, even though the posthumous title page says neither. The first edition was published in open score, that is, with a separate line for each voice. This was an old Italian and German way of presenting keyboard music used, for example, by Samuel Scheidt in his Tabulatura Nova (1624). It was certainly not the standard keyboard notation in 1750, but Bach had used it shortly before, in his Canonic Variations, BWV 769. The contrapuncti all fit very well under two hands and two feet, and with some difficulty under two hands alone. The pedal parts work as pedal parts: that is, they can be learned using the kinds of pedal technique known to Bach and his students, and when so learned they are comfortable (though occasionally challenging) to play. This would not be true of the bass lines of Bach chamber works or harpsichord works, by and large. The editors of the first edition chose to include a short additional piece by Bach, to compensate the purchaser for the incomplete state of the last movement. The piece they selected was an organ chorale, which they also presented in open score. It is thus likely that they assumed that the users of the work would be organists, even though they did not say so on the title page. It is also quite possible that Bach himself wanted musicians to use their own judgment as to how the piece can be realized in sound.

B-A-C-H

The third subject of the last movement of The Art of the Fugue is made up of notes that, in the standard German musical nomenclature, spell the name “Bach” (Example 2). In the German system, B-flat is called B, and B-natural is called H. Bach was aware throughout his life that the letters of his name made a plausible musical theme—it was certainly known to his musical ancestors as well—but he used it sparingly in his music. The only extensive use he made of it was in The Art of the Fugue. The final appearance of the B-A-C-H theme as the subject of a powerfully climactic fugue in Contrapunctus 18 is prepared by a chain of musical developments running through the whole work. This chain is best followed retrospectively. Before Contrapunctus 18, the B-A-C-H theme appears in Contrapunctus 11. Here, the four relevant notes form part of a lively and insistent eighth-note motive (Example 3). They do not stand on their own, but they are clearly present. This eighth-note motive, however, is an inversion of one of the main themes of Contrapunctus 8. That movement is thus revealed to have contained the B-A-C-H theme in a highly disguised form. The motive also occurs in once in Contrapunctus 8, casually, without repetition or development, in the bass voice at measure 143, transposed up a whole step. The first appearance of the B-A-C-H theme in the work occurs at the end of Contrapunctus 4, where the four notes form part of an otherwise meandering free chromatic countersubject to the main theme. This serves to underline the essential chromaticism of the B-A-C-H theme, and to tie that theme to the other chromaticism in The Art of the Fugue. The seeds of the chromaticism in the work, and thus the seeds of the B-A-C-H motive itself, are found, as explained above, in the initial statement of the main theme. The four contrapuncti in which the B-A-C-H theme is found (4, 8, 11, and 18) are by a considerable margin the four longest movements in the work, and each of the four is longer than the last.

To be continued.

Le Clavecin Mythologique

Le Clavecin Mythologique is the title of L’Encelade compact disc EL 1801, the most recent recording by harpsichordist Anne Marie Dragosits playing the Pascal Taskin harpsichord from 1787 now in the Prof. Dr. Andreas Beuermann Collection of the Museum for Art and Commerce in Hamburg, Germany. Ms. Dragosits studied with Wolfgang Gluxam in Vienna and with both Ton Koopman and Tini Mathot at the Royal Conservatory in Den Hague (Holland). She currently holds the position of harpsichord professor at the Anton-Bruckner-Conservatory in Linz, Austria.

For this recording she has created a fascinating program comprising seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French music by Pancrace Royer, Jean-Philippe Rameau, François Couperin, Jacques Duphly, Jean-Henry D’Anglebert, and Antoine Forqueray—thoughtfully organized to form a narrative program based on ancient tales beginning with the sweet singer Prometheus and culminating with the king of the gods, Jupiter.

The playing throughout is musically satisfying, historically stylish, and technically agile. The instrument delights in each selection, and be sure to take the time to enjoy the seemingly endless reverberation as the musical bombast of Jupiter slowly dies away at the disc’s conclusion. This historic harpsichord’s resonance is nearly as long lasting as that of my own remarkable Richard Kingston Franco-Flemish double.

The historic harpsichord by Pascal Taskin is one of the builder’s reworkings of an even older instrument made by the Flemish master Andreas Ruckers. Taskin is usually credited with the invention of the Peau de Buffle stop for the harpsichord, just one of multiple attempts to add more dynamic possibilities to an instrument that was facing stiff competition from the newly popular fortepiano. The use of soft buffalo hide (thus the name) to stroke the strings rather than pluck them as did the usual quill plectra offered an additional gentle, quieter tonal possibility for music that seems to require it. Taskin also added pedals for changing the registers while playing, and he thus provided an historic example for the early twentieth-century revival instruments by Pleyel and the many other builders. Indeed, my 1968 harpsichord by William Dowd was the American builder’s penultimate two-manual instrument to be equipped with pedals for controlling the registers, and this instrument, like the Taskin, has four registers: 8′, 8′, and 4′ provided with the usual “quill” plectra (at this time replaced with plastic rather than bird-provided material), plus the added 8′ Peau de Buffle stop. I still own that instrument, but do not hear or use it very often since I placed it with a friend decades ago when I ran out of space in my spacious music room, as my inventory of keyboard instruments surpassed six widely varied examples. The Dowd may be heard, complete with buffalo hide, on my first Musical Heritage Society vinyl disc, The Harpsichord Now and Then, where it was particularly useful for the Busoni Sonata, one of the earliest compositions for the revival harpsichord. To hear such similar gentle tones on the current compact disc, reference Track 8: Royer’s La Sensible to be moved by five minutes of gently haunting music.

Editor’s note: see www.encelade.net or www.amazon.com to order the disc. Tracks are available for listening at www.youtube.com. For more information on Anne Marie Dragosits, visit http://dragosits.org.

A major instrument collection

The historic harpsichord featured on the compact disc and a recent rediscovery of an email sent from London to my partner Clyde Putman in July 2007 reminded me that I have been meaning ever since then to call attention to Alec Cobbe’s historic keyboard instrument collection housed at Hatchlands, an historic estate in Surrey.

Harpsichordist Jane Clark Dodgson arranged for me to perform the first of the two harpsichord recitals that I have been fortunate to play at London’s Handel House Museum—a truly memorable experience to make music on a beautiful Bruce Kennedy instrument in the very room where Handel composed his immortal oratorio Messiah. She also made arrangements for me to join Claire Hammett, an American harpsichord technician who served as tuner from “about 2000 to 2016” for the Alec Cobbe Collection at Hatchlands, as she drove to the National Trust House in Surrey to prepare an instrument for a recital.

Quoting from my email of July 12, 2007: Yesterday at the country house Hatchlands was far more exciting than we had planned: I was allowed to tag along on a demonstration given by the collector of the instruments, Alec Cobbe, for The Friends of Wigmore Hall. He is quite unique in that he not only purchases all these fantastic rare keyboards, but he is able to play them quite well, too. Among the early keyboard gems are a Bach-period clavichord (Hoffmann) and a virginal from Whitehall Palace (marked with the royal accession initials from Charles II’s time, so it was most likely tuned weekly by Henry Purcell). Other instruments include ones by Kirkman, Shudi, and the newest prize, a Ruckers made into an expressive double by Henri Hemsch, fully decorated and absolutely gorgeous in sound, just restored to its playing condition.

Got to play a bit on each of them. And you should see the place—statues everywhere (mostly plaster casts of Greek and Roman originals). A nice lunch with the Collection staff and the day’s recitalist Robert Wooley, and all this was followed by a wonderful extended drive with Claire down into the Surrey countryside . . . absolutely magical.

For a summer visitor to the United Kingdom, if one is interested in historic keyboard instruments, Hatchlands is not to be missed. The catalogue lists five harpsichords: Zenti, c. 1622; “probably English,” c. 1623; Andreas Ruckers, 1636, reworked by Henri Hemsch, Paris, 1763; Jacob and Abraham Kirkman, 1772; Burkat Shudi and John Broadwood, 1787. Also of interest: a virginal by John Player, 1664; a spinet by Ferdinand Weber, 1780; and a clavichord by C. G. Hoffmann, 1784. Other non-plucked keyboard instruments include two organs: a chamber instrument by John Snetzler, 1754, and a larger organ by J. W. Walker and Sons, 1903.

Cobbe’s interest in pianos that have composer-connections has led to at least 28 accessions, of which several highlights are the 1836 Graf owned by Gustav Mahler, and instruments known to, and sometimes signed by, such outstanding figures as Frédéric Chopin, Edward Elgar, Franz Liszt, Sigismund Thalberg, Charles Dibdin, and Jane Stirling. There is even a Zumpe square piano from the 1770s autographed by Johann Christian Bach.

The collection is open to visitors from April to October. Since the stately home serves as the private domicile for the Cobbe family, the hours for public viewing are limited from 2:00 to 5:00 p.m.

Claire Hammett

Since the October 2018 death of my partner Clyde, I have been at a loss when asked to suggest a tuner-repairer of harpsichords in the Dallas Metroplex. Thus, when I contacted Claire for information about her current status with such matters it was helpful to receive this information: Claire and her family have returned to the United States from London and now are settled in Florida, from whence she reports “few engagements as tuner/repairer.” However, she and her new Kevin Fryer harpsichord are scheduled for the Birdfoot Festival in New Orleans at the end of May, so she commented, “that is a proper job like I used to do six times a week rather than once in a blue moon.” She is also on the schedule of this year’s Historic Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA) conference in Huntsville, Texas (May 12–15), where she will lead a workshop, “Introduction to Quarter-Comma Meantone Tuning” from 1:00–1:50 p.m. on the final day of the meeting. One could purchase a day pass and, if so moved or merely curious, also attend my 25-minute paper, “Scarlatti’s Cat in London, Vienna, and Texas” from 10:00–10:30 a.m. on the same day.

Claire also wrote that she is available to fly out to repair and refurbish harpsichords or tune for recordings or festivals (“birthdays, anniversaries, bar mitzvahs . . . whatever”). She may be contacted via email at [email protected]. More information is available on her website: www.harpsichordservices.com.