Harpsichord Notes

Jane Clark: “D’un goût nouveau:” the influence of Evaristo Gherardi’s Théâtre italien in François Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin

In the Preface to his first book of harpsichord pieces, Couperin praised the work of his “forbears” saying that their music still appealed to people of “refined taste” (ceux qui l’ont exquis). “As for my pieces,” he adds, “their new and diversified character has assured them a favorable reception with the people who matter (le monde).” He also said the pieces were ideas that had occurred to him and that many of them were portraits. Titon du Tillet, in Le Parnasse François, wrote that Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin were “d’un goût nouveau,” in a new style. He said the same of the playwright Charles Dufresny, writing that the author understood music perfectly and that his lively portraits of almost all the different characteristics of mankind were “d’un goût nouveau.” Was the playwright perhaps an influence?

There is a play by Dufresny called Les Mal-assortis. The stage represents the Room of the Ill-matched Couples where Hymen, god of marriage ceremonies, sits among couples with their backs to one another. He is sitting under a dead tree on which perch birds of evil-omen: cuckoos, owls, and bats. Couperin’s piece, L’Himen-amour (Married Love) from the 16th Ordre, mimics cuckoos (measures 18–22 and 41–43 in the bass), owls (measures 18–21 and 34–36), and bats (measures 30–32), and wedding bells are heard briefly in measure 5. Almost certainly Dufresny was one of Couperin’s inspirations. Like the play, the composer’s piece is a powerful and often sad satire of a universal human condition.

Marked majestueusement, the piece refers back to the previous piece in the 16th Ordre, Les Graces incomparables ou La Conti, also marked majestueusement, a radiant portrait of the popular Prince de Conti, whose marriage was not a great success. We know it to be this Conti because Saint Simon, who was very fond of him, tells us he had a laugh like the braying of an ass (measures 9 and 15). He was also a great patron of the theater. Thus we have had an idea from the theater and a portrait. It seems that many of Couperin’s contemporaries did not understand this “new and diversified character:” “I am always astonished,” he said in the Preface to Book III,

after the pains I have taken to indicate the appropriate ornaments for my pieces, to hear people who have learnt them without heeding my instructions. Such negligence is unpardonable, the more so as it is no arbitrary matter to put in any ornament one wishes. I therefore declare that my pieces must be performed just as I have marked them, and that they will never make much of an impression on people of real discernment if all that I have indicated is not obeyed to the letter, without adding or taking away anything.

Perhaps one example may bring this home. The allemande La Verneüil is presumably a portrait of Achile Varlet, seigneur de Verneüil, a great tragic actor. His wife was a soubrette actress, the subject of the next piece in the 18th Ordre, La Verneüilléte. Couperin has marked ports de voix in the middle of many of the chords, but almost always this important ornament is simply played as part of a spread chord (measures 1, 5, 18, and 19). Surely this is “unpardonable negligence” and reduces this wonderful piece to just one more beautiful allemande. But if the “appropriate ornament” is played the great actor declaims his tragic speech. It is easy to see how one ornament can change the whole meaning of a piece.

But who were “the people who matter,” “le monde?” We know Couperin played at the salon of Mme. de Lambert and that Louis III de Condé employed him to teach his children and engaged him to entertain his guests. A member of his father’s household was La Bruyère, whose literary Caractères, a copy of which Couperin possessed, were clearly an influence. Condé’s sister, and cousin of the Prince de Conti, la duchesse du Maine, was a friend of Mme. de Lambert. All these people were patrons of the great Harlequin, Evaristo Gherardi’s Italian comedians. Dufresny’s play, Les Mal-assortis, comes from the collection published by Gherardi, Le Théâtre italien. There are many specific references to these plays among Couperin’s harpsichord pieces. It is interesting that Charles Couperin, François’s father, taught the duchesse d’Orléans who was the dedicatee of this publication.

As time went on the plays became more and more subversive. They satirized Lully’s operas, thus satirizing the glory of the King who eventually banned the troupe. The reason for this is not clear, but contributing factors included obscenity and that they had overstepped the mark with comments about the unpopular Mme. de Maintenon. However, perhaps the real reason was the subversive undercurrent, with which the patrons would have sympathized. Mme. de Maintenon was a lady of reforming zeal, and she slowly turned the court into what one courtier called “a monastery in court dress.” The courtiers resented this. From 1688, for most of the rest of Louis XIV’s reign, France was at war and conditions at home became appalling for many people, so discontent and subversion rumbled on every side.

Another piece that takes its inspiration from the theatre is L’Arlequine from the 23rd Ordre. It refers to a play by Regnard, Le Divorce, in which Gherardi made his debut, and is a harlequin chaconne. At the beginning Couperin is imitating a fairground organ, remembering that after the troupe was banned the actors took refuge in the fair theatres. The passage of discords towards the end (measures 25–31) is inspired by a scene from Le Divorce in which Harlequin is singing a duet with Mezzetin, the singing master. Harlequin’s efforts are a disaster and Mezzetin pleads, “Do please sing in tune.” Harlequin replies, “Oh, sing in tune yourself, do you think I don’t know that it’s necessary to mark a dissonance there, and that the octave comes in clashing with the unison, forming a B-sharp minor.” Like so much of Book IV, this piece has an element of nostalgia. The previous piece in the 23rd Ordre, L’Audacieuse, refers to Gherardi’s debut, known as la tentative audacieuse.

Sometimes a title seems obvious when it is not. La Sophie from the 26th Ordre is not a pretty girl, but rather a play, Mezzetin en Grand Sofi, which revealed the true meaning, a whirling dervish. Couperin portrays the whirling throughout the piece. To dress La Sophie in pretty girls’ clothes makes a mockery of the music. It comes between the nostalgic Gavotte and the heart-rending portrait of Maria Teresa d’Orsi, L’Epineuse, the Spinetta of Gherardi’s troupe, in the 26th Ordre. Couperin’s theatrical sense never allows him to put three gentle pieces in a row. The final piece, La Pantomime, is described by Gherardi. Scaramouche sits playing his guitar; Pasquariel comes up noiselessly behind him and beats time on his shoulder scaring him stiff:

It was in this pantomime of terror that he made his audience rock with laughter for a good quarter of an hour, without once opening his mouth to speak. He possessed this marvelous talent to such a remarkable degree, that he could, by the simplicity of pure nature alone, touch hearts more effectively than the most expert orators.

The tragicommedia aspect of the plays is strong in this particular piece.

Another reference to Gheradi’s Théâtre is Le Gaillard-Boiteux from the 18th Ordre. It mocks a dancing master at Versailles, Jean Gaillard. In Regnard and Dufresny’s play Les Chinois we are told the actors are going to mock themselves at last: “There is not a profession that has escaped their satire; Attorneys, Doctors, Magistrates. They have not even respected Roman Emperors or dancing masters.” In the scene, from Boisfran’s Arlequin misanthrope, the dancing master has a wooden leg. Harlequin asks: “And what is your profession?” Colafon: “I was the dancing master at the opera house in Lyon, but as the opera has
fallen . . .” Harlequin: “It fell on you I suppose, and there you are, completely crippled?” Marked dans le gout Burlesque this piece limps along cheerfully.    

People have wondered at the sexy words of Couperin’s canons but a glance at Gherardi’s Théâtre reveals similar sexual references. Couperin’s Les Culbutes Jacobines from the 19th Ordre is about somersaulting in bed. These are the somersaults of the Jacobin order of monks and nuns, whose fallen morals were the subject of many satirical poems. If all Couperin’s detailed markings, which include the slurs, commas, and aspirations, are obeyed the piece becomes a sexy romp. Those who attended the salons and appreciated the theatre were among those known as Le Monde. They were in a position to appreciate Couperin’s “new and diversified character,” rather than those of “refined taste” who appreciated his forbears.

His references to the play Les Chinois in his final valedictory 27th Ordre fit the stage directions so exactly it is likely they started as incidental music. The troupe had a large orchestra and these pieces feel like arrangements. The scene referred to satirizes Apollo and the Muses on Mount Parnassus, which implied the whole edifice of the court of Versailles. Pegasus (symbol of literature), portrayed as a winged ass, keeps interrupting the conversation, and when Apollo asks Thalia why the authors have not fed him she says, “The poor devils can scarcely feed themselves these days, you can’t get fat on chewing laurels,” a reference to the fact that the king had withdrawn his support for the troupe. The piece opens with the same figure used for the braying of the ass in La Conti. Later the stage directions instruct that an ensemble of comic instruments is heard. These appear in the second part of the piece.

Les Vieux Seigneurs followed by Les Jeunes Seigneurs, Cy-devant les petit Maîtres from the 24th Ordre proves that Couperin was influenced by Dufresny. In Les Vieux Seigneurs Couperin satirizes obsequious courtiers. To quote Dufresny, from Les Amusemens sérieux et comiques, “The courtier thinks carefully before he speaks, the petit maître talks a lot and scarcely thinks at all . . .”

The courtiers flatter those they scorn, what dissimulation. The petit Maîtres are more sincere, they hide neither their friendship nor their scorn. The courtier’s speech is uniform, always polite, flattering, never direct. The speech of the petit Maître is high and low, a mixture of the sublime and the trivial. The first part is a mixture of “high and low” motifs and idle chatter while the second, still “high and low,” is beautiful. Les Vieux Seigneurs, if all Couperin’s markings are obeyed, is, once again, an apt portrait. Les Jeunes Seigneurs chatter away both high and low during the “trivial” first half, but the second part is “sublime.”   

In the final piece of this Ordre, L’Amphibie, we are back where we started, showing Couperin’s sense of symmetry. Here we must be mindful of eighteenth-century meanings. La Bruyère used the term amphibious to describe the ambitious courtier. Similarly Alexander Pope was scathing in his portrait of Lord Hervey: “Amphibious thing! That acting either part, The trifling head, or the corrupted heart, Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board, Now trips a lady, and now struts a Lord.” A speech from Boisfran’s Les Bains de la Porte Saint Bernard describes a Lutin Amphibie, who ordains that: “The young men of fashion are by pleasures, by appearances, by gait, by patches, and by manners made less men than women.”

The ambiguity is reflected throughout L’Amphibie. Marked noblement, at the beginning, it is indeed noble, but gradually gives way to “Wit that can creep and pride that licks the dust,” to quote Pope again. We go through caution at the court, obsequious bows, pleading, seeming success, sudden disillusion, anger, resignation, till finally, nobility returns, but with a startling G-natural, which can perhaps imply scorn at the dissimulation needed for success. Recent research has shown that Couperin worked very little at Versailles apart from his organist’s post for three months a year. He was probably a bad courtier himself. Clearly he felt great sympathy with the values expressed in Evaristo Gherardi’s Théâtre italien.

Jane Clark is well known as a harpsichord recitalist in Europe and the United States. Her research into the music of François Couperin and Domenico Scarlatti has received international recognition. The Mirror of Human Life: Reflections on F. Couperin’s Pièces de Clavecin (written in collaboration with Derek Connon) explores the background to these pieces and offers suggestions as to the meaning of many elusive titles. David Tunley, writing in Music and Letters (May 2012) suggested that “this book should be within arm’s reach in every studio where Couperin’s music is loved and practiced.”

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.

Notes in The Diapason: a bit of history

Siegfried Gruenstein, the founding editor of The Diapason, served for forty-eight years. The front-page tribute to him in the December 1959 issue celebrating the magazine’s fiftieth anniversary began with these descriptive words:

. . . a rare combination of competent organist and professional newspaper man, (Gruenstein) founded The Diapason in 1909 against the advice of his elders among organists, builders, and well-wishers. That it grew and prospered steadily under his guidance was due wholly to his skill, his impartiality, his integrity and his taste. . . .  At first the principal purpose of the magazine was to represent the organ industry. However, it soon became evident that the organist and the organbuilder were so closely allied in their interests that the field should include both of them and that the paper would serve to bring the two more closely together.

In those early years the magazine expanded its focus in several directions, serving for a time as the official journal of the American Guild of Organists, for example. However, it was not until Frank Cunkle, Gruenstein’s successor, took over the supervision of the magazine that the organ’s sister instrument, the harpsichord, was welcomed into its pages. The first person to take charge of harpsichord matters was Philip Treggor (1920–2004) of Hartford, Connecticut, who published his first column in October 1967 (page 11). November’s column (page 13) featured the lute while a feature article by E. Power Biggs occupied the opposite page with his “Case for the Pedal Harpsichord.” Treggor’s three columns of interviews with Denise Restout, Wanda Landowska’s companion and legatee, presented valuable information about the pioneer harpsichordist’s biography and legacy (1968: March page 15, April page 23, May pages 14–15).

I had made my Diapason print debut five years earlier, in November 1962, when the magazine published the feature article “Hugo Distler—20 Years Later” based on research I was doing for my Doctor of Musical Arts thesis that I was busily writing while a student at the Eastman School of Music. My first guest contribution to Treggor’s column, published in June 1968, was “Isolde Ahlgrimm as the Widow Bach” (page 15), followed in October of the same year with my report on the second Bruges International Harpsichord Competition (pages 10–11). Meanwhile, in July 1968, Treggor’s column featured an interview with Boston-based composer Daniel Pinkham (page 8).

Treggor wrote an informative column about Arnold Dolmetsch’s collaborations with the Chickering Piano Company as they produced harpsichords and other early musical instruments (November 1968, page 12, with continuation in the December issue, pages 10–11), which proved to be his swansong, for he resigned from harpsichord column responsibilities at the beginning of January 1969.

During 1969 harpsichord news items were solicited from our readers, who were instructed to send them to the editorial staff of The Diapason. In May I submitted another feature article about Hugo Distler’s Harpsichord Concerto (pages 12–13), and in September 1969 an announcement and my picture appeared on page 25, with the information that, from henceforth, I would be “the man in charge of harpsichord items.” The following month my first column as harpsichord editor was published: “Praeludium, Allemande, and Courant: Some Notes on a European Summer” (page 12), and in December 1969 I relayed some corrections concerning the Huguenots and the city of Erlangen, as sent to me by Dr. Lowell G. Green of Boone, North Carolina, a reader who knew far more about such matters than I did. I was pleased to publish his corrections since that is how knowledge is disseminated.

So, depending on when one begins counting the years, I am either celebrating my fiftieth anniversary year as harpsichord editor or the fifty-seventh year since my first publication as a writer for this splendid magazine, which I have served by working with every editor except the founder, happy to have lasted even longer than Mr. Gruenstein, albeit with far fewer responsibilities. It will be my pleasure during 2019 to revisit some favorite pieces from this more-than-half-century collection of articles, as well as editing several guest essays, and, hopefully, sharing a few more original thoughts of my own.

2018 Harpsichord Notes: topics and page numbers

January, page 10: A posthumous gift from Gustav Leonhardt (Bach transcriptions published by Bärenreiter)

February, page 11: The Art of the Harpsichord (Two Texas Treasures: three-manual harpsichord by Keith Hill and Philip Tyre, miniature by Art Bell)

March, page 12: Handel with care (performance suggestions, recommended books, Handel House Museum, London)

April, page 10: Harpsichordist Jane Clark’s birthday

May, page 11: Seeking Haydn (new compact disc reviewed, some relevant research noted)

June, page 12: Dandrieu’s Harpsichord Music

July, pages 10–11: A glimpse into actual eighteenth-century performance practices (Beverly Jerold’s article, “Reichardt’s Review of Handel Concerts in London”)

August, page 10: Death and taxis in Vienna (Obituary of Gordon Murray), Review of Bach Violin/Harpsichord Sonatas CD (Pine and Vinikour), Communications from Readers

September, page 12: Armand-Louis Couperin Keyboard Works, edited by Martin Pearlman available for free download

October, page 14: A letter from Johann Sebastian Bach with two illustrations by Jane Johnson

November, page 16: Recent recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations by Diego Ares, Wolfgang Rübsam, and Helmut Walcha (from a boxed set)

December, page 11: Christmas gifts: a few suggestions (CDs, scores, books, and an anonymous Landowska caricature)

Scarlatti’s cat in London, Vienna, and Texas

Our story begins with Thomas Roseingrave, born in Winchester, England, in 1688. He emigrated to Dublin, Ireland, with his father, his first music teacher. In 1707 he entered Trinity College, but did not complete his degree. A life-changing trip to Italy was financed in 1709 by Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, “to improve himself in the art of music that hereafter he may be serviceable to the Cathedral’s music program.”

It was at the home of a nobleman in Venice that young Roseingrave was invited to play the harpsichord. As he related to music historian Charles Burney some years later, “finding myself rather better in courage and finger than usual, I exerted myself and fancied by the applause I received that my performance had made some impression on the audience . . . .” Burney continues,

". . . a grave young man dressed in black and in a black wig had stood in one corner of the room, very quiet and attentive while Roseingrave played. Being asked to sit down at the harpsichord, when he began to play, ‘Rosy’ said he thought ten hundred devils had been at the instrument. He never had heard such passages of execution and effect before. Inquiring the name of this extraordinary performer he was told it was Domenico Scarlatti, son of the famous opera composer Alessandro Scarlatti. Roseingrave did not touch the harpsichord for a month following this experience, but, after his hiatus he became very intimate with the young Scarlatti, following him to Rome and Naples, and hardly ever leaving him during his time in Italy . . . ."

Returning to England in 1714 or 1715, Roseingrave continued to champion Scarlatti’s music, producing one of his operas at the Haymarket Theatre and publishing an edition of forty-two Scarlatti sonatas in 1739, a volume that included some examples from the 1728 Essercizi, including Kirkpatrick number 30, the “Cat’s Fugue,” which came to bear the descriptive title that is often credited to the composer Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi, born in 1770 in Bonn. And why, you may ask, is it universally known today as something to do with a cat?

That answer derives from its wide-ranging fugal subject that begins on the G below middle C and continues upward dotted quarter note by dotted quarter with these intervals: G–B-flat, E-flat–F-sharp, B-flat–C-sharp, then cascades downward in eighth notes: D, C-natural, B-flat, A, G, F-sharp, G—a rather strange subject, but, bearing Scarlatti’s original tempo indication of “Moderato” this 6/8 theme does indeed sound rather like a middle-aged tabby cat walking on its favorite harpsichord keys!

I would emphasize the moderate tempo should you wish to play this audience-pleasing harpsichord or organ sonata! A Lyrachord recording by a very fine harpsichordist who is excessively fleet of finger rather destroys the fun and enjoyment of the quite unusual harmonies generated. Of course, I, too, have been guilty of playing too quickly many times, but once I approached retirement age I found that I really preferred to dwell longer on sonorities that I find beautiful. (Although my late-in-career students would probably counter, “But he always mentioned that he would prefer a slightly slower tempo!”)

Roseingrave made a number of changes to Scarlatti’s score of K. 30: these included a few differing notes, some octave doublings, and the replacing of many dotted quarter notes with a plain quarter, followed by an eighth rest rather than a dot—making these passages much more suitable to the organ and to the resonant acoustics of London churches. Speaking of which it may be of interest that Roseingrave, in 1725, became the organist of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, the parish church of none other than George Frederic Handel, the longest-lived of the 1685 triumvirate.¹

If one should wish to play from Roseingrave’s score, the best edition of K. 30 is a 1972 publication from Alfred Music, New York, edited by Willard Palmer (who used to say when I was performing in his presence, “Unfortunately, no relation”) and Margery Halford, both Houston-based early-music supporters. These intrepid researchers compared all the earliest printings (there is no autograph known to exist)—and their edition contains a facsimile of the work from the first printed edition (London, 1738) of which the first copy was presented by the composer to his patron King Joâo V of Portugal. Roseingrave’s changes to the score are given in smaller staves directly above the affected measures, and other divergences are indicated by footnotes referencing a copy of Scarlatti’s first edition that was reprinted by Witvogel in 1742 and Clementi’s version, published about 1811 in the second of four volumes comprising Clementi’s Selection of Practical Harmony. All of these useful addenda resulted in a score of 10 pages: the most comprehensive edition that I have found of this iconic work.

To continue with the references found in my title, I used an April 2019 recording from a demonstration concert performed on the oldest playable organ in Texas, the Caetano Oldovini organ built in 1762 and now housed in Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Art Museum. This instrument was originally in the Monks’ Gallery of Evora Cathedral in the university city of that name in Portugal, where it was one of three organs in the building.

Vienna: Reicha

A composition that I have never encountered on anyone else’s concert programs is the Fugue on a Theme by Domenico Scarlatti, opus 36/9 by Antoine Reicha. I found this delightful homage in Volume 2 of Bohemian Piano Music from the Classical Period, edited by Peter Roggenkamp, published by Universal Edition, Vienna (UE18583), in 1990. Perhaps Reicha, an exact contemporary of Beethoven (both born in 1770) felt some special kinship when he moved from Prague to Bonn with his parents in 1785?

In 1799 Reicha traveled to Vienna with the hope of provoking interest in his newly composed opera. His first visit was not to Beethoven, however, but to his idol, Josef Haydn, to whom his opus 36, a collection of contrapuntal works, is dedicated.

Eventually Reicha moved to Paris, where in 1818 he was appointed professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Paris Conservatoire, where his classes included such now well-known figures as Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and, for the ten months prior to his death in 1836, as special mentor to César Franck!

Reicha’s “Cat Fugato” (pun intended) with its tempo indication of “Allegro moderato” may portray a slightly younger cat than Scarlatti’s, but the theme is the same, and the full title Fugue on a Theme from Domenico Scarlatti leaves no doubt as to the homage work that it is. Gently swirling sixteenth notes sound lovely on the harpsichord, and I enjoy, immensely, introducing this beautiful novelty to audiences. Depending on my mood of the moment I sometimes make the piece even more special by changing the concluding chord from minor to major; thus far, no thunderbolt has reached me from the heavens (nor from below the earth), so I suspect that I have the composer’s blessing.

Thus we have fulfilled the offerings named in the title of my presentation for the May conference of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA) held this year at Huntsville, Texas, in the beautiful venues provided by Sam Houston State University. I made an ad hoc quick recording of Reicha’s Fugue utilizing my Richard Kingston Franco-Flemish double harpsichord, to complement the organ solo of Scarlatti’s original Fugue. A neighbor did the recording, and, with the multiple duties of preparing for the trip, I did not check the disc that was offered. Thus, when I checked its suitability and compatibility with my computer, I had the shock of its not being playable.

My rescuer in this debacle was newly minted DMA Silvanio Reis, a star pupil of Temple University’s Joyce Lindorff (who, incidentally, succeeded me as president of the Southeastern Historic Keyboard Society, one of the now-merged components of the current national organization). His computer was receptive to MP-3 recording, and he not only operated the sound for this second selection, but also took over the earlier disc of the organ fugue, which made my morning presentation much easier than I could have imagined. Dr. Reis also made his own presentation, “The International Idiom in the Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti,” during which he played examples from six sonatas as apt musical preludes to my more verbal and humorous offering.

Note

1. Dates given in Gerald Gifford’s article for Grove’s Dictionary of Music, Fifth Edition.

Editor’s note: the staff of THE DIAPASON congratulates Dr. Palmer on being named a member of the International Advisory Panel for the Historical Keyboard Society of North America.

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).

The Diapason harpsichord columns history

Part II: Front-page features

The magazine’s third editor Robert Schuneman made harpsichord history when he placed my report on the Bruges [Belgium] International Harpsichord Competition and Festival on the front page of the October 1971 issue. To my knowledge this was the first time a non-organ-related item had appeared in that prominent spot! There were two black-and-white photographs: at the top of the page, the first prize winner, Scott Ross from the United States playing a harpsichord by David Rubio, and at the bottom, a picture of the very distinguished and very international jury: Kenneth Gilbert, Raymond Schroyens, Colin Tilney, Charles Koenig, Robert Veyron-Lacroix, Isolde Ahlgrimm, and Gustav Leonhardt, plus the director of the festival, Robrecht Dewitte, surrounding an instrument by Rainer Schuetze. The report continued on page 10, graced with one more illustration­—the semi-finalists, a truly international group from the UK, Netherlands, France, Chile, Ceylon, Hong Kong, Italy, Canada, and two from the United States.

Front page #2: I returned to Bruges for the fourth competition in July 1974. Again, Editor Schuneman placed the report of that event on the front page of October’s magazine, and it was just as eye-catching as the first feature, with three photographs. (A young Martin Pearlman is the first figure on the left of the middle picture.) My lengthy article continued without illustrations, on pages 3 and 4.

As had become usual for the Bruges event by this time, the harpsichord solo competition was not graced with a first prize. The five finalists garnered awards beginning with a second prize, continuing with two sharing the third spot, and one each in fourth and fifth rankings. I noted that none of the players had reached the electrifying level of playing achieved by Scott Ross in 1971. The most popular harpsichord chosen by the contestants was a harpsichord by William Dowd, built in his Paris workshop.

Front page #3: The Diapason published in July 1978 displayed David Fuller’s fascinating and erudite article “Harpsichord Registration” on page one, courtesy of Editor Arthur Lawrence. The front page sported a two-column-wide facsimile of the first page from Armand-Louis Couperin’s Simfonie de Clavecins. Fuller’s comprehensive traversal of this most interesting topic continued on pages 6 and 7, illustrated with a diagram of knee levers, two further musical manuscript examples by C. P. E. Bach, and a useful bibliography for further study of this topic. As an additional bit of nostalgia, page 7 also had an advertisement for Richard Kingston harpsichords; at this time Richard was still in his first decade of building fine instruments in his Dallas, Texas, shop.

Front page #4: Editor Lawrence chose my “Affectionate Remembrance” of the late E. Power Biggs for the cover feature of March 1979’s journal, resplendent with a large photograph of the master organist and his pedal harpsichord. I just happened to be at harpsichord maker John Challis’s home one afternoon during the 1960 American Guild of Organists national convention in Detroit. I was playing some Bach on Challis’s prototype pedal harpsichord when EPB arrived to try the instrument. Removing his shoes, he sat down to try it. The result, of course, became harpsichord history: Biggs ordered one on the spot and subsequently recorded several discs, ranging from popular musical favorites such as Saint-Saens’ The Swan to a full set of all six Bach trio sonatas on the newly acquired instrument.

Front page #5: In July 1979 there was much international celebration of Wanda Landowska’s centenary. Editor Arthur Lawrence agreed that we should join that observance, and that we needed to contact Landowska’s longtime companion and current resident of the pioneering harpsichordist’s last home in Lakeville, Connecticut, to ascertain if she might write a feature article for us. Denise Restout responded favorably, but informed us that she would need to be reimbursed for such a task. Since no contributors to The Diapason were paid at that point in its history, Arthur and I each contributed her fee from our own funds, and the magazine was well served! Ms. Restout not only provided the feature article for the front page (continued on pages 12–15), but she insisted, since she did not trust a young Pleyel harpsichord owner in Texas to write a proper description of such an instrument, that she herself should write that short but necessary article as well (pages 16–17).

Other featured articles included “Reminiscences of St. Leu” by Momo Aldrich, Landowska’s first private secretary, whom I met and interviewed extensively during many annual winter trips to visit her in Honolulu, where she had settled to be close to her daughter and grandchildren (pages 3 and 8). I contributed an extensive article about the two Landowska-inspired harpsichord concerti by Falla and Poulenc (pages 9–11) and the introduction on page 2 (“Happy Birthday, Wanda”). The result: Landowska was celebrated on thirteen of the twenty-four pages in our July publication.

Front page #6: Well, half a front page, actually. My report, “The Harpsichord at the Boston Early Music Festival and Exhibition,” shared the front page for August 1981 with Editor Arthur Lawrence’s report on the Montreal Organ Conference, “L’Orgue à notre époque.” And he had an organ photo! My report managed to display some harpsichord soundboard rosettes, reprinted by permission from the festival program book, as well as portraits of the two outstanding harpsichord recitalists on page 3: John Gibbons and Ralph Kirkpatrick.

Front page #7: A true festschrift to celebrate the seventieth birthday of master harpsichord builder William Dowd appeared in February 1992. By this time The Diapason sported actual front covers, which in this case featured a montage of four Dowd harpsichords (German, French, and Franco-Flemish doubles and a French single), with the builder’s King David and his harp logo in the middle of the very attractive layout approved by Editor Jerome Butera.

The idea for the celebratory edition was suggested by Dowd’s wife Pegram (Peggy) in conversation with me at a Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society (SEHKS) conference. She was a great help with contacts to the contributors, and together we assembled vignettes from fellow Coast Guard serviceman Fenner Douglass (who after World War II service became a much sought-after Oberlin Conservatory organ professor, and later, at Duke University), Dowd owners Albert Fuller, Frederick Hyde, David Fuller, Miles Morgan, Robin Anderson, Dowd shop foreman and distinguished jazz harpsichordist Donald Angle, soundboard painter Sheridan Germann, John Fesperman of the Smithsonian Institution, William Christie (who, having moved to France to “restore French Baroque opera to the French,” provided me with my first fax experience), Arthur Haas, Dirk Flentrop, Thomas and Barbara Wolf, Glenn Spring, and Gustav Leonhardt. A specially made caricature was created by Jane Johnson.

All these varied glimpses into Dowd’s life and legacy are fascinating, and they comprise a major contribution to the modern history of the American (and Parisian) development of harpsichords based on historic models. The last two, however, provide unique offerings: from composer Glenn Spring, a complete score of his winning Aliénor competition composition from 1990—William Dowd: His Bleu, the full score of which is included (centerfold, full size, four pages), referencing Dowd and Angle’s improvisations in the Cambridge shop as well as the color of the new Dowd at Walla Walla College where the composer was teaching at the time. It was a first for the harpsichord submissions to the magazine, but one that has been followed by at least one more harpsichord piece (Mulet’s Petite Lied).

All these tributes required ten pages, with another published a year later (February 1993) when the honoree contributed his one-page response, which the magazine graced with a second Jane Johnson caricature plus three photos of the honoree.

To end on a very high note, here is a sample of Gustav Leonhardt’s tribute:

Dowland and Purcell choosing their texts with William Dowd in mind

O how happy’s he, who from bus’ness free

Music for a while (Yes, a very good while,—since 1949)

While bolts and bars my days control[ed]  (The last two letters added by the editor make comment superfluous)

From silent night (Only since acquiring a telephone answering machine)

If my complaints could passions move (Deliver them at No. 100) . . .

If music be the food of love (Eat on) . . .

Flow my tears (For good humidification)

Lachrimae (The same, for another kind of customer) . . . .

For the rest of the text, consult page 20, The Diapason, February 1992, available at www.thediapason.com.

Editor’s note: all of the issues mentioned in Dr. Palmer’s column are available at our website, www.thediapason.com. Near the top left of the home page, click on “Magazine.” Under “Magazine Archive” on the next page, type the year desired and click “Apply.” The available months of that year’s issues will then appear. Click on the desired issue, and on the following page, click on PDF.