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Harpsichord News

by Larry Palmer
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Letter to the harpsichord editor

Dear Mr. Palmer,

I don't often comment on articles in The Diapason, that is,
in a positive manner, but I don't know when I have enjoyed any writing as much
as yours on Momo Aldrich ["Momo!" in the August 1997 issue]. I assume
it was because I knew both Mr. And Mrs. Aldrich in the mid-50s. I worked in a music store in Palo Alto and met Mr. Aldrich when he watched me hang a picture of Landowska seated at a Pleyel. Mr. Aldrich asked me if I knew who the
"Lady" was; I said it was Wanda Landowska. He was surprised that I
knew.

At this point in time I knew Mr. Aldrich was on the faculty
at Stanford, but not much more. Shortly after that a friend also on the faculty
at Stanford saw me talking to Mr. Aldrich and later told me who he was, and
that he had studied with Landowska in France. Still later I read an article
about Landowska and it talked about Momo, but it took an organ recital at the
Stanford Chapel for me to meet Mrs. Aldrich, who he introduced to me as Momo.
Then the wheels started to turn.

I rebuilt several harpsichords in the next few years and after I completed the first one, and I might add that I was very proud of it, I asked Mr. Aldrich if he would play it and tell me what was right and what was
wrong.  This he did and he found
very little that was right. He made a list for me to follow and he came a
couple times a week to check on my work. Finally it suited him and he brought
in a student who wanted to buy a harpsichord. She liked it and it was sold.
Later he asked me to call on a friend in Palo Alto with a Neupert harpsichord.
It had all sorts of problems.  Mr.
Aldrich made a few suggestions, but it was Mrs. A. who came up with answers.
She told me that Landowska regularly rubbed a bar of soap on the sides of any
jack that seemed sluggish to her. And that she also trimmed plectra that she
thought were digging too much with a pair of fingernail clippers. I ended up
using both on the Neupert.

I have always felt that I learned much from both of the
Aldrichs, both in working on the harpsichord and in learning to hear it
"sing" as Landowska called it.

Some years later I was working for a company building
automated commercial broadcasting equipment. We were dubbing classical music
from records to tape and inserting tones and so on for it to control the
equipment. We had hired a recording engineer who had done much work in the
eastern part of the States and one day he happened to mention recording
Landowska. I asked him about it as she recorded at home.
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He said that in one session they
detected an "extraneous" note that didn't sound like anything even a
Pleyel might have made. When they played it back for Landowska, she listened
carefully, and finally shrugged her shoulders and said, "I broke
wind," and walked off.

Anyway, again thanks for bringing back a lot of deeply
seated and very fond memories of two people who left many impressions on me
that still guide my thoughts in my work today . . .

Richard Warburton

Skykomish, WA

English early music losses

Carl Dolmetsch (23 August 1911-11 July 1997)

Carl Frederick Dolmetsch was the second son of early music
pioneer Arnold Dolmetsch.  His
mother, Mabel, a leading writer about early dance, was Arnold's third wife.
After his father's death in 1940 Carl succeeded him as director of the
Haslemere Festival. Carl Dolmetsch was best known as a player of the recorder.
Wartime production of plastics in the Dolmetsch workshop led to his creation,
after World War II, of the Dolmetsch plastic recorder, an instrument used by
millions of school children. Carl Dolmetsch also expanded the modern repertoire
for recorder by commissioning more than fifty new works from composers such as
Lennox Berkeley, Edmund Rubbra, and Jean Françaix.

Ruth Dyson (28 March 1917-16 August 1997)

Professor of Harpsichord and Piano at the Royal College of
Music from 1964, Dyson, of Dorking, had a long association with fellow townsman
Vaughan Williams (who was a patient of her doctor father). As Leith Hill Music
Festival Librarian in the 1930s Dyson had the duty of erasing pencil marks from
orchestral parts, and she particularly treasured the telephone call from
Vaughan Williams in which he queried, "Now, my dear, you haven't
forgotten, have you, that we're meeting on Monday at 10 to rub out the whole of
Creation?"

Dyson recorded the clavichord works of Herbert Howells, the
principal keyboard duets before Mozart, and particularly loved the music of the
English Virginalists and English Baroque composers Purcell, Arne, Chilcot, and
Blow.  Her long association with
the Dolmetsch family is documented on the compact disc, The Dolmetsch Years,
Programme Six (Allegro PCD 1018), although not all of her selections played on
the clavichord are correctly identified. (She plays C. P. E. Bach's Variations
on Les Folies, Howells' Dyson's Delight 
and Hughes' Ballet, and, as track 9, C. P. E. Bach's Fantasia in C
minor  from the 18 Probestücke
of 1753, not Lambert's Fireside [Howells].)

Ruth Dyson died of a heart attack following a particularly
happy week of teaching at the Dolmetsch Summer School.

George Malcolm (28 February 1917-10 October 1997)

Well-known as a harpsichordist of brilliant technique, whose
repertoire included the English Virginalists and the major 18th-century
composers, Malcolm was also Master of Music (1947-59) at Westminster Cathedral,
where his work with the choir of men and boys was highly regarded.
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He was named CBE in 1965 and, in 1966,
an honorary Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, from which he held degrees in
classics and music.

International Competitions in Bruges

The 12th Harpsichord and 6th Fortepiano Competitions (with a
first prize of 150,000/100,000 Belgian Francs) will be held this summer in
Bruges, Belgium from July 24 through August 1.  The competition, open to players born after December 31,
1965, will be judged by Francoise Lengellé, Wolfgang Brunner, Jesper
Christensen, Johan Huys, Gustav Leonhardt, Davitt Moroney, and Ludger
Rémy.  Information and
application forms (due by April 15), Festival van Vlaanderen-Brugge, C.
Mansionstraat 30, B-8000 Brugge/Belgium. 
Telephone 00.32.50/33 22 83; fax 34 52 04.

Clavichord Symposium in Magnano

The third biennial International Clavichord Symposium (24-28
September) co-chaired by Bernard Brauchli and Christopher Hogwood, was held in
its unique setting of Magnano in northern Italy. Special interest centered on
the pedal clavichord built by John Barnes and Joel Speerstra and expertly
demonstrated by Mr. Speerstra. Another unusual instrument was the
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copy of a rare octave clavichord after
Praetorius, presented in a program of 15th- and 16th-century music. Many fine
copies of more familiar clavichords, particularly of the 18th century, were
displayed and demonstrated in a series of recitals, illustrated papers, and
discussion sessions.

The reawakening of interest in the clavichord is most
heartening and more than ably promoted by this influential international
conference.

--(Virginia Pleasants, London)

Features and news items for these columns are always
welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Meadows School of
the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275. E-mail:
[email protected]

Related Content

20th-Century Harpsichord History: Sex, Recordings, Videotape

by Larry Palmer
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Books about the phenomenon known as the 20th-century harpsichord revival continue to appear. Among recent publications, none is so engrossing as Violet: The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, written by her great-niece Jessica Douglas-Home (The Harvil Press, 84 Thornhill Road, London N1 1RD; £20). The geneological connection is especially important in this instance, for the author has had full access to unpublished letters and family diaries, enabling her to give full exposure both to the public persona and the unconventional private life of the English harpsichordist and clavichord player.

Mrs. Gordon Gordon Woodhouse (Violet and her husband officially changed their name to become an unhyphenated double one) was placed by author Osbert Sitwell in that company of "human genius who form so rare a race." Critic and composer Kaikhosru Sorabji wrote that Violet's technique and musicianship "are not surpassed by any English-speaking musician whose medium of expression is a keyboard instrument." Various editions of Grove's Dictionary assign her the honor of being the first to record the harpsichord (in July 1920) and the first to play a radio broadcast on the instrument (March 1924).

Drawn to the harpsichord through the influence of Arnold Dolmetsch, she attracted to her musical salon such figures as the artists Picasso and Rodin; the impressario Diaghilev; authors Law-rence of Arabia, Wilfred Owen, Ezra Pound, Bernard Shaw, and the three Sitwells--Osbert, Sacheverall, and Edith; and eminent composers Bartok, Delius (who, in 1919, composed his Dance for her), Vaughan Williams, and Ethel Smyth (one of Violet's passionate admirers).

Passion constituted a large part of Violet's intriguing story!  Although she married Gordon Woodhouse, they agreed that the marriage would remain unconsummated, and Violet's friend Adelina Ganz even accompanied the bridal pair on their honeymoon. Four years into the marriage, Violet's lover Bill Barrington joined the household. Subsequently the ménage à trois became a ménage à cinq when Denis Tollemache and Maxwell Labouchère, in love with Violet, also took up lodgings chez Woodhouse.

In addition to this tangled web of male companionship there was a continuing saga of Violet's female friends Christabel Marshal, Radclyffe Hall (who dedicated a book of Lesbian erotic poetry to Violet), Ethel Smyth, and of Dame Ethel's friends Virginia Woolf and the Princesse de Polignac. Scandal was never far-distant from the Gordon Woodhouses, but the most titilating event of all was the murder of Gordon's two maiden aunts by their longime butler, an event that saved the Woodhouse family fortune for Gordon and allowed him to maintain Violet in the extravagent life to which she had become accustomed.

It was this pampered existence which kept her, for much of her life, away from a professional career and the recording studios. Aristocratic women of means did not play concerts for money! But when she did give concerts, Mrs. Woodhouse appeared not only as a soloist, but also with such leading musicians as Sarasate, Casals, and Lionel Tertis. Receiving glowing reviews which were the envy of many other players, she was the only possible rival to the great Landowska, and to many listeners Woodhouse was the finest harpsichordist of her generation. Jessica Douglas-Home's book presents a fascinating picture of English aristocratic and musical life from late in the Victorian era through the second World War. Well-written and beautifully produced, the book features line drawings at the beginning of each chapter, a bound-in purple bookmark-ribbon, and a generous portfolio of photographs. The author claims April 23, 1871 as Violet's birthdate (not 1872, as in Grove's), and she repeats the claim that Mrs. Woodhouse was the first artist to make harpsichord records.

But she probably wasn't. In Claude Mercier-Ythier's coffee-table extravaganza Les Clavecins (Expodif Éditions, Paris) he cites a 1914 cylinder recording on which French organist and harpsichordist Paul Brunold (1875-1948) played pieces by Couperin and Rameau on the 1732 Antoine Vater harpsichord--obviously an earlier entry for the "first to record" sweepstakes.  Mercier-Ythier's 1996 book (which I found remaindered in an Alsacian flea-market sale) carries a hefty price (750 French francs, or about $150), but it is a volume filled with elegant color plates and photographs of harpsichords and harpsichordists, historic and modern. The French text includes chapters on harpsichord history, the various national schools of harpsichord making, the harpsichord revival and modern instruments, decoration, and the recent trend toward more-or-less exact copies of historic instruments.

While coverage of French matters seems to be reasonably gounded in fact, other 20th-century items are treated with a somewhat cavalier attitude toward accuracy. In just five pages (121-126) I caught the following errors:  Landowska was born in 1879 (not 1877); her housekeeper Elsa Schunicke's name gained an extra syllable (and she was promoted to secretary); Dolmetsch did not work at Chickering's in Boston "from 1902 until 1909" (he was employed there from 1905 until 1911); Hubbard and Dowd started their harpsichord-making together in 1949 (not 1965), and Mercier-Ythier does not seem very certain about which one wrote the book Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making. Falla's puppet opera for the Princesse de Polignac (El Retablo de Maese Pedro) dates from 1923, not 1919; Poulenc composed his Concert Champêtre in 1927-28, not 1929; but why worry, it's only "modern stuff," right? Buy this one for the pictures and refer to my Harpsichord in America: A 20th-Century Revival for details!

I've not yet run across Brunold's "first" harpsichord recording, but for many years I have been a devotee of Violet Gordon Woodhouse's artistry, having searched out her too-few 78-rpm recordings. Now the complete recorded legacy is available on one compact disc: Violet Gordon Woodhouse (Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, Volume Three: Pearl GEMM CD 9242). To complete the picture of Mrs. Woodhouse gained from reading the new biography, listen to her supple playing of just about everything on this generous disc, but especially to her remarkable performance of Bach's "Italian" Concerto, made in 1927 (Woodhouse's first electric recordings). Here is music-making that confirms the high opinions of her contemporaries!

The other volumes of this series are also recommended.  Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, Volume One: Pearl GEMM CD 9124) contains 75 minutes of playing by Marguerite Delcour (1924), Anna Linde, Simone Plé; Landowska-students Alice Ehlers and Eta Harich-Schneider (disarmingly called "Harry-Schneider" in Mercier's book); Marguerite Roesgen-Champion, Julia Menz, Yella Pessl, Régina Patorni-Casadesus; and the best keyboard player from the Dolmetsch clan, son Rudolph, recorded between 1929 and 1933.

Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, Volume Two, features the first recordings by Ralph Kirkpatrick, made for Musicraft between 1926 and 1929.  Bach (Partita 5, Italian Concerto, Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue), Purcell, the Virginalists, Couperin, Rameau, and two Scarlatti Sonatas are all performed on the artist's 1909 Dolmetsch harpsichord, an instrument which had originally belonged to the composer Busoni. The record producer, Teri Noel Towe, comments, "Some listeners confuse Ralph Kirkpatrick's tenacious and unswerving commitment to the composer's intentions with dullness and mistake his exquisite attention to detail and technical accuracy for dryness.  There is a special beauty and unique warmth to Kirkpatrick's sometimes austere but always direct, 'no nonsense' performances; his interpretations are always superbly conceived, often transcendent, and occasionally hypnotic."

Another recent release is A Recital of 20th-Century Harpsichord Music (Music and Arts CD-977), Kirkpatrick's unique recital at the University of California, Berkeley, given on 26 January 1961.  This unedited concert program features coughing, applause, and the world premiere performance of Henry Cowell's Set of Four, with its typical tone clusters and the specific octave trills for the left hand, so proudly pointed out later by Mr. Kirkpatrick in his introduction to the printed score.  I wish I could be more enthusiastic about this disc, but, unfortunately, I find the performances particularly lacking in suppleness and charm, especially in the decidely "non-grazioso" fast bangup of Delius' Dance, and the startling number of misreadings and wrong rhythms in the first movement of Persichetti's [First] Sonata for Harpsichord (at that time the only one there was). Kirkpatrick played only this one movement at his recital, and his reading sent me searching for my copy of the composer's manuscript to see if it really differed so markedly from the later printed version.  It didn't!

Other works chosen for this program included Lou Harrison's Six Sonatas, Ernst Lévy's Fantasie Symphonique, and works by Peter Mieg, Halsey Stevens, Douglas Allanbrook, and David Kraehenbuehl, whose Toccate per Cembalo, together with Mel Powell's exciting Recitative and Toccata Percossa, are the best-played selections.

What possessed the producers to include Igor Kipnis' fine review of Frances Bedford's Harpsichord and Clavichord Music of the 20th Century as a major part of the accompanying booklet defies logic!  There is no information about the music on the disc, but rather a general background of 20th-century composition for harpsichord and some very Kipnis-specific examples of how Bedford's catalog is useful.  With a full program of music unfamiliar to most players and (probably) all listeners, it surely would have been helpful to provide information about the specific composers and works found on this particular compact disc. All-in-all this release has historic and archival value, but it will not do much to garner general appreciation for 20th-century harpsichord music.

Fortunately that is not the case with Into the Millennium (Gasparo GSCD-331), a brilliant offering of attractive modern works, beautifully played by harpsichordist Elaine Funaro.  It was good to hear again the riveting Raga by Penka Kouneva, Dan Locklair's The Breakers Pound (especially its idiomatic and moving Prelude), and Tom Robin Harris' Jubilate Deo, a Ligeti-inspired two-and-one-half minute minimalist romp which truly is "joyful in the Lord."  (For those who follow the score of this work, Funaro chose not to play the composer's published new ending to this piece, preferring the original one!)  Other pieces on this appealing program from the Aliénor Harpsichord Composition Competitions include Edwin McLean's Sonata [I], Nicole Clément's Covalences Multiples, Stephen Yates' Suite, and two non-Aliénor works by Isaac Nagao and Peter B. Klausmeyer.  Two harpsichords (by William Dowd and Joop Klinkhamer) were lovingly recorded in a resonant acoustic (Duke University Chapel). Exemplary notes and a striking cover photo of  a flower-decorated Reinhard von Nagel harpsichord. Brava!

And the video? Landowska, a Documentary by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Diane Pontius (AGP Productions, 16 Levering Circle, Bala Cynwyd, PA 19004; 610/664-7316). The great Wanda's life is detailed in a montage of period photographs, films of 20th-century historical events, and interviews with those who knew her well (companion--secretary--student Denise Restout, Polish baritone Doda Conrad, record producer John Pfeiffer), those who heard her play (author William F. Buckley, Jr., French harpsichordist Magdeline Mangin), authors who have written about her (Alice Cash, Larry Palmer), and several other leading figures from the contemporary harpsichord scene (the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Laurence Libin, harpsichord-maker Willard Martin, and star performer Skip Sempé).

Especially vivid are the Restout sequences filmed at the home she shared with the harpsichordist, now the Landowska Center in Lakeville, CT; and the unique anecdotes from Conrad, who first met Landowska in 1912, and Pfeiffer, who recorded her final discs for RCA Victor.  Both of these men have since died.  Conrad's description of Landowska and Restout taking up lodging in a New York hotel best known as a brothel and his reference to Landowska's husband Henri Lew's propensity for visiting such institutions gives a certain added piquancy to the biography.

But, as always, it is Landowska herself who is the star of this feature!  Liberal segments from her only filmed appearance (for NBC Television's Wisdom Series, 1953) document for a new group of listeners and viewers the virtuosity of her music-making, as well as her public persona, a savvy mix of humility and self-awareness.  Responding to Jack Pfeiffer's questions, she recounts highlights of her early career (such as her memorable visit  to Tolstoy to play for him outside Moscow during a Russian winter), her delight in the natural beauty of her Connecticut home and its surroundings, and her love for the music of the past, her love of performing, and her love for her audience.

For all Landowska afficionados, this film is a reminder of her continuing place in our cultural history and in our hearts.  For those who have not yet had the opportunity to experience Landowska's artistry, it should be required viewing. Her role in the 20th-century revival of the harpsichord and early music is so central that every one of her successors owes a debt of gratitude to this pioneering figure.  Besides, her dramatic life-story, played out amidst the upheavals of 20th-century history, is more engrossing than fiction could ever be!

Harpsichord News

by Larry Palmer
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Clavichord Symposium

In Magnano, northern Italy, the second International Clavichord Symposium took place September 21-23, 1995. Far from the madding crowd, in a beautiful small 12th-century church, performers, builders, musicologists, and auditors from several countries gathered for three days of rewarding papers, discussions, and performances on a variety of clavichords. 42 presenters provided this program, chaired by Bernard Brauchli and Christopher Hogwood. Plans are already being made for the third symposium in 1997. Interest in the clavichord increases steadily.

--Virginia Pleasants (London)

Among other Americans at the Magnano Symposium were Bruce Glenny (Chicago) who lectured on Herbert Howells and the Clavichord; Jane Johnson (Crab Orchard, TN) who gave a lecture recital of 16th-century Spanish music; John Koster (Vermillion, SD), Joel Speerstra and Beverly Woodward, both of whom gave papers about C.P.E. Bach, and Carol lei Post (Pella, IA). Richard Troeger's (Edmonton, Alberta) paper on the Dolmetsch/Chickering clavichords was read at the conference.

And Speaking of Clavichords . . .

Jeremy Montagu reports in Early Music (February 1995, p. 175) that two Dolmetsch clavichords were sold at the Phillips (London) musical instrument sale of 24 March 1994. One which had belonged to the brilliant player Violet Gordon Woodhouse brought £2,530, while the instrument which Dolmetsch had built for George Bernard Shaw reached £5,060.

In a microfilm of Dolmetsch memorabilia from the Boston Public Library, I just happened to notice an item which gives a bit of perspective on the value of these clavichords! In a clipping from 1949 it was announced that Shaw's clavichord had been sold at auction to "a Londoner" for £110 (at the time, $440). Dolmetsch had sold it to Shaw in the  1920s for £40 ($160).

Publications of Interest

"The Harpsichord Invention of De la Pleigniere" by Thomas McGeary appears in The Organ Yearbook for 1994 (volume XXIV). The invention is a system of registration pedals operating pulleys "to overcome the limitations of the harpsichord." Before Pleyel!

Early Keyboard Journal (Volume 13, 1995) contains Lewis Reece Baratz's discussion and translation of "The Basso Continuo According to Jean Joseph Boutmy" (1770), the only tutor on this subject from a resident of the southern  Netherlands. In the same journal C. David Harris' article "Kuhnau's Accentus and its Implications for the Performance of Bach's Keyboard Music" makes some sense of a confusingly-described, oft-appearing ornament used by Bach's immediate predecessor, and amplifies Kuhnau's example with descriptions from Bach contemporaries Thomas Balthasar Janowka and Johann Gottfried Walther.

An Interview with Stephen Dodgson

by Pamela Nash
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From the Harpsichord Editor:

 

Barnes, an area of London just south of the Thames across the Hammersmith Bridge, has been home to a succession of English composers: Gustav Holst lived here from 1909 until 1912, Herbert Howells settled in Barnes in the 1920s and stayed for more than forty years, and the current longtime "resident composer" is Stephen Dodgson.  Since a first meeting at a Bruges Harpsichord Competition more than thirty years ago, I have come to treasure Dodgson both as composer and as friend.  Several of our musical collaborations are noted in Pamela Nash's insightful interview with the composer.  It is my hope that curiosity will be stimulated, and that our readers will proceed to investigate Dodgson's music. As Hugo Cole wrote in The New Grove, "He is one of the few living composers to write with understanding for the guitar, harpsichord and clavichord." For further information concerning Dodgson's compositions for our instruments, consult Frances Bedford's invaluable catalog 20th-Century Harpsichord and Clavichord Music. Inquiries concerning the availability of unpublished scores may be directed via email to

--Larry Palmer

Stephen Dodgson has composed for almost every instrumental genre, his works for the guitar having brought him particular notice. However, Dodgson has also earned a place in 20th-century harpsichord history and he has probably the longest and most productive association with the harpsichord of any living composer. His affinity with the instrument has been nurtured by the developments in the harpsichord world over the last forty years, and his output now comprises 49 works, both solo and ensemble.

 In my capacity as a harpsichordist and performer of contemporary music, I regard Dodgson as a singularly gifted champion of the harpsichord whose works should have wider recognition. His strength of feeling and depth of intuition for the instrument produces writing that is wholly idiomatic; his economy of line, clarity of voicing, control of texture, and dynamic rhythmic treatment are always expressed in ways that bring the harpsichord to life. I asked Dodgson about his work with the instrument, and about his philosophy on contemporary harpsichord matters.

PN: Is your penchant for the harpsichord partly a practical one--an outcome of being exposed to the instrument in your working environment?

SD: I always seem to respond to its rhythmic clarity, and the vividness of texture and spacing. Perhaps "living with harpsichords" quickens this response, but it's certainly not the cause of it.

PN: Can you recall your first encounter with the harpsichord?

SD: I can pinpoint it exactly. It was an afternoon in early summer 1955, when Stanislav Heller introduced me to Thomas Goff and his instruments with the definite aim that I should become interested in composing for him and for them.

PN: How did marriage to harpsichordist and Couperin expert Jane Clark foster your appreciation?

SD: It quickly extended my knowledge of the repertoire and this has subtly infected my perception of the instrument itself.

PN: Are there particular works that have provided the inspiration and impetus to compose for the harpsichord?

SD: At the start, Scarlatti was uppermost. Then it broadened out; the inspirational factor has been a generalised one of character, not so much deriving from one specific work.

PN: With the exception of a few pieces such as the Falla and Martin Concertos [completed in 1926 and 1952], harpsichord music before 1950 was either a sort of adjunct to the piano repertoire and impractical to play, or it was a pastiche of old idioms. You were one of the first to break these molds by writing true and characteristic music for the harpsichord: were you prompted by the burgeoning interest in the harpsichord in the 1950s, and by the new generation of players who were pursuing modern harpsichord repertoire?

SD: I was a lot less aware than your question supposes. I just leapt in excitedly. But it happened to coincide with the explosion of interest among players and makers alike. George Malcolm, Stanislav Heller, Antonio Saffi were very encouraging. They liked what I wrote and played it.

PN: You have been an observer of the harpsichord revival from those early days of your career; has your harpsichord music reflected the changes and developments in the instrument during the past 40 or so years?

SD: I believe the evolution of the instrument is actually reflected in what I've written--with the "classical" instrument steadily in the ascendant. Going back where I began is unthinkable.

PN: Has the harpsichord been a technical factor in your development as a composer? Has it influenced the ways you write for other instruments?

SD: It occupies a place all of its own in my thinking. Which is why I am jealous of being as idiomatic as possible in my approach. But because I value economy of means in everything I write, and an "open space" approach is an essential factor in good harpsichord writing (in any century!) I'm sure there has been some cross-over influence.

PN: Your harpsichord music is very rewarding to play, the main reason being that its style and idiom coincide very logically and happily with the harpsichord's character. This enables the player to make the music speak easily and directly. How does this work; do your ideas originate at the harpsichord? How do you consider technical things like handshifts and fingering in your composing?

SD: I never take something new to the harpsichord until I'm pretty certain of it musically. I then find I may here and there want to move up or down an octave--and leave out still a few more notes than I'd been crossing out the week before. Handshifts and fingerings can actually be exciting things in harpsichord writing, because they are integral to the result in phrasing and attack. Some ideas have actually originated in this way: for example, Invention Set 5, no. 3. (Example 1)

PN: You also have a very strong symbiotic relationship with the guitar. Your harpsichord music seems to demonstrate how close the relationship is between the guitar and the harpsichord, and some of your ideas are found in the repertoires of both instruments. Do they have similar limitations that you can treat in the same ways?

SD: Of course, harpsichord and guitar must both have their limitations. One has heard music on each of them which palpably didn't suit. But there's so much that can be written on each successfully, I've never found it profitable to think about limitations. Rather, I've always preferred going for it positively, trying to develop an instinct for what will succeed and give the performer satisfaction.

PN: Combining harpsichord and guitar in Duo Concertante and Dialogues must have been uniquely difficult.

SD: When asked to write for harpsichord and guitar together, I simply couldn't persuade myself it could work. But Rafael Puyana and John Williams insisted it did, so I took courage in my hands, and as I worked began to believe in it more and more.

PN: Because their timbres are at once similar and different, how did you reconcile them, both in off-setting them soloistically, and in combining them homogeneously?

SD: The fascination is because they are similar yet different. My object was to make them homogeneous here, and by contrast very separated in other places; figuration, spacing are important factors; how to devise dialogues that bring out different facets in the relationship. Then there was the excitement of finding a dramatic structure to give such colorings purpose.

PN: You often end a phrase with an octave unison or an open fifth, which is very idiomatic for plucked instruments where chords can actually sound louder without the third (for example, the ending of the Duo Concertante, where it sounds as though there are several guitars and harpsichords playing!) You also juxtapose thick voiced harmonies of thirds with open fifths or unisons a lot, which seems to have to do with accentuating the pulse, and with rhythmical stress and energy. The notes often seem subservient to the pulse, as in Scarlatti. (Example 2: Invention Set 3, no. 3)

SD: Agreed! This is certainly something I learned from Scarlatti. Rhythmic stress does indeed require additional notes. In cadential situations the big bare intervals appeal through their primary force.

PN: Would you say there are other significant parallels between Scarlatti's harpsichord writing and your own? For example, in the use of harmonic texture: in leaving out the third of the chord and opening out the last chord in a progression to an octave or fifth; the use of an ornament on the off-beat; the tied chord on the last beat or the half-beat, which gives a syncopated weight or accent, significantly on the anacrusis. The use of rhythm and timing to create drama and suspense in the way the music breathes and is sometimes suspended is also similar. Although Scarlatti was specifically concerned with emulating flamencan rhythm on the harpsichord, your music seems to function on the same level as it too explores the harpsichord's ability to dance and "swing." Are these reasonable comparisons?

SD: Yes--to my mind they are very close indeed to my way of going about it, and you're right to point out my penchant for the anacrusis accent, perhaps with an ornament for extra emphasis. (Example 3: Invention Set 3, no. 4)

PN: It is often said that there is an English quality about your music in general. What is it do you think that gives this impression?

SD: I think I'm just very English--full stop!

Dodgson's use of dynamics (before Inventions/Set 4) is very economical for the harpsichord, which adds to the practicality of his music on the classical-type instrument. He has gone from using standard dynamics, to registration dynamics, to no dynamics at all with Set 4 of the Inventions. A decade later in the most recent fifth Set, all expression marks are eschewed to leave "just the notes." The dynamic and expressive feeling in the music has always been intrinsic, in the baroque sense; very often, a marking of 'p' or 'f' is reflected in the notes themselves, in a shift to a different tessitura, or a change of texture, pace or harmonic rhythm. Then to add the registration is merely an accentuation of the inherent musical dynamics. (Example 4: Invention Set 3, no. 1)

PN: Could you explain the evolution of the dynamic treatment in the Inventions? In some of the earlier writing where the registration dynamics cannot be realised on the classical harpsichord, are you happy for the player to revise them?

SD: I may have been reasonably consistent about dynamic markings at any one time, but, overall, I think there's no consistent development. At first I only thought in terms of 2-manual instruments. In general therefore the f & p invite a registration change, or an addition/subtraction of 4-foot or coupler. By the time of Set 5 I'd become concentrated on making all the coloring arise from the music itself, with the ambitious aim that the whole set could succeed on a single register throughout without seeming monochrome. In settling for "just the notes" notation I'd convinced myself anything else would be a distraction. I actually want to appeal to the imagination of the player! And this naturally applies too to those spots where my notated changes cannot be realised on the instrument being used.

PN: Have you also dispensed with the use of accents? In your earlier writing the accent or [-] tenuto dash is often poignant as an indication of the rhythmic intent, or the importance of a note. And although accent in the tonal sense (as on the piano) cannot be realised on the harpsichord, in some ways the spirit of it can be: for example as an agogic accent, or a tenuto or inégale form of accent.

SD: In general I'm a great supplier of accent signs, but more and more I question their relevance for the harpsichord. I'm also a great one for beaming notes according to their accentual grouping, and allowing these to criss-cross with the metrical organisation. This dispenses with most of any remaining need for accent signs. But who can deny the psychological impact of a Sforzando where the intention is dramatic? So I don't promise never to use accent marking in the future.

PN: You seem almost to have phased out the use of mixed meters as well: why is this?

SD: Modern music has often done itself disservice with over-complexity of time-signature and incessant change. The simpler the notational method the better. Constant change tends to result in constant choppiness in performance; OK if that's the purpose, but it's really never my purpose. Therefore I've a preference for the basic 3/4, 4/4, 6/8 standard and let the more capricious rhythmic elements fly about, since this is an inducement to continuity. If I can get the music to look simpler than it actually is, I take a pride in it.

Today's baroque, almost "vocal" approach to playing the harpsichord contrasts strongly with the generic pianistic approach of the early 20th-century school of harpsichord playing, but although piano technique is not desirable for early repertoire, the 20th-century repertoire is a different context. Some modern harpsichord works will sound basically the same regardless of the source of technique used to play them, but there are instances in Dodgson's works where real harpsichord sensibilities in the performer can be important. For example, Invention Set 3, no. 1 (Example 5) is a very expressive piece, improvisatory in feel, and it could be seen in the light of the unmeasured prelude. It is marked "largamente e liberamente" and "sempre sostenuto." This can be expressed on the harpsichord by overholding the notes of the broken chords and by "arpeggiating" between voices. For example, to play the E and the C in bar 1 fractionally broken is an example of harpsichord technique that gives a more expressive and resonant result, as well as a rhythmic emphasis by bringing out the duple time. The use of harpsichord articulations brings out phrasing and pulse, and this can be said for much of Dodgson's music where the voices are exposed, slow and melodic, and where harmonic and rhythmic emphasis are important.

PN: In general, how relevant is it that your music is played by a true harpsichordist? Perhaps the issue of technical style is less important when the right musician is playing it, regardless of their keyboard "persuasion"?

SD: As such, it's not so important; but I'm a bit upset if I find the player isn't as sensitive as I'd like to peculiarities of harpsichord sound. On the other hand, their keyboard persuasion can mean an overweaning devotion to one of the tenets of "performance practice." I remember begging a continental harpsichordist to play a certain passage in my Aulos Trio with the hands together in place of the exaggerated displacement which so appealed to him, after which he was less keen to have my opinions.

PN: The Fantasia movements in Set 5 and in Sonata-Divisions, and the unmeasured prelude style, seem to illuminate further the dichotomy between the piano and the harpsichord in your keyboard writing. (Example 6: Sonata-Divisions)

SD: I've developed an unmeasured style in writing for the piano too--but it's completely different. I love both instruments, but I do not let them meet!

PN: In throwing off the last vestiges of "piano writing" in your most recent harpsichord works, do you feel a greater sensitivity to the whole harpsichordaesthetic?

SD: Yes: it's an important reason why I've gone on writing for it--the search for an elusive ideal--a modern music that is intrinsically harpsichord yet carries resonances of its historic past.

PN: In writing for harpsichord in ensemble, what are the challenges in balancing the sonorities? For instance, how do you work round the predisposition of the harpsichord's treble register to get lost in ensemble?

SD: I agree that the harpsichord changes its nature in ensemble, and each ensemble situation is unlike the others. In nearly every situation its sustaining power is eclipsed by all the naturally sustaining instruments. To obtain a balance, it is the handling of those instruments which is the clue to success. Avoid the register where the harpsichord is to penetrate clearly; similarly avoid duplicating its busier figurations. Open spacing is always good; single notes rather than chords are better for a held background.

Dodgson demonstrates in his Arlington Concertante that harpsichord sound can "behave" very differently in a concerto context; it has a highly dramatic effect, sometimes of menace--particularly when re-entering with a burst of activity after a long rest. Dodgson projects this quality to compelling effect in his fondness for suspense and dramatic shifts of mood. Ornaments and fast arpeggiated movement are also fantastically effective inside a varied instrumental texture. (Examples 7 & 8)

PN: With the denser instrumental texture of the concerto, there is a propensity for the harpsichord to lose its rhythmic power. How did you compensate for this, for example in Arlington Concertante: in particular, writing rhythmic stress into the harpsichord part? In what ways did the orchestration allow the harpsichord to cut through the texture, particularly in tutti passages?

SD: Arlington Concertante was a challenge indeed, being on the face of it an impossible combination. There had to be an illusion of tutti, achieved by leaving "holes" in spacing and rhythm for the soloist. The thematic ideas were shaped by this--a case of making a virtue out of a necessity. I must have a perverse streak, because I really enjoy that sort of situation!

PN: What was the difference in your approach to scoring in Concerto da Camera in 1963? What were the reasons for its revision in 1979?

SD: Concerto da Camera is scored for violas, cellos and double bass only (I was thinking of the 6th Brandenburg); their natural compass is exactly where the harpsichord has its soul. It was a long time before it came to performance, and by 1979 I acted to improve its sonority, its transparency, in ways I knew little of when originally working at it.

Dodgson attended a week-long symposium of his harpsichord music in 1996 run by Southern Methodist University of Dallas. It was led by the organist and harpsichordist Larry Palmer who commissioned Dodgson's Duo alla Fantasia for harp and harpsichord in 1981. It featured masterclasses by the composer, and performances of Inventions, Sonata-Divisions and Carillon for two harpsichords.

PN: What was it like to be studied and performed so intensively and by such a diverse group of keyboard players?

SD: It was a new experience for me. I'd never previously thought of all my harpsichord music all at once, and was anxious about a good many of the earlier Inventions. Would they stand up to an intensive week? Would they fail to hold the attention of the participants? They were a very diverse group, in age and attainment. It was not only a true adventure for them, but it felt like one for me too--and I felt I'd been right to pursue harpsichord composition as long as I have.

PN: As a composer, you must have an ideal in your mind of how a piece should come across in performance. Is it more rewarding to collaborate with the performer, for example in a masterclass format, or is hearing what a performer makes of the piece on their own terms equally valuable?

SD: The most rewarding thing is the discovery that a performer has identified with what you've written, and found meaning and excitement in it. It actually adds to the interest if it's not identical with mine.

PN: You have written for many different media, but you show a predilection for non-mainstream "uncommercial" in-struments and ensemble combinations. The Duo Concertante for guitar and harpsichord, for example, while demonstrating that this is a fascinating medium, is still a relatively uncharted territory. Few players after Rafael Puyana and John Williams have explored the harpsichord and guitar ensemble, not least because of a dearth of major works like the Duo Concertante. Then there are the limitations in distribution and publication, etc.: doesn't it therefore deliver rather a small return on your investment? Or is it more important to you to follow your nose for a particular medium, regardless of its marketability?

SD: Don't forget that the larger part of what I've written for both guitar and harpsichord has been at specific players' request. It's not just my predilection; it's my willingness to be led where the prospect seems interesting. I should probably give more attention to marketability than I do and you are of-course right on the general point!

PN: Although there is a segment of the classical audience which still associates the harpsichord with unflattering antiquated recordings, it seems significant that harpsichord aficionados were often converted to the instrument by these early renditions; was it because one was listening without judgement or criterion, and so the spirit of the music came through regardless?

SD: Yes. The 20th-century history of the harpsichord is every way as fascinating as the original hundred years from circa 1660. Those early renditions from the dawn of the revival will never lose their fascination, and are so illuminating as to all that has happened since.

PN: Although the criteria for judging harpsichord performance style has changed dramatically since the dawn of the revival, there are still anomalies in current opinion when it comes to certain performers. Landowska's style, for example, is at odds with today's widely-held maxims of performance practice, and yet there is an almost universal reluctance to evaluate her style objectively.

SD: To evaluate Landowska's style objectively is hard, not just because she was so strong and individual herself, but almost as much because our standpoint is constantly shifting as to what is or is not a "good style."

PN: Most people, including yourself, now feel that there is nothing of any value the harpsichord with pedals (such as the Pleyel or the Neupert) can do that the classical harpsichord can't. And whilst it must be said that the tone and responsiveness of the classical instrument bears it little comparison, would we do better not to try to relate these two species at all, and simply to preserve the role of the pedal-supplied  harpsichord as it was? The instant registration, and the colorations and combinations therein can add up to 30 or more on some instruments, and there are certain pieces where this can still come into its own. For example, in Elliott Carter's Sonata for Flute, Oboe, Cello and Harpsichord, the treatment of the other instruments' dynamics and phrasing, and indeed the texture and form of the music revolve around the tone color possibilities of a pedal harpsichord.

SD: The pedal harpsichord is part of history. There has to be a preservation order before we lose them all! I heard a claim the other day that only two Pleyels remain in the UK in anything like working condition. Elliott Carter's Sonata is part of history as much as Ligeti's Continuum and Poulenc's Concert Champêtre.

PN: Aside from works where range of volume is a condition of the music, could pedal instruments still play a part, do you think, in championing new music?

SD: The classic, reproduction harpsichord IS the harpsichord of today; I suspect new music itself is out-of-date if it fails to recognise the march of time.

PN: But are there pieces which could be considered equally viable on both instruments?

SD: The Falla Concerto sounds wonderful on the classical harpsichord; but you learn something about its historical place hearing it on a Pleyel. The application of "authenticity" doesn't only apply to olden time.

PN: Players like George Malcolm always seemed to be compensating for the fact that the harpsichord wasn't the piano; perhaps his resultant "hybrid" style is another example of 20th-century "authenticity," particularly on the Thomas Goff harpsichords, since these were hybrid instruments anyway? Specifically, wasn't Malcolm in fact serving Goff's vision of the perfect harpsichord, along with composers like yourself?

SD: The Malcolm/Goff interdependency was unique. An adequate answer to this question needs a chapter to itself! Goff was undoubtedly ambitious with regard to his instruments being in the forefront of public attention--and they were!

PN: Do you think that the harpsichord still remains relatively obscure to the general public?

SD: I think there's complete public awareness of the harpsichord, but little knowledge of why it sounds the way it does, and only a little more of the reason for its existing today.

PN: How should we raise awareness of the harpsichord in the contemporary music field?

SD: A good first step would be for composers of contemporary music to understand better what the contemporary harpsichord is--to regard it as more than merely a timbre.

PN: You have a strong vantage point from which to view today's harpsichord scene, and to reflect on the changes you have witnessed. Do you feel there is a certain directness and simplicity lacking in some of today's harpsichord playing: that the currently received ideas under the banner of performance practice have had an intimidating effect on artistic intuition?

SD: Yes. The currently received ideas on performance practice seem to me largely outmoded. They were too academic in formulation to withstand the onrush of musical curiosity.

PN: There has also resulted a sort of cloning of playing style which appears to be more endemic in the US and in other parts of Europe than in Britain. There seems to be more independence of style and more individuality among British players. It is due partly perhaps to the absence of a "school" of British harpsichord playing, but is it also that we have a greater sang-froid and directness of character--a "no-nonsense" objectivity towards music in general?

SD: Yes, I think we are a little more sceptical, more suspicious of dogma. So, there again, you see how British I am!

PN: 20th-century music is not a medium for demonstrating "performance practice," as the context does not engender the same sorts of freedoms as early music does, and there is no assumed historical agenda other than the composer's own. The performer has to be open to this and technically versatile; in your own harpsichord music, there is a need for great clarity and technical precision and little margin for liberties within the style. Is this part of the question of why contemporary music is ignored by harpsichordists?

SD: Perhaps so. If I take your question aright, the "Performance Practitioner" finds his interpretative role diminished by the exact requirements of a contemporary score, and so retreats to his beloved old masters, who (he believes) give him this freedom. Something in the argument, but a bit simplistic I think.

PN: Do you see it as being rooted politically in the old factions that formed in the harpsichord world: those who endorsed contemporary harpsichord music were "politically incorrect" be-cause their wider musical concern was seen to detract from the cause?

SD: Rather more in this argument. Dabbling in contemporary music is avoided by some players (but only some!) as a dilution of their application to the old masters--that their seriousness as "specialists" is undermined thereby. The low-pitch factor plus meantone tuning also play their part in creating a chasm between old and modern music. A composer may want to write for the harpsichord in ensemble, but may not want the partnering instruments to be baroque.

PN: Has this chasm affected the harpsichord's credibility as a contemporary instrument in your view?

SD: Not too much, for I'm convinced that the contemporary composition that shows strong and idiomatic insight into the harpsichord and its players as they actually are won't need to struggle for its champions. As to the public, that may take a bit longer.

Harpsichord Playing in America “after” Landowska

Larry Palmer

The Diapason’s Harpsichord Editor since 1969, Larry Palmer is author of the pioneering book, Harpsichord in America: A Twentieth-Century Revival, published by Indiana University Press in 1989 (paperback second edition, 1993). Of six international advisors for the Berlin commemoration, two were Americans: Teri Noel Towe (New York) and Palmer (Dallas). Poster and postcard images for the exhibition featured an anonymous caricature belonging to Palmer, the gift of Momo Aldrich, first secretary to the iconic Landowska.

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The Power of the Press:
“A Living Legend”

Nicholas Slonimsky (1894–1995), writing about harpsichordist Wanda Landowska for the French journal Disques in 1932, introduced his subject with a three-stanza poem. It begins:

Her fingers on the cembalo
Type out the polyphonic lore
Of Bach’s Inventions—and restore
The true original edition
Unobfuscated by tradition.1
Twelve years later, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, habitually cranky New York music critic Virgil Thomson (1896–1989), reviewed the Polish harpsichordist’s Town Hall concert of 20 November 1944 under the adulatory headline “Definitive Renderings”:

Wanda Landowska’s harpsichord recital of last evening . . . was as stimulating as a needle shower. . . . She played everything better than anybody else ever does. One might almost say, were not such a comparison foolish, that she plays the harpsichord better than anybody else ever plays anything . . .
. . . [Her] playing of the harpsichord . . . reminded one all over again that there is nothing else in the world like it. There does not exist in the world today, nor has there existed in my lifetime, another soloist of this or any other instrument whose work is so dependable, so authoritative, and so thoroughly satisfactory. From all the points of view—historical knowledge, style, taste, understanding, and spontaneous musicality—her renderings of harpsichord repertory are, for our epoch, definitive. Criticism is unavailing against them, has been so, indeed, for thirty years.2
It seems that the divine Wanda had accomplished her objective, half a century in the making, of restoring the harpsichord to a recognized place in the cultural consciousness of music lovers, both in Europe and in the western hemisphere. Her personal style, based on an innate rhythmic certainty, a turn-of-the-century impressionistic use of tonal color, and, not incidentally, her careful perusal of historical source materials had made her name virtually synonymous with the word harpsichord, at least in the collective consciousness of the public.

True Believers:
Expatriated European and Native American Disciples

Landowska’s acolytes dominated those American venues where harpsichords were played: Alice Ehlers (1887–1981), Professor Landowska’s first student in 1913 Berlin, immigrated to the United States and taught for 26 years at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. Among Ehlers’s fascinating oral history recorded vignettes she noted that Landowska did not talk much in those early lessons, but she relied heavily on playing for her students. Later, in Ehlers’s own teaching, at least one anecdote retold by her student Malcolm Hamilton (1932–2003) showed that Ehlers was less than impressed at his derivative details copied from Landowska’s style. When Hamilton added an unwritten trill to the subject of a Bach fugue Ehlers stopped him to ask why. “I heard a recording by Wanda Landowska,” he began. Madame Ehlers interrupted brusquely, “Wanda Landowska was a genius. You and I, Malcolm, we are not geniuses—‘spaacially you!”3
Two more Landowska students holding American academic posts were Marie Zorn (b. 1907?), who promoted the Landowskian style in her harpsichord teaching at Indiana University from 1958 until 1976, and Putnam Aldrich (1904–1975), who married Wanda’s own personal secretary Madeleine Momot in 1931 (with a somewhat-reconciled Landowska as witness for the bride). Eventually “Put” settled his young family in northern California, where he established a prestigious doctoral program in early music at Stanford University.
In concert halls, Madame’s final brilliant students, Rafael Puyana (born 1931), a South American of blazing virtuosity, and Texas-born Paul Wolfe (born 1929), both built solo careers in the decade following their teacher’s death.
In 1961 Puyana played a concert at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York, during my first year there as a doctoral student. Rafael, the scion of a wealthy family, toured the country with a Pleyel harpsichord (the instrument of choice for Landowska’s students) and a personal driver. His Eastman recital was a dashing and colorful evocation of a Landowska program, including kaleidoscopic changes of registration; a repertoire firmly grounded in the major Bach works; but with at least one non-Landowska addition: his own harpsichord transcription of a Canción for piano by the Catalan composer Frederico Mompou.
Paul Wolfe, not from a moneyed family, set out to make his name through recordings. I came to know him when Nick Fritsch of Lyrichord Records decided to reissue a number of their 1950s vinyl issues on compact discs and asked me to write an introductory article explaining harpsichord pedals. Wolfe’s instruments—a 1907 Pleyel of wooden construct and a large concert instrument completed in 1958 by the young northeastern builders Frank Rutkowski and Richard Robinette—as well as programs that featured 17th-century works by Frescobaldi and the English virginalists, Spanish music, and all eight of the 1720 Handel Suites—presented both facile young fingers and an expanding repertory of early keyboard music to the American harpsichord scene.

A Contrarian’s View of Landowska
During the autumnal years of Landowska’s career, critics of her playing style were not legion. But one composer-critic who did not idolize the High Priestess of the Harpsichord was neo-classicist composer Robert Evett (1922–1975). In a 1952 piece for The New Republic, Evett wrote:

Mme. Landowska has seduced the brighter part of the American public into believing that she offers it an authentic reading of Bach and his predecessors. What this lady actually uses is a modern Pleyel harpsichord, an instrument that she employs as a sort of dispose-all. . . .
After fifteen years of incredulous listening, I am finally convinced that this woman kicks all the pedals in sight when she senses danger ahead. When she sits down to play a Bach fugue, I go through all the torments that a passenger experiences when he is being driven over a treacherous mountain road by an erratic driver, and when she finally finishes the thing it is almost a pleasure to relax into nausea.4
A Different Aesthetic:
Ralph Kirkpatrick
Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911–1984), funded by a post-graduate John Knowles Paine Traveling Fellowship from Harvard University, set off for Europe in the fall of 1931 to hone his harpsichord playing skills. As described in his memoirs,5 the pre-eminent American harpsichordist of his generation had a difficult relationship with the priestess of St-Leu, eventually running off to Berlin for coaching and consolation with another Landowska student, the more congenial Eta Harich-Schneider (1897–1986). Kirkpatrick’s public playing, beginning with concerts and recordings during the 1930s, sounded distinctly unlike Landowska’s in its conscious avoidance of excessive registration changes and its near-metronomic regularity. Teri Noel Towe’s description of Kirkpatrick’s style, printed as a “disclaimer” in the compact disc reissue of these early solo recordings for Musicraft Records, puts it this way:

Some listeners confuse Ralph Kirkpatrick’s tenacious and unswerving commitment to the composer’s intentions with dullness and mistake his exquisite attention to detail and technical accuracy for dryness. These detractors would do well to listen again. There is a special beauty and unique warmth to Kirkpatrick’s sometimes austere but always direct, ‘no nonsense’ performances; his interpretations are always superbly conceived, often transcendent, and occasionally hypnotic. . . .6
For a balanced evaluation of Kirkpatrick the harpsichordist, one needs to sample some later examples from his extensive discography. A 1959 Deutsche Grammophon Archiv recording of Bach played on a Neupert instrument presents quite another aural document of a decidedly non-austere artist. And by 1973 when I experienced Kirkpatrick’s deeply-moving playing of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the Rothko Chapel in Houston (Texas), I reported in The Diapason that “Kirkpatrick played magnificently with a prodigious technical command of the work as well as with spacious feeling for the overall architecture . . .”7
At the very end of a more than five-decade career, and now totally blind, the aged master could allow his innate musical sensitivity to triumph. Despite his end-of-career tongue-in-cheek comments about preferring the piano, the Yale professor was the most highly regarded and recorded native harpsichordist in the United States during the period of Landowska’s American residency.
Other noted American players of Kirkpatrick’s generation included Yella Pessl (1906–1991) and Sylvia Marlowe (1908–1981). Marlowe’s first instrument was a true Landowska Pleyel, by this time painted white, the better to be seen on the revolving stage of New York City’s Rainbow Room, where Sylvia played jazz arrangements of classical favorites under the catchy rubric Lavender and New Lace. Deeply influenced by Landowska’s playing, encountered while the New Yorker was studying with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, Marlowe’s 1959 solo Bach recording for Decca demonstrates how much Madame’s long musical shadow dominated the American harpsichord scene.
Eventually Ms. Marlowe chose to play harpsichords built by the American maker John Challis, moving subsequently to those of Challis’s apprentice William Dowd (with lid-paintings by her own husband, the artist Leonid [Berman]). Non-night-club recital repertoire included 18th-century classics, soon augmented extensively by commissions to prominent living composers. Thus, important works by Ned Rorem and Elliott Carter, to cite only two, came into being through Marlowe’s sponsorship. Together with the impressive catalog of similar commissions from the Swiss harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer (1909–1973), Marlowe’s initiatives helped to provide the harpsichord with an extensive, new twentieth-century musical voice.
Influenced by Kirkpatrick during student days at Yale, Fernando Valenti (1926–1990) switched from piano to harpsichord, and also played important new works by Vincent Persichetti (that composer’s First Harpsichord Sonata composed in 1952) and Mel Powell (Recitative and Toccata Percossa). However, Valenti made his name primarily as the most exciting player of Domenico Scarlatti’s sonatas and specifically as the first harpsichordist to record such a large number of them—359 individual works performed on his Challis harpsichord in a series of albums for Westminster Records. In 1951 he was appointed the first harpsichord professor at New York’s Juilliard School. Several didactic books, published late in Valenti’s career, are as colorful and insightful as his playing. Who could resist a chuckle at words such as these?

Many years ago I promised myself that I would never put in print anything that even vaguely resembled a ‘method’ for harpsichord playing and this is it.8
One of the best-known harpsichordists to study privately with Valenti was Berlin-born Igor Kipnis (1930–2002), son of the prominent bass opera singer Alexander Kipnis. The family moved to the United States in 1938, where both Kipnises became familiar names in the classical music arena. Igor was particularly noted for his comprehensive and innovative repertory, recorded extensively. His playing was thoroughly representative of a more objective style of harpsichord performance.

Winds (or Strings and Quills) of Change?
One of the great services rendered by Kirkpatrick was his fervent advocacy for the historically inclined instruments of Frank Hubbard and William Dowd. As the years went by, these musical machines emulated ever more closely those from earlier centuries, albeit with some decidedly 20th-century materials, such as the plastics used for jacks and plectra. But with keyboards built to various baroque dimensions; sensitive, light actions; and registers deployed in a way that an 18th-century composer might have expected; together with the absence, for the most part, of the sixteen-foot register and pedals, these light and agile instruments gave the new generation of players sensitive tools for performing the music of the past. Emulating Hubbard and Dowd, a number of builders, in Boston and other American venues, and throughout the world, joined the “surge to the past,” and thereby changed both the dynamic and the expected sounds of harpsichord revival instruments.
Among Kirkpatrick’s allies in promoting these new “old” instruments were two Fullers—his student Albert (1926–2007) and the not-related David (born 1927), and harpsichordist/conductors Miles Morgan and William Christie. As the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, nearly every emerging teacher and player in the country seemed to be joining the pedal-less crowd. In 1966 I met Dr. Joseph Stephens and played the Hubbard and Dowd harpsichord in his Baltimore (Maryland) home. Shortly thereafter I ordered my own first Dowd double. It was delivered at the beginning of January 1969. As has happened for so many players in our small musical world, that sensitive instrument taught me as much as had the memorable hours spent studying with two of the finest teachers imaginable: Isolde Ahlgrimm (at the Salzburg Mozarteum), and Gustav Leonhardt (during two memorable July participations in his master classes at the annual Haarlem Summer Organ Academies).

Influential European
Artist-Teachers

Both of these superb artists made significant contributions to harpsichord playing in the United States: Ahlgrimm (1914–1995) through her teaching in Salzburg, Vienna, and during semester-long guest professorships at Oberlin and Southern Methodist University, as well as several American concert tours organized by managers, but aided and attended by her grateful students. Until recently, Ahlgrimm’s place in the story of the 20th-century harpsichord revival has been little celebrated. With the publication of Peter Watchorn’s major study Isolde Ahlgrimm, Vienna and the Early Music Revival,9 that deficiency in our history has been rectified!
Leonhardt (born 1928), surely the most recorded of post-Landowska harpsichordists, has influenced virtually every harpsichordist from the second half of the 20th-century forward. His students seem to be everywhere. Even the most cursory of enumerations would include many of the leading teachers in the U.S: Oberlin’s first full-time professor of harpsichord Lisa Crawford; Michigan’s Edward Parmentier; Boston’s John Gibbons; University of New York at Stony Brook’s Arthur Haas; Florida State’s Karyl Louwenaar; Illinois’ Charlotte Mattax; and, particularly during the 1970s and ’80s, my own large group of harpsichord major students at Southern Methodist University. In the spirit of the early music excitement of those decades, SMU conferred his first doctorate on Leonhardt in 1984, citing the Dutch harpsichordist’s advocacy of “performance on period instruments,” as well as his “commitment to both stylistic authority and artistic sensitivity in recreating music of the past.”
To this day, more than 25 years after the conferral of that honorary degree, Leonhardt still refers to me in communications as his “Doktor-Vater.” Whereas Ahlgrimm referred to herself as a biological phenomenon since she “got more children the older she became,” Leonhardt’s humorous salutation presents me with a similar phenomenon: the “son” as father to the “father.” At any rate, I am pleased to have Dr. Leonhardt as my most distinguished graduate!
Ah yes, students—the new generators of harpsichord playing in America. Too many to list, but perhaps one graced with multiple “A’s” may serve as representative—Andrew Appel, American, who completed his doctoral studies with Juilliard harpsichord professor Albert Fuller in 1983, and now carries on that line from his teacher, who had been a pupil of Ralph Kirkpatrick, who was . . . and here we could circle back to the beginning of this essay. May Andrew Appel represent the achievements of so many of our fine young players: the late Scott Ross, the with-it Skip Sempé, the sensitive Michael Sponseller, the delightful teaching colleague Barbara Baird—Americans, all!
Ultimately all of us are indebted to those European “explorers” who have provided our inspiration and training: French/English Arnold Dolmetsch, Austrian Isolde Ahlgrimm, Dutch Gustav Leonhardt: all contributors to the variety and richness of the harpsichord’s presence in our contemporary musical life. And our Polish mother, Wanda Landowska: that vibrant musician who has brought us together for this celebration of her musical legacy.

Some Information about Added Aural Examples
This paper was presented at the Berlin Musical Instrument Museum on November 14, 2009, during a symposium in conjunction with the exhibition Die Dame mit dem Cembalo [The Lady with the Harpsichord], in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Wanda Landowska’s death. The topic was suggested by the museum’s curator Martin Elste, who organized the event. To remain within an imposed time limit, I chose to include only seven short recorded examples, each one a performance of the same final 25 measures from the third (Presto) movement of J. S. Bach’s Italian Concerto (BWV 971)—with an individual duration of between 30 and 40 seconds.
The first example demonstrated one of the most unforgettable of all my musical experiences: Landowska’s unexpected slight agogic hesitation between top and bottom notes of the climactic downward octave leap in measure 199, the last return of that wonderfully energetic opening theme. Taken from her 1936 recording for EMI [reissued in Great Recordings of the Century, CDH 7610082], it served as an aural measuring rod with which to compare the following recordings, made “after” Landowska.
Example Two presented the young Ralph Kirkpatrick playing his early 20th-century Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord, captured in a 1939 recording for Musicraft, digitized on Pearl [Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume II, GEMM CD 9245]. Example Three: Kirkpatrick again, 20 years later, recorded in a thrillingly theatrical performance played on a powerhouse Neupert instrument for Archiv [198 032] (LP).
Example Four: Sylvia Marlowe, like Landowska, played on an instrument by Pleyel, recorded in 1959 for Decca [DL 710012] (LP).
Example Five: Leading Bach authority Isolde Ahlgrimm, recorded 1975, playing her 1972 David Rubio harpsichord, recorded by Philips [6580 142] (LP).
Example Six: Gustav Leonhardt utilized the sound of an actual 18th-century historic instrument for his 1976 recording on a 1728 Hamburg harpsichord by Christian Zell. Seon [Pro Arte PAL-1025] (LP).
Example Seven: Andrew Appel played a 1966 harpsichord by Rutkowski and Robinette in his 1987 recording for Bridge Records [BCD 9005), concluding the musical examples in just under four minutes! Fortunately for the word-weary, the next, and final, presentation of the two-day seminar was given by British record collector extraordinaire Peter Adamson, comprising a fascinating sound and image survey of early harpsichord recordings.

 

Harpsichord News

by Larry Palmer
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A Bach makes news

 

All Charges Dropped Against Singer Who Threatened Murder

 

My eyes were drawn to a news item from the Associated Press: "charges against heavy-metal singer Sebastian Bach will be dismissed if he avoids trouble for a year. The former lead singer for Skid Row, whose given name is Sebastian Bierk, was charged with terroristic threats and drug possession when apprehended during a bar fracas." (Reported in the Santa Fe New Mexican for July 27).

Bierk's brush with the law recalls an event in the life of "our" Sebastian Bach (as reported by various biographers, most recently Christoph Wolff, in Bach: The Learned Musician (pages 83-84): young JSB appeared before the Arnstadt Consistory on August 4, 1705, to complain about abusive treatment from a certain bassoonist named Geyersbach, with whom the composer had an altercation and street brawl. Bach's cousin Barbara Catharina witnessed the event, and her eyewitness testimony helped clear Bach of responsibility for initiating the incident, but the governing body suggested that perhaps he should have refrained from calling Geyersbach "a greenhorn bassoonist!"

 

Publications

 

Entrancing Muse: A Documented Biography of Francis Poulenc

 

Carl B. Schmidt's 2001 biography of the French composer is both complete and felicitously written. A chronological life story and details about Poulenc's works fill fourteen chapters. Extensive appendices include an explanatory "dramatis personae;" a complete listing of Poulenc's concerts, tours, and broadcasts; his recordings; and a "work-in-progress" list of drawings and portraits of the 20th-century master. (Pendragon Press: Lives in Music Series, number three; ISBN 1-57647-026-1).

The author's retelling of events surrounding the creation of Concert Champêtre for Harpsichord and Orchestra is comprehensive. To flesh out the words, two photos of the composer with Wanda Landowska (from the legacy of Momo Aldrich) are included. There is, however, a misprint in the dating of the photos. Momo's notation on the back of the pictures reads "Eté [19]28"--the season and year of mutual work on the piece (not the published 1918, at which time the composer had not yet met the pioneering harpsichordist).

Contemporary Music Review: volume 19 part 4; The Contemporary Harpsichord: A New Revival

Contemporary Music Review: volume 20 part 1; The Contemporary Harpsichord: New Perspectives

Two extensive and important paper- bound volumes published by Harwood Academic Publishers, edited by Jane Chapman, these books offer much information on the last century's development of the "modern" harpsichord. "A New Revival" comprises writings about compositions recorded on an accompanying compact disc (not sent with my copy). Among the articles are Annelie de Man's "Contemporary Music in the Netherlands;" "Points of Departure: An Interview with Simon Emmerson" (Jane Chapman); "Thoughts Before and After a Sonata"  (George Mowat-Brown and Helena Brown); "Déploration--In Memoriam Morton Feldman" (Brian Cherney, and in conversation with vivienne spiteri [sic]); "One Man's Noise Is Another Man's Music: The Demise of Pitch in Kevin Malone's Noise Reduction" (Pamela Nash); "Karyl Goeyvaerts' Litanie V for Harpsichord and Tape or Several Harpsichords" (Christine Wauters, Mark Delaere and Jef Lysens); and "Instrumentum Magnum" (Caroline Wilkins). Two gaffes noted in Chapman's introduction: "Challice" for "Challis" [p. 3]; and Howard Schott's name listed as "Henry" in her end notes [p. 6].

"New Perspectives" focuses more on the instrument's recent history: articles include "Harpsichord--a Mother of Necessity?" (Jukka Tiensuu); "Major 20th Century Composers and the Harpsichord" (Frances Bedford); "L'Interprète--La Memoire du Compositeur [The Performer--the Essence of the Composer]" (Elisabeth Chojnacka); "The Electroacoustic Harpsichord" (Simon Emmerson); "Notes Inégales in Contemporary Music" (Jane Chapman); "Ligeti's Harpsichord" (Ove Nordwall); "Brian Ferneyhough's Etudes ranscendantales" (Roger Redgate) together with an interview (Jane Chapman); "A Discussion of Overture to Orpheus with the composer Louis Andriessen" (Pamela Nash); "Lavender and New Lace: Sylvia Marlowe and the 20th-Century Harpsichord Repertoire" (Larry Palmer); and "The Harpsichord Works of Iannis Xenakis" (Ian Pace).

 

Early Keyboard Journal

 

Published under the editorship of Carol Henry Bates, this joint venture of the three early keyboard societies (Southeastern, Midwestern, and Western), Volume 19 (2001) is a veritable feast of valuable information for harpsichordists. Included are extensive articles by John R. Watson ("Instrument Restoration and the Scholarship Imperative"); David Chung ("Keyboard Arrangements and the Development of the Overture in French Harpsichord Music, 1670-1730"); the first part of an exhaustive catalog by R. Dean Anderson ("Extant Harpsichords Built or Rebuilt in France During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries--An Overview and Annotated List"); and Cynthia Adams Hoover's report on the extremely successful exhibition PIANO 300 at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., together with brief descriptions of its European counterparts in Leipzig, Nuremberg, Berlin, and Prague.

 

Another musical B

 

Franz Benda (1709-1786), Bohemian composer at the court of Frederick the Great, composed a duet Sonata in E-Flat, opus 6, for Madame la Contesse de Hueseler. This pleasant work in two movements (Allegro Vivo; Presto Scherzando) for keyboard, four-hands has been edited by Norman D. Rodger, from an undated print in the Library of Congress. The few errata in the original have been corrected with care by the editor. If played on the harpsichord, several thick passages may need to be thinned a bit (such as repeated thirds low in the bass at measure 4 of the second movement, or the string of successive octaves beginning in measure 20), but, in general, the work sounds well for our instrument, and is a pleasant, charming addition to the repertoire. The score is available from Good Pennyworth Press, P. O. Box 1004, Oak Park, IL 60304 (312/491-0465).

 

Moonspender joins murders with pluck

 

Thanks to reader Michael Loris, we list some musical references in Jonathan Gash's eleventh Lovejoy murder mystery, Moonspender (Penguin Books, 1988). The story includes mention of a Tallis madrigal, the Tantum Ergo, Purcell, Franz Listz [sic], organ, positiv, harmonium, Bach, Boehm flute, and, most welcome of all, harpsichord, which first appears on page 17: ". . .though I like her because she's bonny and plays the harpsichord for Les Moran's music shop in the High Street."

The big moment occurs on page 157: "Not many two-manual harpsichords play during working hours, so the music led me to Dorothy, my favorite witch . . . 'John Dowland?' I guessed. . . 'A pavan from his Lachrymae, Lovejoy. . .' Her instrument was a kit assembly, based on an early seventeenth century Flemish maker called Ruckers.  New, it costs half the price of a new car."

Keep those harpsichord and organ references coming our way, please.

Features and news items are welcome for these columns. Please address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275;<[email protected]>.

 

More than the notes

 

"Beyond Notation" was the well-chosen title for a conference presented at the University of Michigan, September 26-29, 2002. Sponsored by The Westfield Center and the University, the focus was on Mozart--ornaments, improvisation, cadenzas, Eingänge [introductory flourishes and "lead-ins" to the written harmonies] as essential, even compulsory, additions in the composer's keyboard music.

Robert Levin, Malcolm Bilson, Seth Carlin, Penelope Crawford, Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, and Andrew Willis were the presenters. Through their lively and informative talks, as well as their expert playing, ideas for further study were encouraged. Small master classes and participation by the auditors, a welcome feature, afforded an opportunity to put these ideas into immediate practice.

May this conference be the first of many investigations "Beyond the Notes."

--Virginia Pleasants

Harpsichord News

by Larry Palmer

Larry Palmer is a contributing editor of The Diapason.

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A work by Dutilleux

It is extremely rare that I come upon a harpsichord-inclusive piece of music that has not been listed in Frances Bedford's Harpsichord and Clavichord Music of the Twentieth Century, but such was the case when I read the Chicago Symphony Orchestra program for concerts played during the last weekend in January. On the program was Symphony Number Two (Le double) by Henri Dutilleux (born 1916)--scored for two orchestras: a chamber group of oboe, clarinet, bassoon, trumpet, trombone, celesta, timpani, string quartet and HARPSICHORD, plus another complete orchestral force with harp and a large battery of percussion instruments.

Dutilleux' Second Symphony, commissioned by the conductor Charles Munch to celebrate the Boston Symphony's 75th anniversary, resembles a baroque concerto grosso, and is a work lasting approximately 30 minutes. Michael Gielen conducted and Mary Sauer (principal pianist of the Chicago Symphony) was harpsichordist for this set of performances. [With thanks to faithful reader and longtime friend Roy Kehl for sending the Symphony program.]

Violet

The early 20th-century harpsichordist Violet Gordon Woodhouse (1871-1948) is the subject of a dramatic presentation with music, Violet, by her biographer Jessica Douglas-Home. It was performed on December 16 in London's Bush Hall (a 1904 ballroom) by harpsichordist Maggie Cole with actors Maggie Henderson and Robert McBain.

The exotic Violet is surely an apt subject for a drama: drawn to the harpsichord through Arnold Dolmetsch she became a player of exquisite sensitivity, the first to make commercial recordings at the harpsichord. Her intense musicality had its counterpart in her unconventional personal life: married to Gordon Woodhouse, the couple shared a home with three other men in a long-lasting ménage à cinq. Women, too, were passionate in their devotion to Violet, among them the composer Ethel Smyth and the writer Radclyffe Hall. Devotées of her playing included the three literary Sitwells, George Bernard Shaw, T. E. Lawrence, and Serge Diaghilev.

Virginia Pleasants reports from London

The London musical scene has been enriched by the openings of the Handel House Museum (November 8, 2001) and the York Gate Collections at the Royal Academy of Music (February 27, 2002).

To honor one of music's most famous composers the Handel House Trust acquired his longtime residence at 25 Brook Street in central London, the site not only for the composition of several of the composer's most famous works (including Messiah), but also of rehearsals for their performances. Music is again to be heard in regular concerts on two harpsichords: a single-manual William Smith replica of an instrument in the Bate Collection, Oxford, and a two-manual Ruckers-style instrument by Bruce Kennedy. Both commissioned instruments are professionally maintained and are available to students for practice and concerts. A future addition will be a chamber organ, like the harpsichords a replica of an instrument Handel played in these rooms.

Lectures on Handelian subjects, both independently and in conjunction with concerts at nearby St. George's Church, are offered by the Museum. At last London boasts a major tribute to one of its most famous composers! [Contact information: The Handel House Museum, 25 Brook Street, London W1K 4HB; Website: http://www.handelhouse.org;

Email: [email protected]].

The Royal Academy of Music has officially opened its York Gate Collections of Musical Instruments at a site adjacent to the Academy (1 York Gate). There, nine pianos from the collection of Kenneth and Mary Mobbs are on loan. The collection shows the development of the grand piano in England during the first half of the 19th century; it provides a welcome corollary to the Academy's famed collection of string instruments.

Early Music: Chopin (!)

The Oxford University Press journal Early Music (Volume XXIX/3, August 2001) includes Laurence Libin's article "Robert Adam's Instruments for Catherine the Great" and several contributions on the topic "Chopin As Early Music," among them Jim Samson's "Chopin, Past and Present;" Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger's "Chopin and Pleyel;" and Jonathan Bellman's "Frédéric Chopin, Antoine de Kontski and the carezzando Touch."

These articles are highly recommended. I hope our readers will share them with their pianist friends, who, in general, often ignore the gentle sensitivity of Chopin's music and, if one believes contemporary reports, of his own playing.

Some years ago I read with great interest a small volume by Edith J. Hipkins: How Chopin Played (From Contemporary Impressions collected from the Diaries and Notebooks of the late A. J. Hipkins, F.S.A [1826-1903]), published in London (J. M. Dent and Sons Ltd, 1937). In this book the daughter of the harpsichord-playing pioneer relayed her father's observations of the great composer, impressions from very early in Hipkins' career as an employee of the Broadwood piano firm, where Chopin visited in April 1848. Hipkins reported that "Chopin's fortissimo was the full pure tone without noise, a harsh inelastic note being to him painful. His nuances were modifications of that tone, decreasing to the faintest yet always distinct pianissimo." [page 5]

Concerning Chopin's touch, Hipkins wrote "He changed fingers upon a key as often as an organ-player." (A footnote to this statement relates that "At the age of sixteen Chopin was appointed organist to the Lyceum at Warsaw.") [page 5]

Hipkins: "To return to pianos, [Chopin] especially liked Broadwood's Boudoir cottage pianos of that date, two-stringed, but very sweet instruments. . .  He played Bach's '48' all his life long. 'I don't practise my own compositions,' he said to Von Lentz. 'When I am about to give a concert, I close my doors for a time and play Bach.'" [page 7]

[A copy of this book having gone "astray" in our university library, I am doubly indebted to Mrs. Rodger Mirrey of London, who sent me a photocopy of the entire 39-page text.]

Still more from Early Music

The issue for February (Volume XXX/1) includes several items of interest to the harpsichordist: "Keyboard Instrument Building in London and the Sun Insurance Records, 1775-87" (Lance Whitehead and Jenny Nex); "The Dublin Virginal Manuscript: New Perspectives on Virginalist Ornamentation" (Desmond Hunter); "Repeat Signs and Binary Form in François Couperin's Pièces de claveçin" (Paul Cienniwa); plus correspondence about Domenico Scarlatti's 'tremulo' (Carl Sloane and Howard Schott) for erudition. And Howard Schott's lovely obituary of Igor Kipnis, for nostalgia.

[Send items for these columns to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; email [email protected]]

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