Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Nunc Dimittis

Denise Restout died on March 9, 2004, in Hartford, Connecticut. Born November 24, 1915, in Paris, she came to the United States in 1941 as assistant to Wanda Landowska. Upon the great harpsichordist's death in 1959 Restout inherited their home in Lakeville, maintaining it as The Landowska Center, conceived both as a shrine and a venue for the study of early music. For many years Denise Restout served St. Mary's Catholic Church, Lakeville, as secretary of the parish council, religious instructor, and organist. Her burial mass was celebrated there on March 13.

SEHKS

Featuring the Aliénor Awards for Contemporary Harpsichord Composition, the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society held its annual meeting at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, March 11-13. Officers elected for the coming year include Larry Palmer, president; Dana Ragsdale, vice-president; Douglas Maple, secretary; Martha Clinkscale, treasurer; and new board members Robert Parkins and Ann Marie Rigler, who join continuing members Ardyth Lohuis, Charlotte Mattox, Karen Jacob, Elaine Funaro, Gene Jarvis, and Genevieve Soly. Harpsichord maker Richard Kingston was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the business meeting and banquet on Saturday afternoon. SEHKS' next meeting will take place at Stetson University, Deland, Florida, March 3-5, 2005.

The Baritone Wore Chiffon: A Liturgical Mystery

by Mark Schweizer (St. James Music Press, 2004; $10)

Hayden Konig, organist-choirmaster of St. Barnabas in St. Germaine, North Carolina, is also the town's police chief, an amateur detective, and a putative author. Following the Christmas goings-on detailed in Schweizer's The Alto Wore Tweed, Hayden is involved this time in Lenten shenanigans at St. Barnabas. The fictional detective's parallel literary work, inspired by and executed upon Raymond Chandler's very own typewriter, adds a second layer of madcap mystery to this hilarious crime novel.

Musical references abound, although not quite so extensively as in Schweizer's earlier offering. Nevertheless the reader encounters Penderecki's St. Luke Passion, Orlando Gibbons' Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, Britten's War Requiem, and Handel's Messiah, as well as the musical portions of a clown Eucharist and an Edible Last Supper, both added to St. Barnabas' schedule of Lenten services by a zany interim priest ("Clown Imperial" as processional, for example).

With a significant part of the action set at England's York Minster, a steadily expanding cast of Hungarian expatriates, including a dwarf verger named Wenceslaus, and the complete text of Schweizer's Weasel Cantata (see pages 149-150), this second Konig mystery is another page-turner. Copies are available from or St. James Music Press, P. O. Box 1009, Hopkinsville, KY 42241-1009.

Last year I suggested that the first volume of this series was the perfect Christmas gift. Number two is recommended as enhancement for any festive occasion, to enliven a plane flight, or as that unique gift for a literate church musician friend.

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275;

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Recommended Reading: Reason and Mayhem

Larry Palmer is the harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

James R. Gaines: Evening in the Palace of Reason.  NY: Fourth Estate (an Imprint of HarperCollins), 2005. ISBN 0-00-715658-8.

Exploring the genesis of Johann Sebastian Bach's late masterwork A Musical Offering and its position as a musical/philosophical response to an Enlightenment intellectual's disdain for strict counterpoint may not seem at first to provide the requisite grist for a best seller. But such is the case with Gaines's well-organized historical study of the parallel lives of Bach and the monarch who requested the aged composer to improvise a fugue on a complex chromatic theme, and then "upped the ante" by challenging him to expand its level of difficulty from three to six voices!

That ruler was Frederick the Great of Prussia: a patron who employed composers Johann Joachim Quantz and Bach's second son Carl Philipp Emanuel; an aristocrat who played the flute at home in Potsdam but spent much of his time in military campaigns with his well-disciplined forces; a ruler who had survived both his father's disdain for Frederick's interest in music, and having been forced to witness the court-martial beheading of his best friend.

Interlaced chapters detailing these two highly disparate 18th-century lives move with vigor and mounting interest toward the culminating meeting of king and composer on May 7, 1747, at which time Frederick presented the tricky "royal theme" on which Bach was to improvise as he displayed the musical merits of the king's prized Gottfried Silbermann fortepianos. That meeting is described on page 222 of the 273 narrative pages comprising the book. Notes on the sources of quotations, a well-chosen bibliography, "very selective" discography, useful glossary of musical terms, acknowledgments and index bring the total number of pages to 336.

Gaines's research is up-to-the-moment, including references to Bach's use of the number alphabet [gematria], possibly even in the somber Chaconne of his D minor Solo Violin Partita, thought by some recent writers to be a subtle memorial to the composer's first wife Maria Barbara. Also of interest is the fascinating example of son Carl Philipp's "automatic" counterpoint writing tables, first published by Friedrich Marpurg in 1755, as cited in David Yearsley's erudite and wide-ranging 2002 monograph Bach and the Meanings of Counterpoint (Cambridge University Press), another book recommended to admirers of J. S. Bach's art.

Several times, after describing a particular Bach masterwork, Gaines admonishes his readers to savor ". . . another of the moments in the course of this story when it makes wonderful sense to stop reading, to find a [recording] . . . , and try to imagine what hearing [this music] would have been like on that particular day . . ." With such sensible advice as well as engagingly jaunty prose, Gaines explores an intriguing intersection of musical ideals in this eminently readable volume, heartily suggested for a place on one's bedside table or, perhaps, to place under a friend's Christmas tree.

Mark Schweizer: The Tenor Wore Tapshoes. Hopkinsville, KY: St. James Music Press, 2005. <www.sjmp.com&gt; ISBN 0-9721211-4-5.

The third Liturgical Mystery featuring Hayden Konig (full-time Chief of Police and part-time organist-choirmaster  in the North Carolina mountain town of St. Germaine) continues the contrapuntal layers of skullduggery encountered in previous books The Alto Wore Tweed (2002) and The Baritone Wore Chiffon (2004). Each provides two related murder mysteries connected by the clever device of having the fictional sleuth write a short mystery of his own, utilizing his prize possession--a manual typewriter that was once the property of mystery writer Raymond Chandler. This short story, presented in page-length installments as it rolls off the typewriter batten, regales Konig's choir at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church with Chandleresque tough talk as well as vintage typescript.

Fellow lovers of satire will have another rollicking good time! How about an Immaculate Confection (the Virgin Mary's likeness in a cinnamon roll)? Or Binny Hen, the Scripture Chicken--part of the modus operandi of Dr. Hogmanay McTavish's Gospel Tent Revival Shows (complete with a giggle-inducing send-up of country western music as rendered by the choir of Sinking Pond Baptist Church)? Or the goings-on at an Iron Mike Men's Retreat, complete with pebble envy?

Some of Schweizer's musical references in this latest offering include Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances, Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs, baroque music by Schütz, Corelli, and Handel (the Nightingale and Cuckoo Organ Concerto as conclusion to another madcap Puppet Ministry presentation at St. Barnabas), and William H. Harris's lovely anthem Behold the Tabernacle of God, a challenge for the choir's alto section.

Suffice it to say that the main tale involving Konig, his long-time lady friend Meg, and the parish clergy, staff, and parishioners, is both diabolic and ingenious--a recreation detective novel that goes by all too quickly.

I await the next installment of this evolving St. Germaine Quartet with the highest expectation that the author's soprano will manage to provide a story equally as humorous as that provoked by her lower-voiced colleagues.

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275;

<[email protected]>.

From the Harpsichord Editor’s mailbox

Four recent harpsichord scores 

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

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

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

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

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

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

A musicological detective story

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

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

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

Mark Schweizer’s 14th
liturgical mystery

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

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

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

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

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

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

The best medicine
Sing Alleluias forth (or seventh, to be exact!). This summer’s light-hearted read to top all others has arrived in the pages of Mark Schweizer’s latest liturgical mystery, The Diva Wore Diamonds, just published by St. James Music Press (ISBN 978-0-9721211-5-6; www.sjmp books.com). Following the uproarious goings-on in The Alto Wore Tweed, The Baritone Wore Chiffon, The Tenor Wore Tapshoes, The Soprano Wore Falsettos, The Bass Wore Scales, and The Mezzo Wore Mink, skullduggery continues unabated at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in the little town of Beth . . ., er . . . St. Germaine, North Carolina!
Police chief and organist-choirmaster Hayden Konig, now happily married to his longtime companion Meg, is looking forward to the dedication of a rebuilt church and its splendid new organ (replacing structure and instrument lost in a disastrous fire). He also continues to keep his choir in reading material with yet another faux-Raymond Chandler gumshoe mystery tale, typed on Chandler’s original Remington typewriter (for those of you too young to know what that machine is, try googling the word). This story-within-a-story, cleverly related thematically to the primary plot, appears in typewriter-script throughout the book.
Musical references abound: I noted mentions of Elgar, Harris, Bach, Karg-Elert, Mahler, Mark Isham, Erich Korngold, Reger, Marcello, Purcell, Handel, and nearly the whole choral output of John Rutter. All these while sputtering with laughter at Schweizer’s madcap inventions, including an International Thurifer Invitational, his engaging retelling of the biblical creation story, an unknown Purcell cantata (Elisha and the Two Bears), and a shady character named Picket the Fence!
For the more scholarly among us I refer you to the July issue of Hymns and Hers magazine (see page 49), as well as to the sly digs at popular television shows (page 29), or the descriptions of pipe organ embellishments Zimbelstern and Nachtigall (page 97). And, just to keep this column slightly thematic, I am grateful for the harpsichord references on pages 138 and 141.
So lads and lassies, hie thee to an order source (electronic, manual, or vocal) and procure this bit of fun as quickly as possible. Better yet, order all seven of these liturgical mysteries. You will be better for it, if laughter truly is the “best medicine.”

Comments and news items for these pages are always welcome. Send them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas 75275; [email protected].

Abundant citings of musical instruments in tales of murder

It has been nearly ten years since I updated my listings of harpsichords in murder mysteries; here are some additional citings.

Popular writer Lawrence Sanders delights his readers with a series of books featuring the urbane, witty, and somewhat-musically-savvy sleuth Archie McNally, Private Investigator of Palm Beach, Florida. In McNally’s Luck (New York: Berkley Books, 1993) the plot introduces us to a kidnapped cat, an esoteric poet turned sensualist, and an amorous psychic. These disparate characters involve the sartorially-elegant investigator in his merry and witty adventure. Imagine the sheer delight of coming upon this sentence in the midst of a scene in which our hero is being pistol-whipped by a killer: “. . . I remained silent and tried to calculate the odds against my ever playing the harpsichord again.” [page 288]

In McNally’s Caper (Berkley Books, 1995) Archie investigates the low-down scandals of Palm Beach high society, particularly the disappearance of a rare Edgar Allen Poe first edition from the library of the wealthy Forsythe family.  The book provides an absolute happiness of harpsichord citations! Obviously of superior taste, Mrs. Sylvia, the wife of the young Forsythe heir, is overheard playing the harpsichord, in a “. . . mid-sized chamber completely naked of any furnishings except for the bleached pine harpsichord and the bench before it.” [pages 23–24] She had been practicing something by Vivaldi (undoubtedly in one of the Bach transcriptions). Mrs. Sylvia also explains to Archie that she constructed her instrument from a kit.

Other mentions of our favorite instrument appear on pages 69, 86, 111–112, 224, and 265 (where Archie wonders if Mrs. Sylvia is trying to play him “like a human harpsichord?”). On page 187 he corrects a maid’s mispronunciation (the ubiquitous “harpISchord”), and, in a final (and less classy) musical allusion [page 324] he hopes to “live to play the kazoo again.”

Continuing this descent from harpsichord-Olympus, in McNally’s Puzzle (1996), the title character reflects “. . .[ a] slow swim had the desired effect: it calmed me, soothed me, and convinced me that one day I might learn to write haiku or play the bagpipes.” [page 84] At least he remains ever musical, our Archie.

Death in Holy Orders (London: Faber & Faber, 2001) by Baroness P. D. James is a thriller that is truly a “cliff-hanger” (the setting is sea-side, in England’s barren East Anglia near Lowestoft—Benjamin Britten country!). Detective Adam Dalgliesh returns to his adolescent haunts, the Victorian Gothic St. Anselm Theological College, where a murderer seems to be picking off the residents at a rather alarming rate. At least two of the four deaths appear to be from natural causes, but Dalgliesh has an intuitive feeling that all of them must be related in some manner.

Although there is no harpsichord cited in this one, but we do get specific reference to countertenor James Bowman’s recording of Handel’s Ombra mai fu; surely there must be a keyboard instrument lurking somewhere in the continuo [page 251]. In another musical mention we are told of well-sung plainsong.

Jane Haddam’s series of holiday mysteries featuring former FBI agent Gregor Demarkian are briskly plotted and well written. Not A Creature Was Stirring (New York: Bantam Books, 1990) takes place from December 1 until Epiphany (January 6), and, as might be expected, there is Christmas music to be heard.

“Music was so much a part of Christmas at Engine House, Bennis hadn’t noticed it before. Ten years ago, Mother had made a single concession to modernity. She’d had all the common rooms in the house wired into a stereo system. At the moment, that system was pumping out an organ rendition of ‘Silent Night.’ . . . ‘Silent Night’ had become ‘Noel,’ played on a harpsichord. The instrument sounded tinny, as if it had been discovered after being long abandoned, and played without being retuned. Mother used to play the harpsichord.”

“. . .Overhead, ‘Silent Night’ became ‘The Holly and the Ivy’—played on a virginal. Mother used to play the virginal, too. For all Bennis knew, Mother had played the music she was hearing now, and recorded it, against the time she would no longer be able to make the carols herself.” [pages 128–129]

One last swipe at plucked stringed keyboard instruments is found on page 217: “ ‘I see you got the music off,’ Myra said. ‘God, it was driving me nuts. All that tinny harpsichord music. . . . Just because Mother loves harpsichord music doesn’t mean I have to. And it was eerie, all those Christmas carols and everybody in mourning.’ “

In Body Blows, by Steven Simmons, (New York: Pocket Books, 1987), ex-Yale hustler Cal Lynch is plying his trade in California. His friend Lena is an organist. Staying alone in her apartment he hears “. . . the sound of music, slightly menacing, pseudo-oriental music, the kind you hear in forties movies when the main character enters an opium den. . . . I get out of bed and make my way slowly down the carpeted hall, following the strange music . . . ‘Lena?’ The music suddenly stops. . . . No answer. Cautiously I step into the room, and just then the piano notes ring out again, and I find Alexander, the fat Siamese, walking back and forth across the keyboard of the antique clavichord in the far corner . . .” [page 221]

Shades of Kirkpatrick number 30 (the Cat’s Fugue), and apologies to Domenico Scarlatti!

How about a story with plot based on quotations from Handel’s Messiah? Such is the case in multi-talented Jane Langton’s The Memorial Hall Murder (New York: Penguin Books, 1981). Harvard professor and amateur sleuth Homer Kelly is featured in this tale of bombing and a headless corpse in the Cambridge school’s Memorial Hall. Well-liked chorus conductor Hamilton Dow is missing and it takes Kelly, his wife and friends, and Messiah itself to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion. The frontispiece shows the text and music of “Behold, I tell you a mystery,” with the author’s drawing of cello and toppled music stand. Each of the ensuing fifty chapters is prefaced with a bit of musical score, as well, most with an equally-appropriate text. The volume is replete with further drawings by the author. Harpsichord, as part of the Messiah orchestra, is mentioned on pages 30, 32, 11, and 126; as an artifact in Dow’s overstuffed living room, on page 135.

In one of her later Homer Kelly mysteries, Divine Inspiration (1993), Langton writes and draws another musically-inspired tale, this one dealing with the installation of a new organ in the mythical First Church of the Commonwealth in Boston. Lots of Luther quotations and Bach chorales in this one, and the organ builders seem remarkably similar to a well-known firm in nearby Gloucester, Massachusetts. As a bonus, if you store this book in your organ bench, you’ll have In dir ist Freude from JSB’s Orgelbüchlein right at hand: the whole piece is printed following the Afterword, on page 407.

Send literary references to early keyboard instruments or other items of interest for Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275. Email <[email protected]>

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Guilty Pleasures: Reading, Listening, and Viewing

Recreational reading and several reissued recordings from the middle of the 20th century are recommended for pleasure, guilty or innocent:

The Soprano Wore Falsettos by Mark Schweizer (Hopkinsville, KY: St. James Music Press, 2006; ISBN 0-9721211-6-1)
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The fourth in Schweizer’s madcap series of liturgical mysteries regales readers with another adroit mingling of a Raymond Chandleresque typewritten tale presented within the story of churchly shenanigans at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in St. Germaine, North Carolina.
The current volume includes shoe polishing for Maundy Thursday (a contemporary worship successor to traditional foot washing); a Pirate Eucharist in which “Arrgh! Alleluia’s” abound; a restaurant called Buxtehooters; references to compositions by Scarlatti, Rachmaninov, Mozart, Fauré, Froberger, Beethoven, and Casals, with German beer, Fräuleins, AND a three-manual Flentrop organ [page 112!] for “local” color. Not to be overlooked is a fortuitously named character, the substitute organist Mrs. Agnes Day. Highly recommended for readers struggling with the demands of the Lenten season. And others.

Choices: A Novel by Paul Wolfe (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 2006; ISBN 0-86534-485-X) (telephone: 800/243-5644 for orders).
During several conversations with the author of Choices, he described his forthcoming book as “Jane Austen with sex,” and this entertainingly wicked publication delivers on this promise. Wolfe’s story is set in Italy, primarily at the international music festival of “Lospello,” where devoted manager Ricardo Ricci keeps things on an even keel. Keeping a relationship with his longtime companion and love Katherine presents the other major challenge of Ricardo’s life. Adding George, a young and comely narcissist, to the festival’s management staff stirs the erotic mix to boiling, and beyond. Sly commentaries on the music festival scene vie with various steamy couplings to keep readers turning the pages. A harpsichordist, the fresh toy for the festival’s maestro Gianfranco Connery, makes a timely appearance [page 368]. Recommended for mature readers only.
Paul Wolfe, Texas born, studied harpsichord with Wanda Landowska together with compadre Rafael Puyana from 1955 until Madame’s death in 1959. During these years he recorded a number of solo harpsichord discs for the Experiences Anonymes label. A few years later, upon the closing of the recording company, these tapes were purchased by Lyrichord Records. Wolfe’s discs, offering splendid playing on an early, pre-Landowska-model Pleyel harpsichord and on his Rutkowski and Robinette nine-foot instrument with sub-unison stop, have been reissued by Lyrichord in two compact disc albums entitled When They Had Pedals, comprising works by Frescobaldi along with English keyboard music from the Tudor Age to the Restoration [LEMS-8033] and six Handel Suites (numbers 3, 8, 11, 13, 14, and 15) [LEMS-8034].

By the legendary Landowska herself, two recordings from her American years have been combined in one compact disc for the Testament label (SBT 1380): Wanda Landowska: Dances of Poland and A Treasury of Harpsichord Music. Originally entitledLandowska Plays for Paderewski (the noted pianist was, late in life, prime minister of Poland), Landowska’s program includes a wide-ranging variety of unusual pieces: short works by Michal Kleofas Oginski, Jacob le Polonais, Diomedes Cato, Landowska herself, and the iconic national composer Fryderyk Chopin (Mazurka in C, opus 56, number 2). If there were ever any doubt about the harpsichordist’s Polish roots, her magisterial rhythmic control in these essential ethnic offerings would squelch any possible argument to the contrary.
Not the least part of the enjoyment provided by this compilation comes from new and original comments in an essay by British harpsichordist Jane Clark. She presents a fresh perspective on two selections by Rameau (Air grave pour les deux Polonois) and François Couperin (Air dans le goût Polonois), noting that the 18th-century French did not think highly of their neighbor nation’s chivalric etiquette, thus suggesting that these short pieces might be satirical rather than adulatory.
The second program on this disc was issued originally in 1957 as a collection of short works recorded at various venues during the year 1946. Highlights include Couperin’s Les Barricades Mistérieuses and L’Arlequine, Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith” Variations from the Great Suite in E Major, two welcome Mozart miniatures, plus the longer Rondo in D, K. 485 (splendid reminders of Landowska’s lovely way with the Salzburg master, more often played by her on the piano than the harpsichord), and ending with a signature performance of Bach’s Vivaldi arrangement (Concerto in D, BWV 972), at the end of which, loathe to depart, she iterates again and again, in descending registers, the third movement’s signature motive—an idiosyncratic and unforgettable addition to Bach’s transcription.

Viewing Landowska: Uncommon Visionary, a 57-minute documentary by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater, and Diane Pontius first issued on video tape in 1997, should be required of all who prize the harpsichord revival. Now available in DVD format (VAI DVD 4246), the new issue has more than 50 minutes of additional material, including all the extant footage of Landowska playing the harpsichord, and an audio-only reissue of her November 1933 first recording of Bach’s Goldberg Variations (made in Paris). The reminiscences from several now-departed major figures who knew Landowska intimately—especially her longtime companion Denise Restout; friend, Polish singer Doda Conrad; and recording engineer John Pfeiffer—are irreplaceable and especially illuminating as the great 20th-century harpsichordist’s life recedes ever further into history. It is delightful, as well, to see some younger images of other commentators in the documentary—Alice Cash, Skip Sempé, Willard Martin, and, yes, this writer—as we appeared and sounded in the waning years of the past millennium. But the major impact of this video disc stems from Landowska’s inimitable playing, reminding us again and again why she became (and, for many, remains) the preferred exponent of that strange and wonderful instrument she toiled so assiduously to revive, THE HARPSICHORD.

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275; .