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Larry Palmer

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

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The Harpsichord Repertoire in the 20th Century:
Petit Lied by Henri Mulet
As detailed in The Diapason for August 2010, a most observant reader, Thomas Annand of Ottawa, brought the existence of a short piece for harpsichord by French composer Henri Mulet to my attention. I had not been aware, previously, of these two pages published in 1910 “for harpsichord (or piano),” but a check of listings in Grove Music Online, a query to Rollin Smith, a referral to Stephen Best (whose organ arrangement of Petit Lied graced the last page of The American Organist for August 2010), and Best’s subsequent scan of the original harpsichord score have made it possible for us to share this addition to the early 20th-century harpsichord repertoire with our readers.
Thanks to all who asked the questions and provided the answers. Now all of us in the harpsichord community may enjoy Mulet’s “Little Song” as this lovely “noel” attains its 100th birthday!

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Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

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With some help from our readers

A harpsichord piece by
Henri Mulet?

In response to my article on Castelnuovo-Tedesco and his 1909 English Suite for Harpsichord (December 2009), Thomas Annand (Ottawa) wrote to ask if I was aware of a harpsichord piece by Henri Mulet? I was not, and asked Mr. Annand for further information. He referred me to Grove’s Online (now Oxford Music Online), where the catalog of Mulet’s works included a “Petit lied très facile, hpd/pf, 1910” among instrumental and chamber music listings.
Hoping to locate a score, I checked print sources, but was unable to find anything from the cited major publishers. So I turned to the leading authority on 19th- and 20th-century French organ music, Rollin Smith, who responded immediately that he knew of the piece, but did not have a copy of it. But only a few days later, he provided an Internet address (http://www.evensongmusic.net/muletfree.html) featuring a free PDF file of Mulet’s short piece in an organ adaptation by Stephen H. Best, made “from the harpsichord version.” Although this score is presented on three staves, the piece is indeed “simple” enough to play on the harpsichord manuals without any need for pedal. Beginning and ending in B minor, the “Little Song” comprises 17 measures in a gently asymmetric 5/4.
In notes to the piece, Mr. Best writes that “the Petit Lied was composed by Henri Mulet ca. 1909 and dedicated to Albert Périlhou, organist at Saint Séverin in Paris from 1889 to 1914.” He further points out that Mulet and Périlhou were colleagues at Saint Eustache during 1905.
While not an earth-shaking musical discovery, Mulet’s piece adds another charming item to the gradually increasing number of harpsichord compositions from the earliest years of the 20th-century revival.
I am grateful to Mr. Annand for directing attention to this overlooked item, and to Mr. Best for his online generosity. While visiting the website, note Best’s edition of several additional Mulet pieces for the harmonium.

More on Chopin’s Fugue in A Minor
Several readers responded to our February article, The Chopin Bicentennial: Celebrating at the Harpsichord?
Paul Cienniwa (Boston) sent word of the availability of a pristine score for Chopin’s 1841 work found at <http://www.imslp.org&gt;.
Church musician and clavichordist Judith Conrad (Fall River, MA) wrote to confirm the availability of a harpsichord for Chopin’s use at Nohant, George Sand’s country estate.
And ever-vigilant Dallas researcher John Carroll Collins continued his mining of Chopin source materials, with results shared in two extensive letters. In his letter of 28 February 2010, Mr. Collins cited page 227 of Tad Szulc’s Chopin in Paris [New York, 1998], where the author states (without documentation) that in addition to Chopin’s Pleyel, there was also “another piano and a harpsichord in the sitting room.” (This room, along with the guest rooms, dining room, and kitchen, was situated on the ground floor; the main bedrooms and library were on the second.)
In the same letter, Collins commented on my use of quotations from the authenticity-challenged correspondence between Chopin and Delfina Potocka:
The entire matter of the letters was discussed at length by Arthur Hedley in his essay “The Chopin-Potocka Letters,” which was published as an Appendix in Selected Correspondence of Fryderyk Chopin [London and New York, 1963]. In the seventh edition of Baker’s [Biographical Dictionary] it is stated on page 983 that “Hedley was instrumental in exposing the falsity of the notorious Potocka-Chopin correspondence produced by Mme. Czernicka (who killed herself in 1949 . . . after the fraudulence was irrefutably demonstrated by Hedley at the Chopin Institute in Warsaw)”.

In further correspondence (dated 14 March 2010), Collins provided information concerning a possible date of composition for Chopin’s fugue, as well as some documentation for the composer’s interest in counterpoint:

While reading an interesting little book by Gerald Abraham, Chopin’s Musical Style (London, 1939), I came across a clue that offers a [possible] solution [to the question of the date of composition]. In the Introduction (page xii), Abraham quotes from a letter Chopin sent to Julian Fontana, “undated but apparently written in July or August 1841,” in which Chopin requests that he “send without fail Cherubini’s traité; I think it’s du contrepoint (I don’t remember the title well.” This same letter is given in full on pages 195–6 of [the Hedley book cited earlier], where it is dated “Nohant, early June 1841.”
In Hedley’s translation, Chopin asks Fontana to send him a copy of Kastner’s Treatise on Counterpoint and requests him “to fit the things into a suitable box, have them well packed and dispatch them . . . to the same address as my letters. Do please be quick about it . . . don’t delay the dispatch if he [the bookseller] has not Kastner’s book in stock. Anyhow do send Cherubini’s Treatise—I think—on Counterpoint. I don’t know the exact title.” (This book would have been Cherubini’s Cours de contrepoint et de la fugue, published in 1835.)

Collins also sent several pages from The Journal of Eugene Delacroix (translated from the French by Walter Pach [New York: Grove Press]), in which the painter noted a relevant exchange with his friend, the composer, during the last year of his brief life:

Saturday, 7 April 1849: About half past three, accompanied Chopin on his
drive . . . During the day he talked music with me, and that gave him new animation. I asked him what establishes logic in music. He made me feel what counterpoint and harmony are; how the fugue is like pure logic in music, and that to know the fugue deeply is to be acquainted with the element of all reason and all consistency in music.

Comments and news items are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX 75275. E-mails to <[email protected]>.

Gathering Peascods for the Old Gray Mare: Some Unusual Harpsichord Music Before Aliénor

Larry Palmer
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The 2012 inaugural meeting of the new Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA), formed by the merger of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society (SEHKS, founded 1980) and its slightly younger sibling, the Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society (MHKS, organized 1984), was an historic event in itself. The late March gathering in Cincinnati included both the seventh iteration of the Jurow Harpsichord Playing Competition and the eighth occurrence of the International Aliénor Composition Competition, plus scores of scholarly presentations and short recitals, loosely organized into ten sessions, each with a general connecting theme.  

For my contribution to Session Seven (The Old Made New) I attempted to craft a title enigmatic enough that it might pique the curiosity of a few potential auditors, but with the higher goal of providing information about some of the earliest and relatively obscure “new” compositions for harpsichord from the early 20th-century. I hoped, as well, to underscore, at least by implication, the major stimulus for a continuing creation of new repertoire that has been provided by the Aliénor’s prizes, performances, and publications since its inception in 1980. 

 

Woodhouse plays Cecil Sharp

As early as July 1920, Violet Gordon Woodhouse, the most prominent and gifted of early 20th-century British harpsichordists, recorded three of folksong collector Cecil Sharp’s Country Dance Tunes. Thus Sharp’s 1911 piano versions of the tunes Newcastle, Heddon of Fawsley, and Step Back serve as the earliest “contemporary” music for harpsichord committed to disc.1

These were followed, in 1922, by recorded performances of two more Cecil Sharp transcriptions, Bryhton Camp and the evocatively titled Gathering Peascods.2 While the 1920 recordings were already available in digital format, courtesy of Pearl Records’ Violet Gordon Woodhouse compact disc,3 I had never heard the 1922 offerings. Peter Adamson, an avid collector of these earliest discs, assured me that he could provide the eponymous work listed in the title of this article. Both of us were surprised to find that Gathering Peascods was never issued in the United Kingdom, but Peter was able to send me some superior dubs from the original 1920 discs, as well as a few seconds of authentic 78-rpm needle scratching. Combining this acoustic noise with Sharp’s keyboard arrangement, quickly located online via Google search, made possible the restoration of Peascods to the roster of earliest recorded “contemporary” harpsichord literature. It is equally charming, though perhaps less historically informed, when performed without the ambient sound track. 

 

Thomé

New harpsichord music composed for the earliest Revival harpsichords4 actually predates any recording of the instrument: Francis Thomé’s Rigodon, opus 97, a pièce de claveçin, was written for the fleet-fingered French pianist Louis Diémer, and published in Paris by Henry Lemoine and Company in 1892.5

 

The first 20th-century harpsichord piece?

There are currently two contenders for “first place” in the 20th-century modern harpsichord composition sweepstakes. The first may be Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s English Suite, originally committed to paper in 1909 during his student years in Florence, then recreated in 1939 shortly after the Italian composer’s immigration to the United States. That version, sent to prominent harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick in 1940, seems to have been ignored by the artist, but it was ultimately published by Mills Music in New York in 1962.6

A second contender (dare we call it a “co-first”?), which is, thus far, the earliest published 20th-century harpsichord work, is Henri Mulet’s tender and charming miniature Petit Lied. Mulet is most often remembered, if at all, for his ten Byzantine Sketches for Organ, a set that ends with the sometimes-popular toccata Tu es Petrus (Thou art the rock). Comprising a brief seventeen measures, Mulet’s “Little Song” is dedicated to fellow organist Albert Périlhou, who was characterized by his more famous contemporary Louis Vierne, as “a composer of the 18th century.” So perhaps this delicate, nostalgic work, published in 1910 “pour claveçin [ou piano]” was intended to pay homage to Périlhou’s antiquarian tendencies.7

 

Busoni

1916 saw the publication of Ferruccio Busoni’s 1915 Sonatina ad usum infantis Madeline M.* Americanae pro Clavicimbalo composita8—a strange, but ultimately satisfying keyboard work that, with some imaginative editing, is playable on a two-manual harpsichord, which one assumes the composer did, since he was also the proud owner of such a 1911 Dolmetsch-Chickering instrument.9   

 

Delius

Often described as “unplayable,” the very original Dance for Harpsichord (for piano) by Frederick Delius came into being in 1919, inspired by the artistry of Violet Gordon Woodhouse. Kirkpatrick included it in a unique program of 20th-century harpsichord music presented at the University of California, Berkeley in 196110 and Igor Kipnis recorded it in 1976.11 I have occasionally enjoyed playing Delius’s purple-plush harmonies in a shortened version arranged by Baltimore harpsichordist Joseph Stephens. Each time I play the work I find fewer notes to be necessary, and decide to omit more and more of them, often an approach that best serves these piano-centric harpsichord refugees from the early Revival years. Since Delius surely ranks among the better-known composers who attempted to write anything at all for the harpsichord, it seems worth the effort to forge an individual version that serves to bring this quite lovely piece to the public.

 

Grainger

Inspired by the recent anniversary year (2011) of the beloved eccentric Percy Grainger (he died in 1961), it seemed fitting to rework another of my own arrangements, that of his “Room-Music Tit-Bits,” the clog dance Handel in the Strand, particularly after coming across Grainger’s own mention of the harpsichord’s influence on his compositional career. In a letter to the pianist Harold Bauer, Grainger wrote:

 

. . . the music [of my] Kipling Settings . . . [is] an outcome of the influence emanating from the vocal-solo numbers-with-accompaniment-of-solo-instruments in Bach’s Matthew-Passion, as I heard it when a boy of 12, 13, or 14 in Frankfurt. These sounds (two flutes and harpsichord . . .) sounded so exquisite to my ears . . . that I became convinced that larger chamber music (from 8-25 performers) was, for me, an ideal background for single voices . . .12    

So why not present Grainger’s Handelian romp edited for one player, ten fingers, and two manuals? Grainger’s own arrangement (“dished-up for piano solo, March 25, 1930, [in] Denton, Texas” according to the composer’s annotation in the printed score) provides a good starting place.13

 

Persichetti and Powell

Two major solo works from the 1950s composed for the harpsichordist Fernando Valenti deserve more performances than they currently receive: Vincent Persichetti’s Sonata for Harpsichord (now known as that prolific composer’s Sonata No. One), still, to my ears, his most pleasing work for our instrument, and Mel Powell’s Recitative and Toccata Percossa—another wonderful work included on Kirkpatrick’s contemporary music disc.14

 

Duke Ellington

For aficionados of jazz, the 44 measures of Duke Ellington’s A Single Petal of a Rose comprise three manuscript pages now housed in the Paul Sacher Foundation (Basel, Switzerland), available only as a facsimile in Ule Troxler’s invaluable volume documenting the many commissions bestowed on contemporary composers by the wealthy Swiss harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer.15 About Ellington’s unique work, Mme. Vischer wrote to the composer late in 1965: 

 

Just on Christmas Eve I received your marvelous piece . . . I am very happy about your composition and I want to assure you of my greatest thanks. . . . could I ask you the favour to give me the manuscript with the dedication to my name as all other composers are doing for me, with a photo from you who always belong to my collection . . .16  

 

When Igor Kipnis asked whether I had any idea as to where he might find this score, I shared the citation information with him. Some years later he reciprocated by sending an arrangement made in collaboration with jazz great Dave Brubeck. A damper pedal would certainly make playing even this somewhat more idiomatic keyboard arrangement easier, but the gentle beauties of Ellington’s only “harpsichord” work deserve to find their place in our repertoire. In the spirit of jazz improvisation, I suggest adapting the written notes to fit one’s individual finger span, as well as assuming a free approach both to some of the notated rhythms and repeats, and not being afraid to toy with the tessitura by changing the octave of some notes in order to achieve a more lyrical legato line on our pedal-less instrument.

 

Prokofiev (for two)

In 1936 Sergey Prokofiev surprised the western musical world by forsaking Paris and returning to live out the rest of his days in his native Russia. One of his first Soviet musical projects was the composition of incidental music for a centenary production of Pushkin’s play Eugene Onegin. In this dramatic and colorful orchestral score a dream scene is integrated with the house party of the heroine, Tatyana. 

In his recent book, The People’s Artist, music historian Simon Morrison writes,

 

The party scene opens with the strains of a . . . polka emanating from a distant hall. Aberrant dance music represents aberrant events: much like Onegin himself, the dance music offends sensibility. It sounds wrong; it is a breach. Prokofiev scores the dance (No. 25) for two provincial, out-of-tune harpsichords, the invisible performers carelessly barreling through the five-measure phrases at an insane tempo—a comical comment on the hullabaloo that greets the arrival . . . of a pompous regimental commander. There ensues an enigmatic waltz (No. 26), which Prokofiev scores first for string quintet and then, in a jarring contrast, for the two harpsichords . . .17   

 

One wonders just how many provincial harpsichords there were in mid-1930s Russia, but this Polka from Eugene Onegin, played at a slightly more moderate pace, has served as a delightful encore for performances of Francis Poulenc’s Concert Champêtre when that enchanting work is performed as a duo with piano standing in for the orchestral parts, just as it was presented by Wanda Landowska and Poulenc in the very first, pre-premiere hearing of Poulenc’s outstanding score.18   

 

The Old Gray Mare, at last

Having fêted a pompous general with Prokofiev’s Polka, it is time to explain the reference to The Old Gray Mare. American composer and academic Douglas Moore composed a short variation set based on the popular folk tune to demonstrate the culminating amicable musical collaboration between the previously antagonistic harpsichord and piano, a duet that concludes the mid-
20th-century recording Said the Piano to the Harpsichord. This educational production has had a somewhat unique cultural significance as the medium through which quite a number of persons first encountered our plucked instrument. While Moore’s variation-finale remains unpublished, it is possible to transcribe the notes from the record, and thus regale live concert audiences with this charming entertainment for listeners “from three to ninety-plus.” 

Other musical examples utilized in this clever skit include a preludial movement, the mournful Le Gemisante from Jean-François Dandrieu’s 1èr Livre de Claveçin [1724]; the violently contrasting Military Polonaise in A Major, opus 40/1 by Fréderic Chopin, in which the piano demonstrates its preferred athletic and happy music and then goads the harpsichord into a ridiculous attempt at playing the same excerpt, sans pedal. That confrontation is followed by Jean-Philippe Rameau’s ever-popular Tambourin, which manages to sound nearly as ridiculous when the piano tries to show that it “can play your music better than you can play mine!”—an attempt heard to be futile when the harpsichord puts that notion to rest by playing it “the way it ought to sound.”

 

The 2012 Aliénor winners chosen by judges Tracy Richardson, David Schrader, and Alex Shapiro from some 70 submitted scores: Solo harpsichord (works required to emulate in some way the Mikrokosmos pieces by Béla Bartók): composers Ivan Božičevič (Microgrooves), Janine Johnson (Night Vision), Kent Holliday (Mikrokosmicals), Thomas Donahue (Four Iota Pieces), Mark Janello (Six Harpsichord Miniatures), and Glenn Spring (Bela Bagatelles). Vocal chamber music with one obbligato instrument and harpsichord: Jeremy Beck (Songs of Love & Remembrance), Ivan Božičevič (Aliénor Courante), and Asako Hirabayashi (Al que ingrate me deja).19 ν 

 

Notes

1. Jessica Douglas-Home, The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse (London: The Harvill Press, 1996). Discography (by Alan Vicat), p. 329. 

2. Ibid. Matrices issued in France with the catalogue number P484.

  3. Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 3. Pearl GEMM CD 9242 (1996).

4. Three newly constructed two-manual harpsichords built by the piano firms Érard and Pleyel, and by the instrument restorer Louis Tomasini, were shown at the Paris Exposition of 1889, and heard in performances at the event. The modern harpsichord revival is often dated from that year.

5. See Larry Palmer, “Revival Relics” in Early Keyboard Journal V (1986–87), pp. 45–52, and Palmer, Harpsichord in America: A 20th-Century Revival (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989; paperback second edition, 1993), pp. 4–6; page six is a facsimile of the first page of Rigodon.

6. See Larry Palmer, “Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s English Suite for Harpsichord at 100.” The Diapason, December 2009,
pp. 36–37.

7. See these articles in The Diapason: Donna M. Walters, “Henri Mulet: French organist-composer,” December 2008, pp. 26–29; Harpsichord News, August 2010, p. 11; and, for a complete facsimile of the original publication, the issue of January 2011,
p. 12. 

  8. Edition Breitkopf Nr. 4836 “for Piano Solo.”  

9. See Larry Palmer, “The Busoni Sonatina,” in The Diapason, September 1973, pp. 10–11; Palmer, Harpsichord in America: “Busoni and the Harpsichord,” pp. 25–26; the first harpsichord recording of this work is played by Larry Palmer on Musical Heritage Society disc LP 3222 (1975). A fine 2002 digital recording, Revolution for Cembalo (Hänssler Classic CD 98.503) features Japanese harpsichordist Sumina Arihashi playing the Busoni Sonatina, as well as Delius’s Dance, Thomé’s Rigodon, and other early revival works by Ravel, Massenet, Richard Strauss, and Alexandre Tansman.

10. The list of included composers is given in Palmer, Harpsichord in America,
p. 146. Kirkpatrick also recorded this program in 1961. 

11. “Bach Goes to Town,” Angel/EMI S-36095.

12. http://www.percygrainger.org/prog not5.htm (accessed 20 October 2011).

13. Published by G. Schirmer.

14. Persichetti’s ten sonatas for harpsichord are published by Elkan-Vogel, Inc., a subsidiary of the Theodore Presser Company, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010; the First Sonata, opus 52 (1951), was published in 1973. The Powell work remains unpublished.

15. Ule Troxler, Antoinette Vischer: Dokumente zu einem Leben für das Cembalo (Basel: Birkhäuser-Verlag, 1976). Published by Schott & Co. Ltd., London; U.S. reprint by G. Schirmer.

16. Ibid., pp. 99–100. 

17. Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist—Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). The quotation is found on page 130. I assembled the two harpsichord parts by cutting and pasting them from the orchestral score of Eugene Onegin (his opus 71).  I am unaware of any other published edition.

18. Personally I find the balances for the Poulenc much better in duo performances than in live harpsichord and orchestra ones. Another interesting possibility, at least as demonstrated by a recording, may be heard on Oehms Classics compact disc OC 637, where harpsichordist Peter Kofler is partnered by organist Hansjörg Albrecht and percussionist Babette Haag in a compelling performance, recorded in 2009 in Munich.

19. For more information about Aliénor and its history, consult www.harpsichord-now.org.

 

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of harpsichord editor Larry Palmer’s first published writing in The Diapason: a brief article about Hugo Distler in the issue for November 1962. Since those graduate student days he has taught at St. Paul’s College and Norfolk State and Southern Methodist Universities, served as President of SEHKS from 2004–2008, and is a continuing member of the advisory board for Aliénor. At the Cincinnati gathering in addition to “Gathering Peascods” he played Glenn Spring’s Bela Bagatelles at the Awards recital and chaired the Sunday session devoted to “Swingtime—The Mitch Miller Showdown.” 

 

Henri Mulet: French organist-composer

Donna M. Walters

Donna M. Walters is a graduate of Marywood University and holds a master’s degree in musicology and vocal performance. She is presently a music instructor at Hanover Area High School in Pennsylvania, and is the author of a book of children’s poetry entitled “Dreamland Memories.” Mrs. Walters has been in “Who’s Who in American Education,” “Who’s Who in American Teachers,” and “Who’s Who in American Women.” Currently the music director for St. Casimir’s Church in Hanover Township, she lives in Pennsylvania with her husband Joseph.

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Henri Mulet was born in the Eighteenth District of Paris, France, on October 17, 1878 at eight o’ clock in the evening. He was right-handed and grew to a height of five feet, six and one-half inches. Because of his birth date, he is considered a Middle-Impressionist composer. His parents, Gabriel Leon Mulet and Blanche Victoire Patie Mulet, were Catholic. They were considered first-rate performers, but neither of them composed. Gabriel was a pianist, a singer, and director of the choir at the Basilique du Sacré-Coeur. Blanche was a professor of piano, a singer and an organist at the harmonium of the Basilique. Henri had a brother named Gabriel who died in Paris at the age of sixteen. The brother was quite intelligent and had received a bachelor’s degree by the time of his death. Henri received his early musical training from both his parents, including harmonium and piano lessons from his mother. He began to study the violoncello shortly after he began piano lessons. Other than the piano lessons he received from his mother, he did not continue his study of the piano and remained an average player throughout his life.1

Early life
Around 1888, Mulet began to substitute for his mother, playing the Benediction at the Basilique. He eventually succeeded his mother at the harmonium, but the position had a major drawback: the Basilique was still under construction and every time that rain fell, Mulet had to play beneath an umbrella. He hated the experience so much that later in life, whenever he heard the harmonium he would flee. Because of the great musical ability he displayed as a child, Mulet was enrolled at the Paris Conservatory around 1889. At this time, he was in the solfège class of Paul Rougnon. Rougnon found Mulet to have exceptional talent and enrolled him in the violoncello class of Jules Delsart, one of the most famous cellists of the time. Mulet was also a classmate of the virtuoso cellist Paul Bazilaire. The jury members were Salome, the organ composer, and the arranger
J. B. Weckerlin, whose Bergerette album for voice is still in print.2
In 1891, Mulet won the second prize for solfège. In 1892, he won the first accompaniment prize for violoncello. In 1893, the first three prizes for violoncello were awarded to Mulet (first), Herouard, and Hasselmann. Mulet was not happy with the prize because he felt that all he had to do to win was imitate his teacher. He no longer had an interest in the violoncello, because he felt that one had to be a “showoff” to be a great cellist and he flatly refused to go along with this idea. Even though he stopped taking lessons, he continued to play the cello until he was eighteen. At that time, he became interested in composition.
While at the Paris Conservatory, Mulet played the cello at concerts in the Theatre du Chatelet. Jules Delsart had formed a student trio consisting of a violinist (unknown), a cellist (Mulet), and a pianist (Alfred Cortot). They performed in prestigious homes in Paris, Rouen, and Versailles. Mulet also accompanied his parents when they sang at boarding houses to entertain the other guests who were on holiday at the seashore.

First compositional period
In autumn 1893, Mulet enrolled in the organ class of Widor (for which Vierne was a substitute) and the improvisation class of Guilmant. Widor was considered to be the best organist of the time and was thus nicknamed “The Emperor.” Between 1893 and 1896, Mulet studied composition and orchestration with Widor and harmony with composers Pugno and Leroux. In 1896, Mulet won the first prize in harmony. In 1897, he won the second prize for organ and improvisation. Vierne, in his memoirs, said that Mulet was “rattled by nerves” and that he could have won first prize had he not been. The jury members for this contest were Cesar Franck’s students Dallier and Pierné and the composers Samuel Rousseau, Pugno, and Gabriel Fauré. Although Mulet never knew Fauré personally, he greatly admired him. Also in 1897, Henri was employed by the Church of St. Pierre-du-Petit-Montrouge.3
In 1901 and 1902, Mulet played many recitals and organ dedications in Paris, the French countryside, and in Belgium. Mulet’s favorite composer was César Franck, and he played Franck’s works as often as he could. He also admired the Widor symphonies and played them often. (The Widor symphonies that are played today are the 1914 to 1918 revisions, which were published in 1920. Mulet played only the original versions).

Second compositional period
In 1902, Mulet ceased most of his activity with the outside world. A trip to Lombardy, Italy, during an August holiday may have had some bearing on this decision. His compositions also changed quite drastically. He was hostile to the changes and innovations of the twentieth century, and his style remained strongly rooted in the symphonic organ of Cavaillé-Coll of the nineteenth century. It was during this period that Mulet composed his Esquisses Byzantines (Byzantine Sketches), one of his most famous works. He spent the majority of his time in church meditating and playing the organ. He spoke little with his friends, who referred to him from this point as being secretive and mystical.
Mulet left his position at St. Pierre-du-Petit-Montrouge sometime in 1901, but because of the periodic destruction of church records, the exact dates of Mulet’s church positions are difficult to determine. After his position at St. Pierre-du-Petit-Montrouge, he held the position of organist at St. Marie-des-Batignolles, apparently until sometime in 1904. At some point in 1905, Mulet became the choir organist at St. Eustache, a post he held until 1907. He was joined at this time by Joseph Bonnet, who was also employed as another organist by the church. In 1907, Mulet became the organist at St. Roch. The organ, a two-manual instrument, had a direct influence on Mulet’s compositions. His writing from this period shows less intensity, but greater artistry. Up to this point, Mulet’s scores displayed an interest in calligraphy. Many of his titles were done in ornate script. After this time, it appears that he had lost interest in the subject.

Third compositional period
Around 1909, Mulet was associating with another composer, Albert Perilhou, who was a student of and a companion to Saint-Saëns. He may have met Perilhou through his friend Libert. In this same year, Mulet tried his hand at conducting the St. Nationale Orchestra. At that time, anyone who had both a score and the parts was allowed to conduct. The orchestra consisted of some eighty performers from the Colonne, Lamoreaux and the Schola Cantorum orchestras. Felix Raugel, who played the violin, said that Mulet was an excellent conductor and that he never let his nerves show while conducting; however, his autograph scores have all of the tempi re-marked in gigantic letters written in crayon. Mulet conducted only the St. Nationale Orchestra and only the premieres of his own compositions. He conducted between 1909 and 1914, the greater portion of his premieres taking place between 1909 and 1911. After the St. Nationale concerts had run their course, Mulet’s works were heard at the Colonne, Lamoreaux, and Inghelbrecht concerts. Désiré-Émile Inghelbrecht (1880–1965) was the most important instrumental conductor of the time, and he promoted Mulet’s works more than any other conductor. On many occasions, he conducted Mulet’s works for radio concerts.
By 1909, Mulet’s social life consisted of attending intellectual gatherings comprising mostly teachers of English literature, religion, architecture, history, and music. The gatherings were held in private homes, and the guests were merely acquaintances and not close friends.
In 1910, Henri became a member of the Society des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Editeurs de Musique. He was admitted through Widor and Inghelbrecht. After July 1, 1910, Henri met the famous choral conductor Felix Raugel at the home of Libert. Raugel, a former student of Libert, became Henri’s second closest friend. Raugel said of Henri: “ . . . he hardly ever spoke, and he was very reserved and mystical.” He never knew Henri’s entire compositional output because Henri never spoke of his music. Raugel greatly appreciated what little he understood of Henri and was eager to write several articles about him for various dictionaries. He also conducted Henri’s early choral work, Laudate Dominum, quite often at St. Eustache and St. Honoré d’Eylan. Raugel said that he had also heard Mulet improvise and that he was expert at it.

Married life
It was at one of these gatherings that Mulet met his future wife, Isabelle Marie Board Rochereau. She was born in Lougne in the département of Maine-et-Loire on August 7, 1878. After their initial meeting, Isabelle joined the choir of St. Roch so that she could see Henri quite often. She also saw Mulet conduct in 1909 and was very impressed. Henri courted Isabelle for about one year, and they were married at St. Elizabeth’s Church, Place de la Republique in the Eleventh District of Paris on July 12, 1910. The organist at the wedding ceremony was Joseph Boulnois, to whom Marcel Dupré dedicated the third Prelude and Fugue from his opus 7. The Mulets seemed to have chosen this church out of convenience, as their address after the marriage was 28 Place de la Republique. Prior to his marriage, Henri’s address was 26 rue du 4 Septembre, Paris 2.
Within a year of the marriage, Henri composed four orchestral sketches that he intended to orchestrate. When the sketches were finished, he went to see about conducting one of his works and was flatly refused. Raugel said, “ . . . after 1910, it became more difficult to conduct or to have one’s pieces performed by an orchestra.”4 Because of this, Mulet stopped composing in 1911. Raugel continues, “Prior to 1911, if one felt talented, he had only to climb to the podium.” This is how Berlioz, Busser, Messager, Pasdeloup, Colonne, Lamoreaux, Rheue-Baton, Inghelbrecht, Gaubert, and he (Raugel) started. During the time of Gaubert, conducting classes were introduced.
In 1911, Mulet transcribed the four sketches along with an earlier unperformed orchestral work for the harmonium in a desperate attempt to have his music performed. He submitted some of these pieces to a publisher of religious music, Abbot Delepine, who liked Mulet’s music, and the two became friends.Henri’s student, Henri Heurtel, stated that Isabelle could have pushed Henri to compose after 1911, but she saw no reason for doing so. Isabelle was not a musician, did not understand music, and had no interest in it. She did, however, have an interest in business and, at some time between 1911 and 1913, she convinced Henri to open a real estate office. Henri, however, had no talent for business, and it quickly failed.
Isabelle and her husband did not go out a great deal after they were married. Her explanation for this was that Henri had done many things before the marriage; he did, however, take her to see one opera (Felix Raugel said that Henri sometimes went to hear the performances by the Society of Concerts).5 Henri also forbade Isabelle to dance, which she never understood, but she respected his wishes. At some point, Henri acquired a practice pipe organ so that he no longer had to practice at the churches where he was employed. Because Henri did his practicing at home, Isabelle offered this as an explanation as to why Henri did not marry a musician. She said, “You must understand that a man like my husband who often had to stay home to work on the organ pieces that he played every Sunday at the eleven o’ clock mass could not marry a piano teacher or a singing teacher. He did not like to work on his organ studies while having, in the next room, the stumbling playing or singing of a pupil.”6 At the time of his marriage, Henri still had his cello, although he had not played it for some years. Sometime afterward, he apparently gave it to his former classmate, Hasselmann.

The mystic, Mulet
Mulet improvised in the manner of César Franck. The Mulets and the Raugels often had lunch at the Liberts’ home, and the Raugels also accompanied the Mulets on their month-long holidays in August. Henri owned a small Renault, and he always did the driving. Raugel said that they always visited the scenic rural areas. The countryside had a profound affect upon Henri’s composing.7
When Henri premiered his Fantasie Pastorale, a symphonic poem for orchestra, on May 20, 1911, a review in the Comœdia Illustré stated that it was “the most interesting of the new works, containing spontaneity, drive, vigor, and pace. The work was quite dramatic, developed, and descriptive; moreover, it was well-orchestrated, calling up impressions Mulet felt upon looking at the countryside of the Haute Durance.” The motto of the work is also quoted, “Smiling in the sun or tragic under the storm.” This composition is the best remembered of the missing works. Raugel stated that after Mulet ceased to compose in 1911, he amused himself with his thought and would sit, meditating, without saying anything. He was very reticent and months and years went by in silence.

The Niedermeyer School
From 1911–1922 and from 1922–1936, Henri was employed at St. Phillipe-du-Roule, apparently in two different positions. In 1913, Henri became a professor at the Niedermeyer School in Paris. He acquired the position through Libert, who was teaching piano there. At the time that Henri joined the faculty, the school was being run by Niedermeyer’s granddaughter and her husband, Henry Heurtel, and by his grandson, Lefebvre. The Heurtels had eight children who assisted in administrative duties. At one time, Gabriel Fauré was connected to the school, and the Niedermeyers were very close to him. Fauré was godfather to one of the Heurtel daughters.
Two of the Heurtels’ eight children studied the organ with Mulet: Henri Heurtel and one of his sisters. Henri was the only student of Mulet’s that Isabelle ever knew. She knew the Heurtel family and was invited by Mrs. Heurtel to visit. Apart from the Raugels, the Liberts, and the Heurtels, Isabelle appears to have met very few of Mulet’s professional friends and acquaintances. She never met Joseph Bonnet, despite his and Mulet’s close friendship.
At the Niedermeyer School, Henri taught organ, cello, and solfège. He was noted for his ability to sing solfège, but he never sang anything else. He had even directed choirs without singing a note, a practice also carried out by Raugel. He gave only a few cello lessons at the school and never played at these lessons. This practice stemmed from his bitterness at having imitated Delsart’s playing. He never lost the fear that his students would imitate him and he always said, “You must not imitate anyone; you must be personal.”8
Even though the Niedermeyer School had a varied curriculum, it was considered primarily a school for serious organists. When Henri joined the faculty, its members did not speak with one another; however, Mulet’s earlier acquaintance, Bellenot, and a friend, Albert Perilhou, taught there as well. Henri Heurtel said that nothing was known of the teachers’ private lives because they never discussed their affairs with their students; however, Felix Raugel said that Perilhou was a former student of and companion to Saint-Saëns. He states that Saint-Saëns would visit Perilhou at the Church of St. Severin, where the latter was organist. Saint-Saëns would seat himself at the organ and, at seventy years of age, would improvise like a young man. Raugel also said that Saint-Saëns would improvise an entire fantasy. Additionally, Raugel stated that even though Saint-Saëns had a great talent for improvisation, he hated César Franck and remained envious of Franck until he died. Raugel said that Franck’s music did not become popular until 1900, and the more that Franck’s music was performed, the more bitter Saint-Saëns became.9
Another teacher at the Niedermeyer School was Henri Dallier, who had studied with Franck. It is surprising that Mulet and Dallier remained only acquaintances, because Dallier primarily played Franck’s music, which Henri greatly admired. Dallier’s students called him “The Terror of the Pedals.” Dallier had been a concert pianist and would tell his students that the fourth finger is the most important aspect of playing. Dallier eventually adopted the mystic style of Mulet; when this occurred, he was rejected by his composition students at the Paris Conservatory. They labeled him a bore.
Henri Heurtel, who appears to have been Mulet’s most successful student, said, “Mulet was always very reserved and quiet and never talked about himself or about other people. It was difficult to know what he was thinking about anyone. Mulet never boasted about the success of having his orchestral works performed at the great concerts, and he never talked outside of lessons. He was very witty and joked with a straight face.”10 According to Heurtel, Henri was an excellent organ professor. He never allowed a student to go on with a piece if there was one wrong note. As with cello lessons, he never played the organ for his students. Mulet said, “The secret to learning a piece (he used the Bach Fantasy and Fugue as an example) is to let it ripen,” meaning to work it out for a long time with great care. He also told his students that to play in church, a repertoire of at least fifty major compositions was necessary. Henri’s best-remembered quotation was “Time is precious, for tomorrow you will be seventy years old.”11

Final appearance as conductor
In 1937, Heurtel succeeded Libert as organist at the Basilica of St. Denis and held that position until 1977. Libert had held the post from 1896 to 1937. On May 17, 1914, Mulet made his final appearance as a conductor with the premiere of Le Talion, a song written in declamatory style. It was sung by Georges Mary, a baritone whom Mulet frequently employed for his oratorio concerts. As Mulet became older, he became more and more demanding of his students, to the point that they did not want to attend lessons. Henri Heurtel’s sister would beg her mother to “ . . . spare her this torture.” Her brother said that she cried at every lesson; but one day, she did exactly what Mulet wanted and they became good friends. He used to call her “The Princess.”

Mulet’s bitterness
Heurtel stated that Henri’s bitterness was a result of his observation that high art was on the decline, principally because the younger organists broke the tradition of playing legato at an allegro tempo. Mulet remained strongly enmeshed in the style of the symphonic Cavaillé-Coll organ of the nineteenth century. He detested the playing of Marcel Dupré and considered Joseph Bonnet to be one of the last performers to play the organ correctly with excellent technique. Heurtel himself stated that “ . . . modern performers get drunk on the speed they can attain by using the wrong approach.”12
Two additional things that affected Mulet are revealed in an incident that occurred when Henri Heurtel’s mother questioned Mulet as to why he gave up composing. Mulet was said to have lost his great reserve, showed great bitterness and replied, “ . . . cartloads of music in France are waiting to be played and published. It is not worth the trouble of writing if the music will not be played.”
After 1918, it was very difficult to have music published in France. Raugel said that all of the Parisian musicians ignored Mulet’s music, and he came to hate Paris. After 1911, Mulet displayed a rather overwhelming bitterness. Isabelle Mulet said that Henri never discussed any of these affairs with her. They had no children, and each had their own separate lifestyles. She said that her husband loved her very much, but she never completely understood him. She said of Henri, “ . . . he was like in a dream-world, and later, feeling that he had failed, Henri became even more withdrawn.” She added that he was never really content. The only time that he appeared to be happy was when he was driving somewhere or was on holiday. Isabelle said that driving gave him the greatest pleasure and only then did he become relaxed and sociable; otherwise, he remained very much to himself.13
Around 1914, the Mulets moved to the town of Triel-sur-Seine, which is about thirty-five kilometers from Paris. Between 1914 and 1924, Henri, who had no relatives outside of Paris, rarely returned to the city, except when he visited his paternal grandfather. These visits were infrequent. In 1914, Vierne dedicated his Canon (No. 6 from Twenty-four Pieces in Free Style for Harmonium and Organ) to Mulet. This appears to be the only published work ever dedicated to him.

Mulet’s lectures
Sometime between the 26th and the 31st of July in 1921, Henri gave two lectures to the General Congress of Sacred Music, which took place in Strasbourg, Germany. The members included many Parisian musicians including Raugel, Gabriel Pierné, Henri Rabauch, Samuel Rosseau, Eugène Gigout (who also taught at the Niedermeyer School), and Vincent D’Indy. One lecture dealt solely with the technical placement of pistons on organ consoles and the pitch arrangements for mixtures, the other was titled “The Harmful and Anti-religious Tendencies of the Organ.” This lecture dealt with the so-called “French Registration” and attacked some other items including the tremolo. Below is an excerpt of that lecture:

The Harmful and Anti-religious
Tendencies of the Organ
by Henri Mulet
It is very probable that the invention of the organ occurred from the need that one try to imitate the wind instruments by mechanical means, undoubtedly to save the human soul. The result was rather satisfactory, but it contained a surprise: an inert sound. The inertia of the sound of the organ is its fuel, it is accompanied by homogeneity of duration, of intense stability and creates a sound in the world a world apart. Those who like the Organ like its inertia. If the Organ were not inert any more, it would not be the Organ. The Organ recalls the timbre of certain instruments. It does not imitate them. This is not its role. It has better to do. It is self-sufficient because it is as rich as the richest orchestra. The orchestra is a painting; the organ is stained glass. Its sounds of calmness, imposing and seizing, bathe the atmosphere of our cathedrals; just as the lights of our stained glass, sharp as well as ever so soft, induce faithful meditation. Like stained glass, the organ has its colors. One can say, if one wanted, that the flutes are blue, the reeds red, the pleins jeux yellow, the cornets purple, and the gambas green. As in the stained glass, this inertia precisely constitutes the base of any beauty of the organ. If it did not exist, it would have to be invented. Also, it is necessary to deplore the fact that, from time immemorial, it was people who, not appreciative of this beautiful inertia of the sound, always worked to fight it.
The tremolo does not have any other origin than this, but its beats, being always equal to themselves, produce another kind of inertia which without the good qualities all claimed, has only the disadvantages of primitive inertia.
Fortunately, there are a few organists in France who love the organ in the old manner, who never play transcriptions (such as the overture to Tannhauser) and who will not allow our stained glass to be demolished in order to put in its place a sort of “cinema-organ-orchestra,” the organ of the Antichrist. These orchestral tendencies are, moreover, illogical and one is in vain pursuit of a phantom.
Imitating instruments, even perfectly, is not at all the same as imitating the orchestra. Even if, impossibly, the inertia of sound were completely overcome, you would still have to execute the notes. Those who are generous enough to believe that this has been accomplished make us think that they have never read an orchestra score.
In order to merely play the notes, we would have to have 20 hands and as many keyboards. To make the nuances, we would need at least 20 swell boxes. Even then, it would not be exact, because the instruments of the orchestra change timbre when they change intensity. You can close an organ trumpet in a box, but it will never be a true trumpet pianissimo.14

Mulet, the organist
In 1921, Mulet left his post at St. Roch and the following year became the titular organist at St. Phillipe-du-Roule. He played all of his organ works at this church on a Cavaillé-Coll-Mutin built in 1903. It was noted by the abbot of St. Philippe that Mulet’s playing was well-appreciated among the parishioners.
Shortly after Mulet accepted this position, his student, Henri Heurtel, became his assistant for one year, pulling stops for Mulet’s performances. This seems odd, since Mulet lectured against having an assistant while performing. Heurtel said that Mulet always practiced at home and no one but Isabelle knew how much time he spent at the organ. While at his post at St. Philippe, Mulet improvised to fill in the gaps at the services. Heurtel said that he never improvised a prelude or a postlude. Heurtel questioned Mulet as to how one learned to improvise. Henri answered that, “ . . . one has to be born with the gift of improvisation which cannot be learned under any circumstances.” Henri was in disagreement with what Dupré and others termed “improvising.” He felt that improvising was spontaneous, and that the performer developed ideas immediately, rarely remembering what he had played. Raugel said, “ . . . when Dupré was in his early twenties, he could improvise only short stanzas. He planned everything in advance and memorized it. On one of his early concert tours, he declined to improvise, something that one possessing the true gift would never do.”
The late composer, Georges Migot (1891–1976), who was a contemporary of the last of the French Impressionists, confirms this: “ . . . none of them (referring to Dupré and others) could improvise spontaneously; everything was planned in advance.” Vierne wrote of Mulet, “ . . . Mulet of St.-Phillipe-du-Roule, was a musical personality of the sharpest. He was a solid virtuoso and a beautiful improviser. . . . Mulet has written some very significant pieces which have justly become part of the repertoire for very serious organists.” Isabelle Mulet said of her husband, “ . . . if he had written down all of the improvisations that he played on different occasions, he would have been renowned.”
In 1922, Paul Bedouin became the choir organist at St. Phillipe-du-Roule. Bedouin, who was also a pianist, was a student of Vierne and Gigout and knew Felix Raugel. Despite Bedouin’s association with Mulet’s colleagues, he said that he did not see Mulet often at that time.During the summer of 1923, Mulet met the Canadian-born organist Lynnwood Farnam (1885–1930) through his friend, Libert. Farnam was to achieve considerable success in the United States, especially in New York City. Farnam was studying with Libert while the latter was assisting Widor at the Conservatory of Fontainebleau. Also, at this time, Mulet had his photograph taken with American organist and conductor, Albert Riemenschneider (1878–1950), who often vacationed in France. It seems likely that Mulet knew Riemenschneider from the time that Albert studied with Widor and Guilmant.
From 1924 to 1931, Mulet taught at the Schola Cantorum in Paris as well as at the Niedermeyer School. He may also have done some substitute teaching at the Conservatory of Fontainebleau, but this has not been substantiated. During this time, Mulet received correspondence from two parishioners of St. Phillipe-du-Roule. One, dated January 26, 1926 reads:

Sir:
I should like to ask you for some information. I should be very grateful if you could give it to me. Though I have not had the honor of meeting you, I have often had the pleasure of hearing you play on Sundays at St. Phillipe’s. Last Sunday, January 24th, you played a piece which I would like to know the name of. It must be by Franck, probably.
Thanking you in advance,
I remain very truly yours,
Y. Reul
RSVP
PS. You played the piece in question at the end of the 10:30 mass.

The other letter, which is not dated, reads:

Mr. Georges Thomas would be very grateful to the organist of St. Phillipe-du-Roule for the title of the piece which he played in a most charming manner, on Sunday, January 8th at the 11:30 mass right after the sermon; and requests, if this is not too much trouble, to ask that he leave the title for him at No. 1 Courcelles Street, just a step or two from St. Philippe’s.

(This card was probably written in 1928, as January 8th fell on a Sunday in that year).
In June of 1927, Mulet donated his practice organ to the Gothic church of St. Martin in Triel-sur-Seine. Both Raugel and he gave a dedicatory concert on Sunday, June 26, 1927. Mulet played César Franck’s Choral No. 3, J. S. Bach’s Prelude in E Minor, an excerpt from Widor’s Seventh Symphony, and the Buxtehude Fugue in C Major. Raugel then directed the choir from St. Eustache in works by Pitoni, Marcello, Copulet, Fauré, and Psalm Fifteen by Franck.
Around 1928, the publisher Emile Leduc went with his son, Gilbert, to Triel-sur-Seine to meet with Mulet. (The Leduc Publishing House was founded by Alphonse Leduc in 1848 and was taken over by Emile in 1904 after Alphonse’s death.) Raugel said that Mulet had been at odds with the publishing company for years. When the Esquisses Byzantines was published in 1920, Mulet was given a seventy-dollar advance payment for royalties, but he was never paid another penny, despite the fact that thousands of copies of the collection had been sold. Mulet was well aware of the sales, because Leduc had to file them with the French Composer’s Society. Raugel said that Mulet was like a “shorn lamb” and that composers who dealt with Leduc had to “know how to defend themselves.”15
The April 30, 1930 issue of Le Monde Musicale contained an article about Mulet written by Charles Tournemire: “Henri Mulet, strange and great artist, caught up by a mystical ideal. Calm improviser, sometimes lively, religious. Artist worthy of the Middle Ages, which, in his case, does not exclude the feeling of understanding modern art. Mysterious thinker.”
In 1932, a student of César Franck’s, Louis de Serres, founded the Ecole César Franck. Mulet taught there sometime between 1932 and 1937, along with his friends Vierne, Bonnet, and Bedouin. Felix Raugel said that Mulet made use of Marcel Dupré’s compositions for teaching purposes and that he appreciated their technical properties, especially the ostinati; however, Raugel further states that Mulet found little aesthetic worth in these pieces and refused to play them.16 In 1934, Mulet left the Niedermeyer School because it was too difficult for him to climb the hill on which it stood. The school continued to operate until the end of World War II, when it ran out of funds.
During the 1930s, Bedouin frequently visited the Mulets at his home. Bedouin wrote, “He (Mulet) always greeted me in a very friendly manner when I used to go with my little family to visit him at Triel-sur-Seine where he lived.”17 At some point, Mulet met the famed teacher, Nadia Boulanger. She said of Mulet that she did not really know him, but when they were introduced, “He was that most cordial one.” She added that his talent was widely recognized.18
In 1936, Désiré Inghelbrecht directed Mulet’s Petit Suite sur des Airs Populaires Français, which was played by Inghelbrecht’s radio orchestra. A postcard sent to Mulet by the orchestra’s secretary reads:
15 July 1936
Dear Sir:
Your Petit Suite sur des Airs Populaires Français will conclude the program of the Federal Broadcast of Tuesday, July 21st. Mr. Inghelbrecht has set the rehearsals of your work as follows: Saturday, July 18th at 9:00 AM Salle Gareau and the following Tuesday, the 21st after the intermission, Salle Gareau, also, that is to say at 10:45 AM. At the dress rehearsal in the afternoon, he will see the whole program in order, that is to say that you will be on supposedly toward 4:30 PM. Since the concert is public, I will have at your disposal the number of tickets that you might desire.19

After the performance, Inghelbrecht returned this score to Mulet along with two other orchestral works entitled Souvenirs de Lorin Bardie. Inghelbrecht appears to have had possession of these scores from 1911 until 1936. Also in 1936, Mulet had a small article written about him in an unidentified American music magazine. Mulet kept a copy of the article, which was written by a Dr. G. Bedart. It proved to be quite inaccurate except for his having quoted Mulet as hating “Vainglory.” (In 1921, Mulet had lectured against an article that Bedart had written, labeling Bedart as a “careless thinker.”)

Retirement
In 1937, Mulet felt forced to retire from his musical life in Paris. His feelings of failure coupled with his notion that the “moderns” did not question the validity of ideas were both prevailing influences in his decision; but the final blow came from the church authorities of St. Phillipe-du-Roule. Mulet was informed that “modern” music was favored in place of Franck, Widor, Bach, Buxtehude, or any other master composer whose works were in the standard organ repertoire. By coincidence, Mulet received an inheritance at this time, and he officially retired from St. Philippe on Easter Sunday, March 28, 1937. The postlude was Widor’s Toccata from the Fifth Symphony. Michael Boulnois, the son of organist Joseph Boulnois, was hired to succeed Mulet. He was present at the Easter service and said that Mulet played the Toccata brilliantly.
Before leaving Paris, Mulet gave all of his keyboard music to Paul Bedouin. Bedouin said the music was more or less ruined from having been used so frequently. Mulet gave the three orchestral scores returned by Inghelbrecht in 1936 to Raugel in the hope that he (Raugel) could get them performed.
After his retirement, Henri moved with his wife, her sister, and her mother to a small home in Draguignan, which is in Provence. Their home overlooked the beach at Frejus on the Mediterranean Sea. Before moving, Mulet had added his new address to the title page of his orchestral work Dans le Vallée du Tombeau (In the Valley of the Tomb). “Dans” is an interesting piece to choose to list what was to be the last place where Mulet would live.

The final move
Henri then became the organist at the Cathedral of Draguignan—a position that, for Mulet, proved to be an ordeal, because the organ contained every one of the faults that he had argued against in his 1931 lecture. The instrument was a two-manual Merklin built in 1888. It was unified and did not have one mixture or one mutation rank and the pedalboard only went up to D2. Henri called this organ “The Bagpipes.” While at Draguignan, Henri wrote only to Raugel and Bedouin. Libert had died in 1937, and his position at St. Denis was given to Henri Heurtel, the student of both Libert and Mulet. Of Henri’s correspondence, only one letter has been preserved. It was sent to Felix Raugel, who said that this was the only letter in which Henri exposed his thoughts, although Raugel did not seem to understand it completely:
7 August 1946
My Very Dear Friend,
Three times you have written me and I have not answered! I am very ashamed and I ask your forgiveness. I am down in the dumps, a depression as big as an elephant, and this is what has kept me from writing because it stops up my brain.
You are singing the Lamentations. I don’t have the courage to sing the Ténèbre. Silence alone . . .
All that, after all, is of no importance and surely happens for our greater good. Is it to keep us from missing the life of this lower world? Perhaps, but in any case, this is the result.
We are going to die tomorrow, our agony is long and hard, but the important thing is to have our passport in order. All the rest is beneath our attention. Let us forget, then, the earth and especially its horrible inhabitants. And let us think of that “other world” where the sea is no longer. But I think that there will be beautiful lakes and beautiful mountains and no radio [referred to as T.S.F. . . . Mulet did not like the change to popular music on the radio!]. To reach it we travel in fourth class, at least! But we are being too difficult.
I’ve received nothing from Leduc. He said that he would send the E. B. [Esquisses Byzantines] but he has done nothing about it. He is worthy of being a Dracenois [interpreted by Raugel as being a resident of Draguignan] but it is of no great misfortune and if you meet him, you can tell him that I don’t give a damn . . . [written je m’en f . . . ] Doubtless I would not have done anything about it. Rework them, these pieces? I would not have had the courage because that would be so useless. [Mulet was asked to rewrite his E.B. so that Leduc could gain a new copyright on the collection.] The “Bagpipes” [the Merklin organ] here does not interest me at all and for me it is a punishment (or penance) to go to work there every Sunday. I do it only as penance, just as I do everything else.
Take courage, salvation is perhaps nearer than we think. My best wishes to both of you, Henri Mulet. [Oddly, in the letter, the body is very clear, yet the signature is nearly illegible.]

In 1955, Mulet found a summer home for Paul Bedouin in Draguignan, where Bedouin visited Mulet every summer. Because Bedouin visited every season, he and Mulet did not correspond. Despite their long friendship, Bedouin said that Mulet was a mystic and that he (Mulet) never confided in him. Bedouin summed up their relationship by saying that “Henri Mulet, in spite of his kindness, his willingness to please, never completely abandoned a certain reserve. He did not give himself willingly. He was an interior man.”20
In 1956, the Cathedral of Draguignan was closed for major renovation; consequently, Henri faced another retirement. Isabelle’s sister and mother appear to have died before 1959. In that year, Henri became quite ill and needed the assistance of a cane for mobility. He had dizzy spells and, at one time, he fell his entire length on the ground. Later, he had no memory of the dizzy spell or the fall. Because of this incident, the Mulets moved to the convent of the Little Sisters of the Poor in Draquine between late October and December of 1959. Henri had become so ill after his arrival that he was unable to play. It was discovered that Henri was also afflicted with otosclerosis, a genetic illness which causes the bone in the inner ear to grow. This disease will eventually cause deafness, a ringing in the ears and a softening of the voice. At that time, there was no cure.
Henri remained ill for seven years. The Little Sisters said that during this time he cared only about his wife whom he loved very much. On the morning of September 20, 1967, Henri complained of back pain and his doctor was unable to offer him any relief. At nine o’clock AM, he muttered “I am dying,” and he had a dizzy spell during which he lost consciousness. The doctors were unable to revive him and he died at 10:45 AM. Isabelle said that she believed that he died of an internal hemorrhage. He was buried at the local cemetery in Draguignan. Raugel said that Henri died in silence. No obituary was ever published in any French newspaper.
Sometime after Henri’s death, a letter written by some unknown person (Isabelle could not remember the name) was forwarded to Isabelle requesting information from the authorities of St. Philippe-du-Roule about her husband. The authorities of St. Philippe-du-Roule were unable to remember the dates of Henri’s employment. Ironically, the Abbot had once written that Henri was very much appreciated.
In the March 1968 issue of The Diapason (p. 17) an article was published about Henri’s death, which resulted in Isabelle’s reception of one letter of condolence, sent from a Mr. Jerry Koontz of Washington State, USA. Sometime between 1968 and 1972, Isabelle moved to the convent in Nice. She no longer heard from Bedouin, but the Raugels paid her a surprise visit. Isabelle had a cousin in Paris with whom she kept in touch until the early 1970s. Isabelle became increasingly deaf and blind. Between 1967 and 1975, she read books on archeological findings and the history of France. She also corresponded with the French Society of Archeology. Additionally, Isabelle collected stamps, which were sold to raise money for missionaries in Africa.
By 1975, Isabelle was totally blind and could not read or write. She returned to the convent at Draguignan. The sisters said that she was always an interesting conversationalist, even though there was an occasional language barrier. Many of the sisters were from the United States and were not well versed in the French language. Around November of 1976, Isabelle broke her leg. She never recovered from the trauma of the accident and she died on March 24, 1977.
Henri Mulet had his photograph taken at least five times. There is an undated photograph from his student days that was owned by Felix Raugel. One appeared in the 1910 issue of the Comœdia Illustré. A third was taken with Albert Riemenschneider on the steps of St. Philippe-du-Roule during the 1920s. The fourth photograph was published in the 1936 article by Dr. Bedart. The final photograph is a color picture taken by a cousin of Henri between August 7 and October 17, 1959. According to Isabelle, it was taken “ . . . after a good lunch in the garden of the hotel in Draguignan.”

Mulet, the enigma
By nature of his birth, Henri stands as a Middle Impressionist, if Henri Dallier (b. 1849) is taken as the first French Impressionist and Maurice Duruflé (b. 1902) is taken as the last French Impressionist. Although Mulet lived for 88 years, he composed for only fifteen of them, between 1896 and 1911. Even though this is a relatively brief time, his compositions can be divided into three periods such as those of other composers who wrote over their entire lives.
Because Mulet never dated anything and often published his compositions years after they were written, it is impossible to make a chronological arrangement for some years. The order given is based upon his compositional traits. The three periods range from c. 1896 to c. 1902, c. 1903 to c. 1909, and c. 1909 to c. 1911.
Very few autograph scores have survived, because Mulet simply threw them away when the pieces were published. At present, the author has two of the remaining autograph scores in her possession: Offertoire sur un Alleluia Grégorien and Carillon-Sortie. He only retained originals when the printed scores contained a multitude of errors. For the most part, Mulet did not own copies of his own works. As of the present, eight scores have disappeared, seven of which were written in his third period. Six of these were in the possession of Raugel at one time, but when Raugel returned them to Mulet in 1937, Mulet loaned them to some unknown person who claimed the ability to get them performed. They disappeared and have still to be recovered. As with the scores of many other composers, they may someday be found in some Parisian attic. Of the other missing scores, one was an opera burned by Isabelle at Henri’s request and the other simply went out of print. Although the scores were lost, eight-measure themes to each work were registered with the French Composer’s Society.21
Isabelle said that Henri had no set time for composing. Mulet himself stated that “One composes when seized by the spirit. To be inspired is the most important thing.” Felix Raugel said that Mulet would not permit himself to be influenced by any other composer.22
The music of Henri Mulet is unique. Mulet achieved much tension between any two notes. As a result, Mulet was an extremely efficient and concise composer. Not one note can be extracted from a Mulet piece without causing major disruption of the musical line. According to his friends and his wife, Mulet had to struggle for every idea that came to him; therefore, even though Mulet had an incredible depth of inspiration, he cannot be classified as a compositional genius. The master composers always had a flood of ideas that came rapidly. Henri never achieved this.
When Mulet worked on the autograph scores of his first period, he was fascinated by calligraphy. Three types of writing appear on his scores. The titles are written very thickly with ornaments. Other comments are much smaller and much less ornamental. In the organ manuscript Offertoire, the registrations appear in his normal handwriting. In comparing Mulet’s scores to those of master composers of the time, none other took the time to write things out so carefully.
Mulet’s attention to detail yielded extraordinarily balanced musical parts. His music became more and more flawless, especially in his second period compositions. These are written completely in contrary motion, a trait that is rather unusual for an Impressionist.
Where Mulet succeeded so flawlessly in sound, he was quite the opposite when it came to copying out his scores. He composed sketches first and then transferred his works to an actual autograph score. He thought nothing of putting an oboe part on a clarinet line, he never repaired errors when a piece was published, nor did he bother to tell anyone about the mistakes in his printed scores.
Henri Mulet will probably remain enigmatic in the world of music. Because of his lack of correspondence, few friends, and solitary lifestyle, information regarding his life is limited. The information in this article was gleaned from correspondence to his wife Isabelle, the French Composer’s Society, the Little Sisters of the Poor, Paul Bedouin, Henri Heurtel, and from Felix Raugel. Hopefully, the little information that is available will offer some insight into his life and will elevate his much-deserved standing in the world of classical composers.

Copies of Mulet’s extant works are available from the author at a nominal fee. Send e-mail to <[email protected]> for a list of works and details about ordering.

Author’s note:
This project was begun in the late 1960s by Kenneth Saslaw, who was a doctoral student at the University of Michigan. Kenneth was my vocal coach for many years, and when, at age 35, he lay on his deathbed, he asked me to complete the work and have it published. He had spent a great deal of time corresponding with the above-mentioned people to track down what information was available about Mulet, to the extent that the French Society of Composers and Musicians named him the world authority on Mulet. I acquired the materials several years after his death. The task of sorting through letters and notes was monumental, as I had to spend many hours peering at his handwritten notes with a magnifying glass in order to decipher them. As far as I know, the information is accurate. Kenneth has finally gotten his wish; may he rest in peace.

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

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A Love Letter to Ille: Peter
Watchorn’s Ahlgrimm Biography

Isolde Ahlgrimm (1914–1995), known as “Ille” to her close friends, was physically diminutive and personally self-effacing. She was also a woman of strong musical convictions, a prime mover in the 20th-century revival of the harpsichord and fortepiano, and one of the outstanding teachers ever to be encountered. Now, after a lengthy gestation period, her life story is available at last in Peter Watchorn’s book Isolde Ahlgrimm, Vienna and the Early Music Revival (Ashgate Publishing Limited: ISBN 978-0-7546-5787-3). The wait has been worth it! Dr. Watchorn has written a lucid, loving, and memorable prose picture of this pioneering Viennese figure, placing her, correctly, in the forefront of the early music revival, and documenting her contributions as one of the period’s leading keyboard artists.
Firmly based on interviews with the great harpsichordist, this is fascinating biography, moving from the Ahlgrimm family’s close connection to Johannes Brahms and Isolde’s formative study with Austrian composer Franz Schmidt and esteemed pianist and pedagogue Emil von Sauer, to the establishment of an extensive series of house concerts (Konzerte für Kenner und Liebhaber) with her husband, the instrument collector Erich Fiala, and the ultimate breakup of their marriage. Particularly moving is the picture of those harrowing years of Nazi hegemony in Vienna, including Ille’s account of her husband’s incarceration. Career highlights include Ahlgrimm’s monumental series of recordings for Philips, comprising nearly the complete harpsichord works of J. S. Bach, and the story, in her own words, of the association and friendship with Richard Strauss and the genesis of a unique page for harpsichord solo, created “for her exclusive concert use” by the master composer.
Additionally, this 264-page book contains Ahlgrimm’s complete discography; her own chronology of the concert series (in German, with English translation following); a list of her publications (as well as a complete text of the valedictory lecture “Current Trends in Performance of Baroque Music” [first published in Howard Schott’s English translation in The Diapason], re-transcribed by Mahan Esfahani, with musical examples uniformly set by Geoffrey Burgess); and Kim Kasling’s 1977 Diapason article “Harpsichord Lessons for the Beginner—à la Isolde Ahlgrimm.”
With more than thirty photographs from Ahlgrimm’s personal collection, a graceful foreword by Penelope Crawford and short preface from longtime friend Virginia Pleasants, this is a beautiful and indispensable volume, well worth its substantial price ($99.95; online orders from <www.ashgate.com&gt; may receive a discount). Even the book’s type-face (BACH Musicological Font by Yo Tomita) would almost certainly have delighted Ille, who during my student days, often referred to herself as “the Widow Bach” because she spent so much of her time practicing and playing JSB’s music.

Richard Strauss: Suite aus Capriccio for Harpsichord (with concert ending) in the arrangement by Isolde Ahlgrimm, edited by Rudolf Scholz. Schott RSV 9049 [ISMN M-50118-000-4] ($22.95).
Isolde Ahlgrimm received numerous requests from harpsichordists who wished to play this near-legendary single Strauss solo work for their instrument. She was consistently adamant in her refusals: after all, the composer had inscribed the two-page autograph of the work’s concert ending with these words “Für Isolde Ahlgrimm-Fiala/ als Eigentum und zum alleinigen Konzertgebrauch/ überlassen. [For Isolde Ahlgrimm-Fiala, given as her own property, with exclusive right of use in concert.] /s/ Dr. Richard Strauss.”
I was one of those who requested such permission in 1986, after she had retired from playing. Through the years she had made it evident that she was not being stingy with the work itself: she sent me a Xerox of the autograph ending, a complete facsimile of the original three-movement dance suite from the opera (as scored for violin, cello and harpsichord), with her fragmentary penciled “arrangement” notated below. She had, additionally, provided a taped copy of her unreleased recording of the work (made for Philips). But, just at the point at which we were discussing legal matters, Ille was overwhelmed by a trio of permission requests from Frau Alice Strauss, Hedwig Bilgram, and Professor Kohler of the Richard Strauss Institute in Munich. Better than upsetting all these important people, wrote Ahlgrimm, is that both arrangement and her ending “sleep the long sleep of libraries.” And that was that.
As an opera devoté and particular admirer of Strauss’s music, I determined that the best solution to this impasse would be to make my own arrangement based on the piano-vocal score of the opera, with a hint of the Strauss concert ending: the first four measures (readily available in the Müller von Asow thematic catalog), a brief bridge passage, and a “reminiscence” of Strauss’s final four measures (which I had in the Xerox from Ahlgrimm). These measures, as written by the composer, are not completely playable anyway, since they transcend (in two places) the top note found on ANY harpsichord. (Earlier, in measures 19–20 the composer had asked for high G#, A, and B in the right hand, while notating a sforzando/crescendo for the left!)
My solution has worked well for me, and I strongly recommend it to others. Now, with the publication of Ahlgrimm’s arrangement (insofar as it could be deciphered) a dedicated player is able to compare individual solutions with those chosen by the Viennese harpsichordist. As for frequently changing registrations, Ahlgrimm felt that it would be of little use to share her choices since they were for a German mass-produced harpsichord with pedals—an instrument, she pointed out, increasingly difficult to find.
Reading through the newly published score, I am struck with the strong feeling that Ille, coming directly from the opera’s Vienna premiere performances, attempted a too-literal transcription of Strauss’s many notes, thereby making the work both technically demanding and frequently unidiomatic for a plucked keyboard instrument. In her arrangement, many of the cello lines are placed an octave higher than written, creating close duets with the violin part, but leaving an empty stratum below, passages frankly better placed in the piano-vocal score. As for the composer’s ending, I long ago came to agree with Ille’s idea that “it should live the long sleep of libraries.” These pages do not add to the composer’s stature, but serve as reaffirmation for his love of instrumental color (he used harpsichord several times in orchestral and operatic scores). The concert ending shows that he regarded the instrument as a plucked piano—one that definitely suffers from the lack of a damper pedal.
Editor Scholz’s task, not an easy one, has been accomplished carefully. For every case in which I thought a note was wrong, comparison with sources proved his reading correct. (However, in the second dance, the Gigue, I still think the final soprano A in measure 20 sounds better as a G, even though all scores agree on the A). Perhaps the most interesting observation in Scholz’s “Notes” concerns the ending (labeled Cadenza): Scholz writes that in bar four Ahlgrimm corrected Strauss’s bass line [a-c#-e, b-d-f#] with a penciled notation [a-b-d, c#-d-e]—and that she used this version for her recording.
Isolde Ahlgrimm loved this piece, though she was unhappy about its difficulties (especially prior to concerts in which she played it!). I first heard it as she prepared for a performance at Vienna’s Auersperg Palace in August 1964. Several subsequent hearings occurred during her visits to the United States, including several in Dallas; concert performances occurring after 1965 did not make the list printed in Scholz’s commentary.
For now, lovers of Strauss’s music and admirers of Ahlgrimm’s artistry may appreciate having this printed memento, but certainly will continue to hope that the recording of her “own private Strauss” may eventually be made available.

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

Some Sins of Commission

Larry Palmer

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

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Each one of us surely has an individual concept of sin, generally from direct personal experience: I sometimes describe it as “anything that is more fun for the doer than for someone else!” Defining commission might be slightly more difficult. For the purpose of this narrative, I choose to define the term as “the solicitation of a new musical composition, whether or not money is involved.” In my nearly half-century of commissioning new music, much of the time I have been the recipient of extraordinary generosity: most of my composers have donated their music, while others have asked for only modest fees.

Calvin Hampton

The first time I solicited a composer to write something specifically for me was in 1957, when I asked my Oberlin classmate and fellow organ major Calvin Hampton if he would provide an offertory for a summer service at First Presbyterian Church, Canton, Ohio--my first major (if only month-long) church “gig.” His response came in the form of a lovely three-minute aria, titled Consonance. While not a major work by this important composer, it does illustrate the advantage of choosing the right friends; namely, ones who go on to become well-known, thereby considerably increasing the value of their manuscripts. Equally useful, subsequently such friendships may provide one with material for articles about “what they were like before they became well-known”--a perfectly good academic topic indeed, if one includes the proper footnotes.

Neely Bruce

In the fall of 1960 I moved to Rochester, New York to begin graduate study. There I met the next of my composer friends. On my second day at the Eastman School, as I waited in the fourth floor corridor to meet with my advisor Dr. M. Alfred Bichsel, head of the newly established Church Music Department, a striking younger student walked up to me and asked, with lilting southern inflection, if I could tell him where to find Dr. Bitch-el. I was captivated by Neely Bruce, a freshman who had come to audition for the Polyphonic Choir, a new choral ensemble established for this sacred music area. As Dr. Bichsel’s rehearsal assistant, I saw young Bruce regularly. We became friends, and Neely, a precociously talented pianist and composer, eventually supplied the concluding piece for my 1961 master’s recital Organ Compositions Based on the Kyrie fons bonitatis.

When he left Eastman after that single year to attend the University of Alabama, I was devastated. I wrote sad poems (a la Edna St. Vincent Millay and Dame Edith Sitwell)--filled with lines such as:

Our night for love designed, speeds silent on and on,

And time, which only breathless seconds since had seemed so kind,

Is gone.

Neely didn’t answer letters or write poetry. He did, however, write music, and some months later I received the penciled score of his first work for harpsichord--Nine Variations on an Original Theme. The piece held such emotional intensity for me that it was not until 1979 that I copied it out while on my first sabbatical leave, prepared it for performance, and then gave the premiere the following year. Whatever one may think now of such a youthful endeavor, the work certainly is well-crafted for harpsichord--one result of Neely’s frequent opportunities for experimenting with the instrument’s textures at the small two-manual Sperrhake harpsichord, shoehorned into the third-floor dormer room I rented at one of Rochester’s “organ student houses,” 20 Sibley Place.

During my seven years of teaching in Virginia I played a fair amount of 20th-century harpsichord music: Ned Rorem’s Lovers, the Falla Concerto, the Martinu Sonate. But there I was primarily a choral conductor and organist (and enjoyed premiering several new works written for choir or organ by St. Paul’s College colleague Walter Skolnik and New York composer Robin Escovado). My only harpsichord “commission” of this period went to the builder William Dowd, along with almost half a year’s salary, for my first truly first-rate harpsichord, one of his early Blanchet-inspired instruments, delivered to Norfolk in January 1969.

Rudy Shackelford

Shortly after moving to Dallas in 1970, an unanticipated package reached me at Southern Methodist University. This contained Virginia composer Rudy Shackelford’s piece Le Tombeau de Stravinsky. Since my SMU colleague Robert Anderson was a devoted exponent of wild and wooly new organ music, it seemed fitting for me to take on Rudy’s serialism. I also liked the work, and included it on my first Musical Heritage Society disc, The Harpsichord Now and Then, released in 1975.

Ross Lee Finney

Another challenging work, more thorny than I usually care to learn, is Ross Lee Finney’s unique essay for the instrument, Hexachord for Harpsichord. In four movements (Aria, Stomp, Ornaments, Fantasy), the 12-minute work was commissioned for me to play at a Hartt School of Music contemporary keyboard music festival scheduled for June 1984. Drawing few registrants, the event was cancelled, so I gave the first performance that fall in Dallas, not playing it in the composer’s presence until a concert in Hartford the following year.

Working with Finney was quite daunting. A most distinguished and individual composer, he basically disregarded my several suggestions as to texture, and provided me with a nearly-illegible score, the successful realization of which absolutely required a damper pedal, unfortunately not available on most harpsichords. I struggled to read his chicken scratches and tried to parlay his ideas into something that made sense on a plucked instrument. Eventually I wrote him a detailed letter filled with questions and suggestions for possible improvements, not knowing if I would be ignored, despised, or possibly even removed from the project.

Instead, this generous and intelligent man wrote back that it was all very helpful--reminding him of the careful editing his Piano Sonata had received years earlier from its first performer, John Kirkpatrick. For Hexachord’s last movement, the most unplayable of the four, he promised a revision, although current work on his opera left him little time. When the promised revision arrived, it was accompanied by this note: 

I don’t know whether this is better or worse. I’ve spent the vacation week on it and now am so loaded with commitments that it’s the best I can hope for. . . . I tied my right leg to the piano stool so I hope I didn’t think in terms of pedal. . .

Responding to a tape of the first performance, Finney wrote,

I like immensely your performance . . . It seems to me that you have done a wonderful job of projecting the music and it sounds better to me than I feared it would. I like all of your revisions, particularly the ending of the last movement, and I will see that your corrections get in the copy with Peters so that when it is published, they will be included. . .

Unfortunately, this was not to be the case. The printed score from Peters does not present the preferred ending, but rather a more-protracted, rather anemic one.

Herbert Howells

A major commission from the 1970s was Herbert Howells’ Dallas Canticles, the unique Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis composed for St. Luke’s Church, where I was organist and choirmaster from 1971 until 1980. This lovely work was first performed there in 1975. The dedication and copyright of the work, basically a gift from the generous English composer, led to some early adventures in music publishing and the nurturing of  professional and personal connections with the American composer, church musician, and publisher Gerald Near.

Gerald Near

Undoubtedly the most ambitious of my commissions thus far is Near’s three-movement Concerto for Harpsichord, composed for performance at the 1980 national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Minneapolis. Gerald, a Minnesota resident at that time, had not been included in the group of composers invited to provide new works for the gathering, so I asked him to write a concerted work for my program in Orchestra Hall. He took on the project, and, most generously, accepted no fee for this major work.

The performance was carefully prepared, with the composer conducting a superb string ensemble comprising players from the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. The work was greeted with warm applause and considerable affection by the large crowd of attendees. And why not? The piece is very appealing, with memorable melodies, lush harmonies, and an appropriately balanced scoring. Critic Byron Belt, writing in The American Organist for August 1980, concentrated his remarks on the plethora of new scores heard during the convention. Of the Near he commented “ . . . its obvious popular appeal was instantly audible in a splendid performance by Larry Palmer (to whom it is dedicated) and the orchestra under the composer.” In The Diapason (August 1980), Marilou Kratzenstein opined, “The Distler [Allegro Spirituoso e Scherzando] and Near works are both very idiomatic to the medium. By skillful orchestration, the harpsichord part comes through clearly even when accompanied by a 22-piece string orchestra. Both of these attractive works were given clean, crisp performances. It was a pleasure to be present at the premiere of the Gerald Near concerto, which will likely become a favorite with harpsichordists in the near-future.” A future “for the Near” has taken considerably longer than anticipated, but, at last, Gerald’s lovely work had its second performance in October 2004, this time with the SMU Meadows Symphony under Paul Phillips.

Ever peripatetic, Near lived in Dallas for a time, where he held several church positions. When I needed a piece to conclude a program given in conjunction with the Dallas Museum of Art’s major show of El Greco paintings I turned again to Gerald. He spent some time at my house trying various ideas on the harpsichord. The resulting Triptych, completed in 1982, was first played in public at the Museum in January 1983. It certainly achieved its requisite Spanish flavor in the concluding movement, a brilliant neo-Scarlattian romp. Before that Final there are two lovely miniatures--an impressionistic Carillon, and the lyrically Italianate Siciliano (inspired by the composer’s love interest at the time). All three movements are idiomatically conceived for the instrument.

Vincent Persichetti

Dear Vincent Persichetti responded to questions concerning his then-unpublished 1951 Harpsichord Sonata by sending a copy of the manuscript. I loved the work immediately, and still find this first essay for harpsichord to be Vincent’s most arresting and accessible work for the instrument! By the time I was engaged to play a harpsichord recital for the Philadelphia gathering of the International Congress of Organists in 1977, his Sonata was available in printed form. The concert was scheduled to be played in historic St. George’s Methodist Church in the central city, so Persichetti, who lived in Philadelphia, planned to attend, but heavy rain that afternoon delayed him. (It also knocked out power to many venues, causing consternation, and cancellation, for some concurrent organ recitals.) The composer arrived at the church just as my program ended, so I offered to play his Sonata for him after the audience departed. I did so, he made cogent comments (some of them concerned keeping steady tempi and he advised playing the work exactly as he had notated it), and he autographed my printed score (“Thanks to Larry Palmer for a meaningful Benjamin Franklin performance in my own city.” [The reference to Franklin refers to the bridge bearing his name. St. George’s is adjacent to the bridge access road, allowing considerable noise every few minutes from public transit vehicles.]). Then he drove me back to the hotel.

Thus began an acquaintance, nurtured by a Sonata commission from me, occasional piquant notes, or the random, unexpected telephone call from the composer. When he published an incorrect wording of the dedication in my commissioned Sonata VI (crediting Southern Methodist University with payment of the commission fee, an error that I feared might cause problems with some of my academic colleagues), Vincent assured me that he would think of some way to make it up to me. A year or so later, he telephoned with the news that his latest piece, Serenade Number 15, would bear the inscription “Commissioned by Larry Palmer.” “To make it official,” he said, “send me a check for one dollar.” Because this was a time of high inflation, I sent him a check for two dollars, eliciting the response, “How wonderful--this is the first time I’ve ever had a commission doubled!”

It was even more gratifying for me, since I gained two works from a significant composer for a total fee of $502.

Persichetti’s concise Serenade consists of five short movements: the moody Prelude, marked desolato; a quicker Episode; the even faster Bagatelle; a gentle, cantabile Arioso; and the closing Capriccio--made up of a delicato single line, in the texture of a Bach composition for solo stringed instrument. The seven-minute work reminds that, while Persichetti was a distinguished academic, whose mind espoused complicated serial techniques, his soul remained true to the song-inspired expressivity of his Italian heritage.

Rudy Davenport

The 1990s saw a veritable spate of harpsichord writing by Texas-based composer Rudy Davenport. First introduced to me in 1992 through Fr. Tom Goodwin, a harpsichord-playing Catholic padre on Padre Island, Rudy provided me with nine unique works for solo harpsichord or small ensemble with harpsichord. His first national exposure came at the combined 1998 Southeastern and Midwestern Historical Keyboard Societies’ meeting in Texas, where a program devoted to Davenport’s harpsichord writing concluded with the haunting Songs of the Bride, the composer’s settings of texts from The Song of Solomon for solo soprano, oboe, and harpsichord. (Six of these works comprise the program for the compact disc Music of Rudy Davenport, issued by Limited Editions Recordings in 2003.)

Some of my most enjoyable concert experiences have been those involving making music with others, and none has offered more delight than performing music for multiple harpsichords (usually two prove difficult enough to nudge into some semblance of compatible tunings). A Davenport work of exceptional charm, but one not graced with a completely written-out score, is his At Play with Giles Farnaby, a set of seven variations and a fugal finale on Farnaby’s For Two Virginals (Number 55 in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book). Rudy heard this short piece when it was performed by colleague Barbara Baird and me during our 1994 summer harpsichord workshop in New Mexico. His jaunty take on it, as well as the delightful and crafty contrapuntal ending have been an audience favorite on the two occasions we played together. This duo harpsichord work was an especially intensive collaboration, in its creation as well as its performance. Since the divergence of our ways after 1999, I have missed such exuberant music making, as well as the active involvement in fine polishing and editing Rudy’s engaging works.

Glenn Spring

But that void has been filled by the reintroduction into my artistic life of the Denver-based composer Glenn Spring, first encountered at the 1990 Alienor Harpsichord Composition competition finals in Augusta, Georgia. There his William Dowd: His Bleu was one of the winning works. Eventually Spring’s composition was published in The Diapason’s February 1992 tribute to the eminent harpsichord maker. A short while later Glenn’s son Brian moved to Dallas, giving us yet another reason to “stay in touch.” After Brian’s departure from this part of Texas there were years of diminishing communication, a situation suddenly reversed by Brian’s “out-of-the-blue” early morning call from Korea, where he was employed as an English teacher. He must have told his father about this call, for shortly thereafter I received a copy of a 1999 keyboard work, Glenn’s seven-movement charmer Trifles (now a prize winner in the most recent Alienor Competition, 2004). I liked it, learned it, and began playing it in recitals here and there.

A special confluence of friends occurred when Charles and Susan Mize, having contracted for Richard Kingston’s opus 300 Millennium harpsichord, a spectacular nine-foot Franco-Flemish instrument with contemporary brushed steel stand and computer-compatible music desk, asked me to play the Washington, D.C. dedication concert on the instrument. I thought it desirable that Charles should play on his new instrument at that event, so I commissioned Glenn Spring to write a work for two players at one instrument. The pleasing result was Suite 3-D, comprising Denver Rocket, Big D[allas] Blues, and D C Steamroller (honoring the three D’s of our home cities), interspersed with two quiet, lyrical movements (Romance, Night Thoughts). For a second performance on my home concert series (Limited Editions), long-time colleague Charles Brown brought both his musical and histrionic skills to the work, serving as collaborative harpsichordist as well as creator and reader of witty verses before each movement.

The most recent sins of commission, from the year 2004, have included another ensemble work by Spring, Images from Wallace Stevens for Violin and Harpsichord, first performed February 13 in celebration of the 20th season of house concerts (program number 60). Meeting Glenn’s wife, violinist Kathleen Spring, at the Mize harpsichord dedication program, I invited her to join me in this anniversary season, and inquired about possible violin and harpsichord pieces from her husband’s catalog. He responded by offering to compose something for us. Consisting of seven movements, the Images are inspired by short bits of Stevens’ poetry, so much of which evokes musical connections.

Tim Broege

Tim Broege’s score Songs Without Words Set Number Seven, composed for the SMU Wind Ensemble’s conductor Jack Delaney and me, had its first performance by the group and mezzo-soprano Virginia Dupuy on April 16, 2004. The most notable and prominent part for harpsichord is Broege’s reworking of the famous Lachrimae Pavan by John Dowland as each section is presented by the solo harpsichord, then reprised by the full ensemble, heard as the fifth of the work’s nine movements. (This setting may be extracted and played as a solo harpsichord composition).

Simon Sargon

My 35th annual faculty recital at SMU in September 2004 featured the first public hearing of composition professor Simon Sargon’s harpsichord reworking  of Dos Prados (“From the Meadows”), another lovely pavan, originally conceived for the single-manual 1762 Iberian organ in SMU’s Meadows Museum, and now, with a few changes of texture and tessitura, effectively adapted for solo harpsichord.

Involving composers in our performing lives is one of the most rewarding actions we can take. For us it provides the excitement of adding new pieces to our repertoire; for them, it is an affirmation of their necessary contributions to the ongoing vitality of our art; and perhaps not least, this is one pleasure that is neither life-threatening nor fattening! I urge each of you to join me in committing some sins of commission in the near future.

Sources

Calvin Hampton: Consonance remains unpublished; however an increasing number of his organ works are available from  Wayne Leupold Editions (available through ECS Publishing).

Neely Bruce: Nine Variations is available from <[email protected]> (or 212/875-7011).

Rudy Shackelford: Tombeau de Stravinsky is published by Joseph Boonin (B.319).

Recording: The Harpsichord Now and Then (Larry Palmer, harpsichord), MHS LP 3222.

Ross Lee Finney: Hexachord for Harpsichord is published by Edition Peters (67034).

Herbert Howells: Dallas Canticles, Aureole Editions (available from MorningStar Music).

For additional information about the commissioning of this work, see my article “Herbert Howells and the Dallas Canticles” in The American Organist, October 1992, pp. 60-62.

Gerald Near: Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings 1980 (Aureole Editions 149; performance materials on rental only) and Triptych for Harpsichord (Aureole Editions 02) are both available from MorningStar Music.

Recording (Triptych): 20th Century Harpsichord Music, vol. 2 (Barbara Harbach, harpsichord), Gasparo GSCD-266.

Vincent Persichetti: his nine Harpsichord Sonatas and Serenade 15, are published by Elkan-Vogel.

For additional information see my article “Vincent Persichetti: A Love for the harpsichord (Some Words to Mark his 70th Birthday)” in The Diapason, June 1985, p. 8.

Rudy Davenport: Scores are available from the composer at <www.RudyDavenport. com>.

For additional information, see my article “Rudy Davenport’s Harpsichord Music of the 1990s” in The Diapason, April 2004, p. 18.

Recording: Music of Rudy Davenport (Patti Spain, soprano; Stewart Williams, oboe; Larry Palmer, harpsichord), Limited Editions Recordings LER 9904.

Glenn Spring: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Tim Broege: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Simon Sargon: Scores are available from the composer at <[email protected]>.

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
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Pedaling the French: 

A ‘Tour de France’ of Revival Harpsichordists 1888–1939

 

I. Near-death and slow rebirth

“Make what you want: this upstart piano will never replace the majestic claveçin!” Thus began my 1989 book Harpsichord in America: a Twentieth-Century Revival with these combative words from the composer Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799). Looking back from our historical perspective, we all know how that prediction turned out! Even for Balbastre himself: his capitulation was a work for the new “upstart” keyboard instrument, a Marche des Marseillois, “arranged for the Forte Piano by Citizen Balbastre, and dedicated to the brave defenders of the French Republic in the year 1792, the first of the Republic.” At least Citizen [Citoyen] Claude-B B survived!

Following a very few antiquarian-inspired appearances throughout the piano-dominated 19th century, the harpsichord’s return to the musical scene as a featured instrument occurred during the Paris Exhibition of 1888 at the instigation of Louis Diémer (1843–1919), a piano professor at the Paris Conservatoire. Diémer was able to borrow a 1769 Pascal Taskin harpsichord to play in several concerts comprising concerted works by Rameau and solo pieces by various French claviçinistes. Of the latter the most popular composer was Louis-Claude Daquin, whose Le Coucou became one of the most-performed works during the early harpsichord revival period.

Diémer and his concerts must have inspired the salon composer Francis Thomé (1850–1909) to write a Rigodon for this most recent French harpsichordist, and thus provide history with the very first new piece for the old instrument. Inspired by Daquin, but also meant as a tribute to Diémer’s “legendary trilling ability,” Thomé’s pièce de claveçin was published by Lemoine in 1893. Around the middle of the 20th century this work was discovered and later recorded in 1976 by harpsichordist Igor Kipnis on a disc of favorite encores. After being captivated by its simple antiquarian charm, I too was able to acquire an original print of the work, thanks to my German friend and European “concert manager” Dr. Alfred Rosenberger, who found it at Noten Fuchs, Frankfurt’s amazing music store, where, apparently, the yellowed score had been on their shelves ever since its publication date. 

As a somewhat-related aside, the probable first harpsichord composition of the 20th century, or at least the earliest one to appear in print, is a Petite Lied by French organist/composer Henri Mulet (1878–1967). This aptly titled work of only 17 measures in 5/4 meter was issued in 1910. (See Harpsichord News, The Diapason, January 2011, p. 12, for a complete facsimile of the score.)

The solo harpsichord works of François Couperin, in a fine 19th-century edition by Johannes Brahms and Friedrich Chrysander, also found some popularity among pianists. From the musical riches to be found in Couperin’s 27 suites, came the lone musical example to be included in the 20th-century’s first harpsichord method book: Technique du Claveçin by Régina Patorni-Casadesus (1886–1961), a slim volume of only eight pages, most of them devoted to stop-changing pedal exercises (thus the genesis of my title—“Pedaling the French”). This one tiny bit of Couperin’s music is the oft-performed Soeur Monique from his 18th Ordre, a work admired and used by many church musicians—some of whom doubtless would be shocked to read in the authoritative reference work on Couperin’s titles, written by Historical Keyboard Society of North America honorary board member Jane Clark Dodgson, that “Sister Monica” may not be a religious “sister,” but refers instead to girls of ill repute, as in a “lady of the night,” according to the definition of the word Soeur by the 17th-century lexicographer Antoine Furetière (1619–1688), “our sisters, as in streetwalkers, or debauched girls.” (See Jane Clark and Derek Connon, ‘The Mirror of Human Life’: Reflections on François Couperin’s Pièces de Claveçin, London: Keyword Press, 2011, p. 170.)

 

II. Early recorded sounds

Beyond printed music and pedagogical writings, how did the classic French keyboard repertoire fare in the newly emerging medium of harpsichord recordings?

After giving a historical salute to the 16 rare 1908 Berlin wax cylinders that share surface noise with some barely audible Bach performed by Wanda Landowska, the earliest commercial recording of a harpsichord dates from about 1913 and was issued on the Favorite label. It preserves an anonymous performance of a work with at least tangential connections to France: the Passepied from J. S. Bach’s French Overture in B Minor (BWV 831). (See Martin Elste, Meilensteine der Bach-Interpretation, reviewed by Larry Palmer in The Diapason, June 2000.)

More easily accessible today are the earliest harpsichord recordings made in 1920 for the Gramophone Company in England by the Dolmetsch-influenced harpsichordist Violet Gordon Woodhouse (1871–1948). Her repertoire included Couperin’s L’Arlequine from the 23rd Ordre (as played on Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 3, Pearl GEMM CD 9242) and Rameau’s Tambourin, from his Suite in E Major. Mrs. Woodhouse became something of a cult figure among British music critics (George Bernard Shaw), upper-class society (the Sitwells), and adventurous musicians (including the avant-garde composer Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji [1892–1988]), who wrote of Violet’s powerful musical presentations that her playing was “dignified, moving, and expressive, and of a broad, sedate beauty, completely free from any pedagogic didacticism or stiff-limbed collegiate pedantry.” (Quoted in Jessica Douglas-Home: Violet, The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse, London: The Harvill Press, 1966, p. 228.) This should put many of us in our rightful places, although Sorabji’s own excursions into keyboard literature lasting from four to nine hours in performance (example: a Busoni homage with the title Opus Clavicembalisticum) just might call his own authority into question.

Eight years younger than Woodhouse, the better-known Wanda Landowska (1879–1959) made her first commercial recordings for the Victor Company in 1923, just prior to her American concert debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra. These six sides included short pieces by the three 1685 boys (Handel, Bach, and Scarlatti) as well as the Rigaudon and Tambourin from Rameau’s Suite in E Minor, and what might be considered the first recording of a contemporary harpsichord work, Landowska’s own Bourée d’Auvergne #1

Lesser-known players got recorded, too: Marguerite Delcour recorded Couperin’s Le Tic-toc-choc [Ordre 18] in 1924. The following year, 1925, one of Landowska’s Berlin students, Anna Linde, recorded the ubiquitous Rameau Tambourin and the even more ubiquitous Coucou by Daquin. If you recognize Linde’s name it might well be for her edition of Couperin’s L’art de toucher le Claveçin—with its translations into English and German offered side by side with the original French, and the printed music made unique by her Germanically precise “corrections” to the composer’s picturesque (but occasionally unmathematical) beaming of some quick roulades in his preludes. Both of Linde’s recorded legacy pieces sound amateurish enough that I seriously doubt that Sorabji would have enjoyed hearing these performances.

As a matter of history, however, it is quite possible that Anna Linde’s 1925 disc was the first harpsichord performance to be recorded electrically (rather than acoustically), and the difference in sound quality became even clearer in the years immediately following. A 1928 Woodhouse performance of Bach’s Italian Concerto sounds surprisingly present even today, and the performance shows—perhaps best of all her recorded legacy—what her admirers so rightly admired. Indeed her artistry is such that I have thought, often, that had Mrs. Woodhouse needed to earn her living as Landowska did, she could have eclipsed the divine Wanda as a concert harpsichordist. However, as the wife of a titled Englishman she could not make a career onstage for money . . . and that was that! It would have been fascinating to have had two such determined women competing for the title of “the world’s most famous harpsichordist.” 

Realistically, however, Landowska’s tenacity, as well as her superb musical knowledge and sensitivity, should not be denigrated in any way. The 1928 recording of her own second Bourée d’Auvergne (Biddulph LHW 016) especially highlights the rhythmic dimension of her exciting artistry.

In the United States, where Landowska was a welcome visitor during the 1920s, there were several earlier players of the harpsichord; and, not too surprisingly, all of them attempted at least some pieces by French composers. Some of these participants in harpsichord history are nearly forgotten: one of more than passing importance was the Princeton professor Arthur Whiting: a well-received artist in nearby New York City and a campus legend at Princeton, he was known for his ability to attract huge crowds of undergraduates for his popular recitals on both piano and Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. I have not located any recordings by Professor Whiting. The New York Times did mention his concert at Mendelssohn Hall (NYC) on December 11, 1907, which included a Gigue and Rigaudon by Rameau. The unnamed reviewer praised Whiting’s playing as “clear, beautifully phrased, and skillful in ‘registration’ if that term may be used to denote the employment of the different timbres that the instrument affords.

Writing a letter to the editor of The Times on January 11, 1926, the prominent music educator Daniel Gregory Mason offered a response to a letter from Landowska in which she made the statement that she had “single-handedly [!] restored the harpsichord to its rightful position in the world of music.” In this correspondence Professor Mason called attention to some other “‘Harpsichord Pioneers’—among whom he named the Americans: Mr. Whiting, Miss Pelton-Jones, Miss Van Buren, and Lewis Richards.”

The two ladies differed greatly: Frances Pelton-Jones was one of those wealthy women who could afford to pursue her artistic ambitions (rather similar to the would-be soprano Florence Foster Jenkins). Her recitals in New York were of the club-lady variety; baffled critics most often mentioned the stage decoration and the beauty of Pelton-Jones’s gowns. Lotta Van Buren, however, was a thoroughly professional player and harpsichord technician whose work with Morris Steinart’s instrument collection at Yale was very beneficial, as was her association with Colonial Williamsburg and its program of historical recreations, including musical ones. 

As for Lewis Richards, Mason proceeds: “Mr. Richards, who has played the harpsichord throughout Europe as a member of the Ancient Instrument Society of Paris, was, I believe, the first to appear as a harpsichordist with orchestra (the Minneapolis Symphony) in this country, and contributed much to the interest of Mrs. F. S. Coolidge’s festival in Washington . . .” 

Richards did indeed precede Landowska as the first known harpsichord soloist with a major symphony orchestra in the U. S. He was one of the few American musicians to record commercially in the 1920s. His Brunswick 10-inch discs of The Brook by Ayrlton, Musette en Rondeau by Rameau, Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith, and the Mozart Rondo alla Turca were played for me by Richards’ daughter, whom I was able to visit in her East Lansing, Michigan, home (on the day following an organ recital I had played there). The sound is somewhat compromised, for I was recording a scratchy 78-rpm disc that spun on an ancient turntable in a garage; but one gets the impression that Mr. Richards was a charismatic and musical player.  

These discs went on to make quite a lot of money in royalties, and Richards actually taught harpsichord at the Michigan State Institute of Music in East Lansing, which almost certainly certifies him as the first formally continuing collegiate teacher of harpsichord to be employed in the United States in the 20th century.

All of these players played early revival instruments. All have, therefore, used their pedal techniques to obtain a more kaleidoscopic range of colors than we may be used to. Of great interest (at least to me) is the recent emergence of curiosity about, and interest in these revival instruments and their playing techniques, frequently demonstrated by questions received from students. One of the finest concert figures of the “pedal” generations was the distinguished Yale professor Ralph Kirkpatrick (now more knowable than previously, courtesy of his niece Meredith Kirkpatrick’s recently published collection of the artist’s letters; see our review in the April 2015 issue). In his early Musicraft recordings, especially those from 1939, we are able to hear the young player show his stuff, just before his 1940 appointment to Yale, displaying superb musical mastery of his Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord. From Kirkpatrick’s program that included four individual Couperin pieces, culminating in Les Barricades Mistérieuses, and five movements from Rameau’s E-minor set, I ended this essay with the Rameau Tambourin (as played on The Musicraft Solo Recordings, Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 2, Pearl GEMM CD9245). Kirkpatrick’s mesmerizing foot-controlled decrescendo gives a perfect example of his skill in “pedaling the French.”

(From a paper read in Montréal, May 23.)

 

HKSNA 2015 International Conference in Montréal

Hosted by McGill University’s Schulich School of Music, the fourth annual conclave of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (May 21–24) offered lectures, mini-recitals, and evening concerts, far too many events for any single auditor to encompass. Two papers that followed mine, Elisabeth Gallat-Morin’s beautifully illustrated “The Presence of French Baroque Keyboard Instruments in New France” and Graham Sadler’s innovative “When Rameau Met Scarlatti? Reflections on a Probable Encounter in the 1720s” attested to the depth of innovative scholarship.

McGill’s instrument roster includes the superb Helmut Wolff organ in Redpath Hall and 15 harpsichords. One third of these came from the workshop of the Montréal builder Yves Beaupré; among the other ten instruments is a 1677 single-manual Italian instrument from the collection of Kenneth Gilbert. This unique historic treasure was available for viewing and playing for small groups of attendees.

The Vermont builder Robert Hicks was the only harpsichord maker who brought an instrument for display. Max Yount demonstrated this eloquent double harpsichord in a masterful recital presentation of Marchand’s Suite in D Minor. Clavichord took center stage for Judith Conrad’s program. Karen Jacob’s thoughtful memorial tribute to Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society founder George Lucktenberg was enhanced by several solicited remembrances from others whose lives had been touched by the late iconic early keyboard figure.

Evening concerts were presented by harpsichordist/organist Peter Sykes and six former students who organized a tribute to McGill organ professor emeritus John Grew. Saturday’s concert brought the final stage of the ninth Aliénor international competition for contemporary harpsichord music. Six winning works (selected by a jury from nearly fifty submitted pieces) were performed by HKSNA President Sonia Lee (Laura Snowden: French Suite), Larry Palmer (Sviatoslav Krutykov: Little Monkey Ten Snapshots), James Dorsa (Ivan Bozicevic: If There is a Place Between, and his own composition Martinique), Andrew Collett (playing his own Sonatina for Harpsichord), and Marina Minkin (Dina Smorgonskaya: Three Dances for Harpsichord). Following an intermission during which the audience submitted ballots naming their three favorite works, Aliénor presented world premieres of two commissioned works for two harpsichords: Edwin McLean’s Sonata No. 2 (2014), played by Beverly Biggs and Elaine Funaro, and Mark Janello’s Concerto for Two (2015), played by Rebecca Pechefsky and Funaro.

And the three pieces chosen by the audience? Smorgonskaya’s Three Dances for Harpsichord, Collett’s Sonatina, and Dorsa’s Martinique. Bravi tutti.

 

Comments, news items, and questions are always welcome. Address them to Dr. Larry Palmer, e-mail: [email protected].

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