PROLOG

THE HARPSICHORD IN DECLINE

EUROPE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

“Make what you want; this upstart [the piano] will never replace the majestic clavecin!” In any listing of erroneous predictions these vehement words from French composer Claude-Benigne Balbastre (1727–1799) to instrument maker Pascal Taskin (1723–1793) would resound with irony, for the production of harpsichords in France ceased in 1789 at the outbreak of the French Revolution. Indeed this political upheaval resulted not only in the cessation of harpsichord production but also in the destruction of countless noble instruments (as well as countless noble persons).¹ Although the charter of the Paris Conservatoire (1795) allowed for six professors of harpsichord, they were soon vastly underemployed; and the last prize in harpsichord playing was awarded in 1798.²

Production of harpsichords in England slowed to a trickle as the eighteenth century waned; Jacob Kirckman produced his last harpsichord in 1809, but the instrument had been outmoded for several years. A Mrs. Piozzi wrote that in 1803 one could buy the finest of Kirckman’s harpsichords for a guinea, whereas in earlier times people had so prized these instruments that nameboards from them were placed on less-desirable examples from other makers.³ When the dramatist Charles Dibdin auctioned off his theatre in Leicester Place, London, in 1805 there was not a single bid for the Shudi harpsichord, but a Hancock grand piano sold for seventy pounds.⁴ In little more than a decade the upstart had triumphed!

Here and there, of course, quilled instruments were still being used: Giuseppe Verdi, a child in the 1820s, learned his notes on a polygonal spinet now housed in the Museo Teatrale alia Scala, Milan.⁵ A spinet by Alessandro Riva of Bergamo was made as late as 1839.⁶ Clavichord production also held on far into the nineteenth century: Johann Michael Voit and Son of Schweinfurth produced instrument number 399 in 1811.⁷ Donald Boalch lists Swedish instruments by Carl Nordquist and Eric Wessberg from the years 1818 and 1821; and there is even a clavichord dated 1852 in the Skara Museum.⁸ In Stuttgart a maker named Hofmann built two clavichords for Mr. Joseph Street, an English amateur, about the year 1857.⁹ Several clavichords were produced in the Finsbury Park section of London after 1880, and a Mr. Dove, another late nineteenth-century Londoner, made harpsichords and spinets in the tradition of the English builder Baker Harris.¹⁰

So, in a technical sense, harpsichords and clavichords did not “die out.” Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata was published in 1802 for “harpsichord or pianoforte,” a designation that would continue through the publication of Franz Liszt’s very pianistic Tre Sonneti del Petrarca in 1846.¹¹ Conservative musicians of the early nineteenth century kept using the instrument to which they had become accustomed in youth: Carl Zelter, Mendelssohn’s teacher, was discovered at “his old two-manual harpsichord” when Eduard Devrient and Mendelssohn visited him in 1829 to propose the first modern performance of Bach’s Saint Matthew Passion.¹² Rossini learned music at a “poor old instrument” and used a harpsichord for the recitatives in his operas at least as late as 1816.¹³ The harpsichord remained on the Polish musical scene beyond the turn of the nineteenth century, as well; thus Chopin might have played on a quilled instrument as a young student. Boalch lists a Polish maker, Mazlowski, active in Poznan as late as 1805.¹⁴

The poem “A Toccata of Galuppi’s” by Robert Browning (1812–1889), in his two-volume opus Men and Women (1855), ensured the immortality of the rarely performed Italian composer Baldassare Galuppi (1706-1785) and called to mind another age with the line “While you sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord. . . ,”¹⁵

Throughout the nineteenth century the harpsichord remained a household instrument in some out-of-the-way communities. An English curate, the Rev. Francis Kilvert (1840-1879), recorded daily events in an unaffected, buoyant account of life near the Welsh border. For Wednesday, 26 October 1870, he wrote,

Carrie Gore let me in to the Mill kitchen through the meal room and loft over the machinery; and there was Mrs. Gore making up the bread into loaves and putting them into the oven. Good-natured nice Carrie, with her brown hair arranged in a bush around her jolly broad open frank face, and her fine lusty arms bare, entertained me by playing on the jingling old harpsichord, sitting very stiff and straight and upright to the work with her chair drawn in as near as possible to the key-board so that she was obliged to lean a little back quite stiff. She played some hymn tunes correctly, but what I admired most was her good nature, good breeding and perfect manners in sitting down to play directly she was asked. . . .¹⁶

Of course, a few pianists continued to have an interest in “old music” and would, on occasion, try their hands at the old instruments. Ignaz Moscheles (1794–1870) appeared in historical concerts in the Hanover Square Concert Rooms and in the Italian Opera House, London. In 1837 on three successive occasions he played the music of Scarlatti and his contemporaries on a Shudi harpsichord built in 1771, still (at that time) in the possession of Broadwood’s, the piano manufacturers. In her memoir, Life of Moscheles, with Selections from his Diaries and Correspondence (1873), his wife wrote

When the cover was lifted, one saw a contrivance somewhat in the shape of a Venetian blind, which, like the shutter covering the swell part of the organ, was acted upon by the pedals—by using this, greater sonority was given to the tone, which otherwise, was rather thin, and less agreeable. Moscheles gave much attention to the invention, and turned it to good account. The upper and lower keyboards of the instrument were evidently intended for the rendering of such passages of Scarlatti and other masters as on modern pianos require constant crossing of the hands; and one row of keys being connected with two, and the other with three strings, certain shades are produced in the quality of the sound.¹⁷

Moscheles also programmed Bach’s Concerto in D minor with string quartet accompaniment. The critics were of the opinion that the size of the crowds at these concerts should be enough to induce the pianist to repeat them the next season, with even more of the interesting old repertoire.

There is no record that Moscheles continued to be involved with the harpsichord after 1846, when he emigrated to Leipzig to assist Mendelssohn in the founding of the Leipzig Conservatory. Moscheles, a serious scholar, wrote toward the end of his life, “The influx of pianists is as great as ever. . . . They do not see that music is still to me as my own life blood, and while they are burying me, I am quietly feeding on the toccatas and fugues of old Bach. . . .”¹⁸ This sentiment leads one to believe that his interest in early music, if not early instruments, remained undiminished after his departure from England.

After Moscheles left London several other artists took up his idea of historic concerts: Charles Salaman (1814–1901) began his series in 1855, using a Kirckman harpsichord; Ernst Pauer (1826–1905) gave concerts in Willis’s Rooms between 1861 and 1867, playing the same Shudi harpsichord used by Moscheles; and Carl Engel (1818–1882), from Hanover, arrived in England about 1845 and achieved a certain fame for the collection of early instruments he assembled at his house in Kensington. These instruments, acquired by the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1875, formed the basis of the outstanding collection there. Engel played his instruments regularly in public and lectured extensively on the subject of early keyboard music.¹⁹

By far the most remarkable of this group was Alfred James Hipkins (1826–1903), who joined the piano firm of John Broadwood and Sons in 1840 to learn tuning. He remained there for the rest of his life, becoming a superb (if self-taught) executant on all keyboard instruments and a world authority on tuning, musical pitch, and the history of musical instruments. At the request of Ernst Pauer, Hipkins contributed program notes for Pauer’s historic concerts in the 1860s. Subsequently Hipkins gave historic concerts and lecture recitals of his own. In 1885 he presented a lecture on spinets, harpsichords, and clavichords in the Music Room of the International Inventions Exhibition. He concluded his remarks on the history of the harpsichord by introducing the musical examples he would play:

I will now play upon two harpsichords (one by Shudi, dated 1771, and one by Shudi and Broadwood, dated 1781) a Prelude, Saraband and Cebell (or Gavotte), composed by Henry Purcell; a Menuetto and the air, with variations, known as the “Harmonious Blacksmith,” by Handel, and a Sonata by Domenico Scarlatti. This selection will show the special characteristics of the harpsichord and its limitations. But it must be remembered that the adornment of shakes, turns, and other graces were more cultivated in the best days of the harpsichord than emphasis, accent, and those ever-varying changes of power that help to make our modern music what it is. I must not omit to say that the belief once prevalent among musicians, and that I find still exists, that Scarlatti’s handcrossings were due to the use of two keyboards, is not justified. Technically the hand-crossings are intentional, and, moreover, double keyboard harpsichords have found little favour in his, or at any time, in Italy.²⁰

In 1886, in another notable performance for the Royal Musical Association, Hipkins played on five different instruments (his page turner was none other than the pianist Anton Rubinstein).²¹ Hipkins was the first artist since the eighteenth century to perform segments of Bach’s Goldberg Variations at the harpsichord. In his book, A Description and History of the Pianoforte and of the Older Keyboard Stringed Instruments (1896), Hipkins’s statement that the two-keyboard variations should “be played on unisons only” showed sound scholarship, a discriminating ear, and an intuitive sense of the way in which a double-manual harpsichord should be used.²²

Hipkins, a contributor to the first Grove Dictionary of Music, reported that “in 1879 Mr. G. J. Chatterton of London, incited by my article upon the clavichord, which had then appeared in Sir George Grove’s Dictionary, successfully transformed an old square piano into one—the reverse process to that which obtained . . . about the middle of the last century.”²³

PARIS: A PIANIST, A PRINCE, AND
THREE COMPOSERS

The Harpsichord Comes into Fashion Again

Musical performances with the harpsichord, the forerunner of the piano, seem to have become fashionable in Paris. On the 11th of the past month [February 1888], according to the “Guide Musicale,” such an event took place there. . . . The tone of the harpsichord joined with the flute and viola da gamba [in sonatas of J. S. Bach] in a charming manner, most especially, however, with the flute! And what spirited and attractive playing in the amusing pieces by Rameau: La Vezinet, L’Indiscrete, La Timide, and Tambourin for harpsichord, viola da gamba and flute. Truly, if the performers MM. Diemer, Delsart and Taffanel had appeared in white wigs and knee britches, the listeners could have believed themselves transported back in time. The solo playing of M. Diemer at the harpsichord showed with elegance and skilled use of the registers which of the varied tonal shadings could be brought out [at this instrument]. . . .²⁴

In the late 1860s, Louis Diemer (1843-1919), professor of pianoforte at the Paris Conservatoire, had organized a small group of musicians interested in performing music of the past. He had won a first prize in piano at the Conservatoire in 1856, and the Viennese critic Eduard Hanslick called him “a delicate and graceful artist.” But, as such things are wont to be, his fellow pianist Mark Hambourg described Diemer’s playing as “dry-as-dust. . . with a hard, rattling tone.”²⁵ George Bernard Shaw, writing of a London recital, described Diemer as “a remarkably clever, self-reliant, and brilliant pianist, artistically rather stale, and quite breath-bereavingly unscrupulous in using the works of the great composers as stalking horses for his own powers. The mere recollection of his version of the Zauberflote overture causes the pen to drop from my hand.”²⁶

For his pioneering early-music concerts in Paris, Diemer was fortunate in being able to borrow a harpsichord made by Pascal Taskin in 1769 that was still in the possession of Taskin’s descendents.²⁷ In 1882 this magnificent instrument had been restored by Louis Tomasini. Shortly thereafter it was loaned to the Paris firm of Erard, which wished to study the instrument with the thought of making a modern copy of it. Soon after Erard’s had the idea of such an antiquarian venture, the firm of Pleyel decided to open a harpsichord department. Its “re-creation” of a harpsichord, shown in 1889, had three sets of strings with six pedals for the operation of these registers.²⁸ Harpsichords by Erard and by Tomasini were also exhibited at the Paris Exposition—a veritable explosion of new-antique keyboards!

Both Erard and Pleyel built instruments of five octaves. Their harpsichords were graceful, elegant, and beautifully decorated, but with open framing at the bottom, as in the modern piano. The bracing was much heavier than that used by Taskin (a typical example of the doctrine of progress: bigger was naturally better!). No metal was used in the framing at this time, although stringing and bridges were heavier than in the eighteenth-century instrument. For its first harpsichords Erard remained more faithful to Taskin’s original design; already an English-style lute had been added to the Pleyel. Erard used quill plectra for one 8-foot register; Pleyel used leather plectra for all the registers. Both builders employed wooden jacks and traditional felt dampers. Keyboards were built to the dimensions of the contemporary piano rather than to the slightly smaller octave of the eighteenth-century keyboard instruments.²⁹

A typical program given by Diemer and the Societe des Instrumens Anciens included both ensemble pieces by Bach and Rameau and harpsichord solos—always small, light, antique—in the vein of Daquin’s Le Coucou and Rameau’s La Poule.³⁰ Even in these small-scale works one might imagine that Lazare Levy’s description of Diemer’s pianism would apply to his harpsichord playing as well: “astonishing precision ... his legendary trills, the sobriety of his style. . . .”³¹

The first “modern” composition for harpsichord was written for Diemer by Francis Thome (1850–1909), a popular composer of salon music and sentimental piano pieces. Thome’s greatest hit, Simple Aveu, graced the music rack of nearly every parlor piano at the turn of the century. His Rigodon [sic], “Piece de Clavecin,” opus 97, written about 1892, was dedicated “a son ami Diemer.” This work was intended to suggest the frivolous, decadent mood of many late eighteenth-century French composers, and it gave Diemer a further opportunity to demonstrate his trills. The work remained relatively unknown in the twentieth century until Igor Kipnis discovered a copy in an antiquarian shop in London and recorded it as part of a selection of favorite harpsichord encores.³²

The first harpsichord composition of the twentieth-century revival: Francis Thomé’s Rigodon, pièce de clavecin, published by Lemoine, c. 1893.

Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937), organist of the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris, was another sometime devotee of the harpsichord.

Widor, who looked upon St. Sulpice as his home—for sixty years he mounted, with sprightly step, the difficult stairway leading to the great organ—had two habits: before leaving the church he would pause with his friends before the magnificent murals painted by Delacroix in the Chapel of the Angels, making his guests admire them. “Isn’t it beautiful, isn’t it splendid,” he would cry. “Isn’t it worthy of Rubens?” And he would go to the clavecin of Marie Antoinette, which he had placed in one of the small chapels, and would play a few measures of the Mozart Sonata in A, saying over and over: “Yes, yes, he was the god of music.” ³³

Elsewhere in Paris, the harpsichord could be heard at the salon of Prince Edmond de Polignac (1834–1901), an amateur composer of some ability. Through his marriage to the American heiress Winnaretta Singer, Prince Edmond obtained the financial resources necessary to indulge his passion for music. Both the Prince and Princesse de Polignac were devoted to music of the Baroque era, and at their salon this music could be presented on an eighteenth-century harpsichord. Rameau’s opera Dardanus was given its only nineteenth-century performance in the Polignac music room. The production made an extraordinary impression on both musicians and literary figures who heard the work.³⁴

Through association with the Polignacs Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) became familiar enough with the harpsichord to specify the accompaniment of his early song D’Anne jouant de l’Espinette (1896) as “clavecin ou piano (en sourdine).”³⁵ While nothing could be more pianistic than this accompaniment, the idea, drawn from the poetry, of using a harpsichord, could have been an apt one. It is unfortunate that Ravel never used the harpsichord again, for some of his musical thoughts are well suited to the instrument. Ravel performed the song, with M. Hardy-Thé, to whom it is dedicated, in a concert at the Salle Érard on 27 January 1900. At the harpsichord? Probably not, although private hearings for the Polignac circle might well have featured the old instrument.³⁶

The first use of the harpsichord in a twentieth-century orchestral score came surprisingly early: in the opera Thérèse by Jules Massenet (1842–1912),³⁷ which is set at the time of the French Revolution. It was composed during the winter of 1905 and the spring of 1906. Its first performance took place at the Monte Carlo Opera on 7 February 1907, with the offstage harpsichord played by Louis Diemer.³⁸ The opera was popular with the public; it was given during the following three seasons in Monte Carlo and was staged in Paris in 1911.³⁹ The harpsichord was heard, with string accompaniment, in a Menuet lent melancolique. With great charm it suggested an eighteenth-century past. Even more laudable was Massenet’s scoring—muted strings playing pizzicato allowed the harpsichord to be heard. Many later attempts to use the harpsichord have been far less successful.