CHAPTER

6

LANDOWSKA’S
AMERICAN CIRCLE

While Landowska was not the only harpsichordist to have a following in America, she remained the most famous and eventually the most recorded. She must be considered the most influential when one counts the number of players who studied with her and who emulated her playing style and her choice of the Pleyel harpsichord.

PUTNAM ALDRICH

Among the early leaders in the Landowska school, Putnam Calder Aldrich (1904–1975) had the most far-reaching influence on the succeeding generation, for he was noted not only as a fine player but even more as a fine teacher.

Aldrich completed his baccalaureate degree in French literature at Yale University in 1926, and as he was also a gifted pianist, he went to London to study piano with Tobias Matthay for two years. When the critics commented on his beautiful piano tone but lambasted his poor technique at his New York Town Hall debut, he came to Landowska not to study harpsichord, originally, but for her help in technical matters.

Early in June 1929 he sailed to Europe, planning to spend his vacation in Italy and France. Wishing to catch a glimpse of North Africa on the way, he disembarked at Gibraltar to stay a little while in Morocco. There, he met the Viscount of Mamblas, who was then the Consul of Spain at Tangier.

When, in the course of the conversation, the Consul discovered that Putnam was a pianist, he told him of his friendship with Jose Iturbi. Putnam responded by exclaiming “Oh, I wish I had his technique.” Well, then why don’t you study with him?” suggested the Viscount. “Let’s ask him if he would be willing to give you some lessons.”

Iturbi answered that he was not interested in teaching but proceeded to explain that he had acquired his technique from Wanda Landowska. In his youth he had won a scholarship to study in Paris and, at the time, was fortunate enough to have had some piano lessons from Landowska. Putnam, he suggested, could study with her at [St. Leu.]¹

Putnam Aldrich playing for Landowska. (Photograph by Lipnitzki, Paris; courtesy of Momo Aldrich.)

Momo Aldrich, Landowska’s personal secretary, described the nature of the classes at St. Leu:

Wanda worked with a limited number of students in turn. The classes dealt with all the technical problems of the piano and the harpsichord. The strength and independence of the fingers were stressed, but, more importantly, the result of those technical exercises was applied to actual performance. The classes dealt also with the reconstitution of the ornaments, which involved analytic study of their genesis, as well as comparative study—finding the analogies which exist between them. In addition, the classes delved into varieties of touch and phrasing, as well as the characteristic features of the music (and musical “laws”) of the different periods.²

It took only one summer of study with Landowska for Aldrich to become so enamored of the harpsichord that he decided to switch from the piano to the older keyboard instrument. He spent three years with Landowska, which he remembered as “very trying times.”

“She was a terrible tyrant,” he said.³ “Most Americans studying with her just couldn’t take it. Ralph Kirkpatrick, for example, lasted only six weeks. I found it best to act like a little child and just take the abuse she heaped on. Finally, I got to understand what she was doing.”

While studying with her, Aldrich ran out of money and was unable to pay for his lessons. So she put him to work doing her research in return for the lessons. This involved many hours poring over old manuscripts and annotating the music.

“I worked on countless scores but I always made my own copy of everything I did, and I ended up with reams of material no one even knew anything about at that time,” Aldrich said. “When I came back to Harvard I used this material to get my Ph.D. in music. That’s how I happened into musicology—it was quite accidental. I got the Ph.D. only to use the material—not to get a job.”⁴

It was at St. Leu that Aldrich met Madeleine Momot. “Forget the Madeleine,” said Landowska, who nicknamed her “Momo Momot.” Putnam married Momo in 1931 and took her home to New England. “That upset Madame very much and it was ten years before she ever spoke to me again,” he recalled. Author and lexicographer Nicolas Slonimsky wrote of that summer of 1931, “We [Slonimsky and his wife, Dorothy] had lunch with several of Wanda’s girls and a young harpsichord player, Putnam Aldrich, who subsequently abducted one of Wanda’s girls to America. (Wanda never forgave him.) They were soon married, and had a daughter, Allegra.”⁵ Perhaps Landowska’s displeasure was not as great as it was reported to be, for in actuality Momo and Putnam were married in Paris, with Putnam’s brother David, at that time a student in architecture classes at Fontaine-bleau, as witness for the groom, and Wanda Landowska, herself, attending Momo as witness.⁶

Aldrich’s unique position as harpsichordist in Boston was described by Elizabeth Borton in the seventeenth installment of her series “Talking It Over With Unusual Bostonians”:

Putnam Aldrich is the only person in Boston with a working harpsichord. Now this is not only a distinction but a responsibility. A working harpsichord, by the way, is an instrument in good working order, as contrasted with a museum piece which emits but a feeble tinkle when furtively and unlawfully touched by a passerby. . . .

But “Put” Aldrich’s harpsichord brought by him to this country, at such terrific expense (as musicians count expense) that he scarcely dares permit it out of his sight for a moment, has a clear loud voice, two manuals, and plenty of personality. . . .

Nicolas Slonimsky, Wanda Landowska (effectively shaded by her parasol), Putnam Aldrich, and Momo Aldrich at St. Leu, May 1931. (Courtesy of Momo Aldrich.)

“The trouble with the harpsichord is that it’s so delicate,” says Mr. Aldrich, a little bitterly. He looks delicate himself—small, dark and slender as he is, with nervous hands and overbright dark eyes. But then, he is certainly less delicate than his harpsichord, for no one must trail him with a satchel full of loose parts, to be hastily screwed on when he falls apart—and that is what he has to do with his harpsichord.

When he walks out on the stage to play a concert, he brings not only his music, but his emergency bag full of new plectrums, wrenches, hammers and whatnot. The wretched harpsichord keys get stuck once in a while, and notes refuse to sound. They are always important notes. Then Mr. Aldrich has to make his excuses to the audience, roll up his sleeves and get out and get under.

“I can’t allow any one to touch it but myself,” he says, “because then I have to work weeks putting it into shape again. It’s like a fountain pen, you know. It gets used to a certain touch.”⁷

Aldrich was active as a harpsichordist in the New England area while completing his doctorate in musicology at Harvard. In 1935 he played the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the Boston Symphony under Koussevitsky. In 1938, together with Alfred Zighera, he founded the Boston Society for Ancient Instruments, which presented nine subsequent seasons of concerts. He played continuo in Boston and at Tanglewood for the Bach Mass in B minor, Suite in B minor, and Magnificat, all conducted by Koussevitsky. He also served as a music critic for the Boston Herald during this period. In this capacity he reviewed the playing of another Landowska student, Alice Ehlers, to whom he loaned his harpsichord for her recital in Cambridge on 18 February 1936.⁸

As soon as Aldrich received his Ph.D. he was offered a teaching position at the University of Texas in Austin. “I had never taught a day in my life, but I took the job anyway and ended up staying two years.”⁹ He then returned to Boston to continue his playing career. One notable event was a performance of Bach’s Concerto for Three Harpsichords on the Boston Symphony Chamber Concert Series of 1944; the other soloists were Sylvia Marlowe and Daniel Pinkham.

This pattern continued as Aldrich taught for two years at Western Reserve University in Cleveland and then went back to concert life in Boston. Next came two years at Mills College in Oakland, and a tragicomic performance of the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5:

In 1949 the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, in recognition of the growing interest in baroque music, instituted a series of “Classical Interludes—Monteverdi to Mozart.” I was engaged to play the solo harpsichord part in Bach’s Fifth Brandenburg Concerto. The conductor, Pierre Monteux, guaranteed that this was to be an absolutely authentic performance; he conducted from the Bach-Gesellschaft Edition. At a preliminary rehearsal with the flute and violin soloists, I began straightway realizing the figured bass of the opening tutti. The conductor interrupted: “What are these chords you are playing? Bach wrote no chords here!” I tried to explain that the figures under the cembalo part stood for chords, but he said, “If Bach wanted chords he would have written chords. This is to be an authentic performance. We shall play only what Bach wrote!” And in an aside to the other musicians he said, “You see, musicologists have always their noses in books and forget to look at what Bach wrote.” At any rate in the opening tutti it is not too serious, since the harmony is quite complete in the instrumental parts. But in the second movement, scored for three solo instruments, the effect of the harpsichordist’s playing one note at a time with the left hand only was nothing short of ludicrous. Even Monteux began to suspect that something was wrong. At the dress rehearsal he said to me in a whisper, “In this movement you may add a few discreet chords.” ¹⁰

To counteract such strange ideas about Baroque music, Putnam Aldrich spent the rest of his career at Stanford University, where he developed a program in performance practice of early music. The beginning of Stanford’s doctoral program in music coincided with his arrival, and a distinguished group of students studied with him. The first was George Houle, who later went on to direct the New York Pro Musica. Many others took the gospel of early music to colleges and universities across the land: among them were Natalie Jenne, Margaret Fabrizio, Irene Bost-wick, Newman Powell, Don Franklin, Meredith Ellis, Elizabeth Hays, Peter Hurd, and Erich Schwandt. Arthur Lawrence recalled that Aldrich had a set method of teaching harpsichord: everyone had to begin with Bach’s Two-Part Invention in E major. There were three touches to be perfected in this piece. Since Lawrence worked on it for a semester and never got it right, for his second semester he transferred to Margaret Fabrizio, who was also teaching at Stanford.¹¹

Aldrich wrote several important studies, two major ones being Ornamentation in Bach’s Organ Works (1950) and Rhythm in Seventeenth-Century Italian Monody (1966). He continued to play the harpsichord: yearly faculty recitals at Stanford always played from memory, and orchestral appearances. He was known for his performances of the Poulenc Concert Champetre; the Haydn Concerto in D major (with cadenzas by Wanda Landowska), which appeared on the San Francisco Symphony series of 1958 (Enrique Jorda conducting); and the Bach Concerto in F minor.¹² Finally, the teaching and writing took over entirely, and there was no time to practice. Just before Aldrich retired from Stanford in 1969, an interviewer reported: “Putnam Aldrich studied his Pleyel harpsichord for a moment, then looked down at his hands and flexed his fingers several times as if to limber them up. ‘Now I will be able to play again,’ he said with a smile. ‘It’s been a long time.’ ”¹³

PHILIP MANUEL AND GAVIN WILLIAMSON

Despite a penchant for cute and trendy prose, Time magazine offered a great deal of information in an illustrated article about America’s first harpsichord duo:

Musical Antiques

One night last week Chicago’s elegant Goodman Theatre was packed to its heavy oak doors. What drew this throng was no thunder-rousing maestro or pudding-fed diva, but a pair of pale, genteel young men who plunked softly on 18th-century-model harpsichords. Before a silver backdrop, gently lit by amber lights, they joined in deft pluck-a-pluck duets by Mozart and Bach. Occasionally they were joined by two lush lady harpsichordists in 18th-century lace and velveteen. To all this harpsichordery their audience listened reverently, applauded with loud smacks. For they were listening to the No. 1 harpsichord team of the U.S.: Chicago’s famed Philip Manuel and Gavin Williamson.

The harpsichord, which looks like an incubator-baby-grand piano and sounds like a choir of mandolins, was once the most important of concert instruments. Before it was ousted (at the beginning of the 19th century) by the louder and more flexible modern piano, composers like Bach and Handel wrote sheaves of compositions for it. Even Beethoven turned out a batch of sonatas for the harpsichord. Today, harpsichord playing occupies the position that falconry does in the field of sports. And most early harpsichord music is now played on modern instruments like the piano. But today’s handful of harpsichordists point out the undeniable fact that only they can make this 18th-century music sound the way it did in the 18th century.

When they are not giving concerts, Chicago’s Manuel & Williamson tinkle their harpsichords in privacy in a handsome old grey-stone house on the South Side. Its 14 large, high-ceilinged rooms are filled with obsolete instruments, antique pictures, books about music of the long ago. Inseparable bachelors, they act, talk, think alike, have identical handwriting, birthdays within 24 hours of each other (June 29 and 30). Though they have toured the whole U. S., they have never appeared in Manhattan because Manhattan concert managers insist that they hire their own hall.

To Manuel & Williamson all music written since the 18th century has come a long way down hill. Occasionally, for relaxation, they visit the concerts of Frederick Stock’s Chicago Symphony, consider the ponderous 19th-century classics they hear there as comparative fluff. Last month when they heard Harpsichordist Yella Pessl play a lick of swing on a harpsichord broadcast, they turned away their dial in horror. Asked why they prefer 18th-century to all other music, they reply: “It makes us feel spiritually spick & span.”¹⁴

An earlier published anecdote gave a folksy account of one person’s reaction to the curious sounds of the harpsichord. The iceman who serviced the Lake Park Avenue studio apartment in which the duo lived and practiced knocked one day and inquired about the music coming through the windows. He introduced himself as a saxophone-playing music lover and expressed an interest in hearing some more of the “funny music.” His reaction to Manuel and Williamson’s performance of Bach was enthusiastic. “Say, gents, that’s certainly the swellest music I ever listened to—got the saxophone beat a mile. What did you say the name of them things was?” “The harpsichord.” “Well,” he said as he departed,” all I gotta say is that the harpsichord is one swell piece of machinery, and I bet that as soon as the musicians all over the country get onto ’em, pianos ’ll be drove right out of the market.”¹⁵

Philip Manuel (1893–1959), born in Canton, Minnesota, studied piano with itinerant teachers, at a military school, and at Grinnell College, Iowa. His first professional association with Boston-bred Gavin Williamson (born in Canada in 1897) was as tenor singer to Williamson’s piano accompaniment. These concerts were announced under the management of Harrison and Harschbarger for 1923. Both young men performed from memory—“a point which makes for intimacy and individuality of performance.”¹⁶

The manner in which Manuel & Williamson first became interested in . . . old instruments is curious and interesting. . . . They were scheduled for a duo-piano recital at Bloomington, Ill., and on the way both pianos were smashed by trucks. What to do? The town was scoured for pianos and finally, two, about half the size of the modern concert grand were unearthed. They were taken to the hall and quickly put in condition and the program played. The first number was a Mozart Sonata, and so exceptionally did the smaller pianos with their thinner tone, project the Mozart music that Manuel and Williamson thought of the greater charm there would be in playing Mozart, Bach, and their forerunners on the instruments for which their music was written.

Then began some extensive research work on the part of the two artists, during which they went to Paris, spending several weeks at the famous Pleyel factory, where they made arrangements for two harpsichords. “It is like the passion for antiques,” said Manuel, “wherever we find one of these old instruments, not to mention their lesser sister, the clavichord, we feel we must purchase it. Consequently our collection is increasing to such an extent that we have been forced to move from one place to another to find space for each additional instrument we acquire. The more one studies the harpsichord the more fascinating it becomes, for the tone has much more resonance and variety than the piano.”¹⁷

Manuel and Williamson studied with Landowska in New York. In addition to instruction on the harpsichord, her lectures at the Curtis Institute were also important to the duo. They would ride with her on the train from New York to Philadelphia so she could rehearse the lectures for them in order to practice and correct her English.¹⁸

As with all the artists of the “Landowska connection,” Manuel and Williamson played harpsichords by Pleyel. “Grand Harpsichord Number 1” (the first Pleyel with the 16-foot stop) dated from 1912, and the firm numbered its harpsichords consecutively through the year 1929. Instrument number ten (probably 1922) belonged to Alice Ehlers; eleven through fourteen to Manuel and Williamson; and number fifteen to Putnam Aldrich. Pleyel’s production of harpsichords, which seemed to permeate the entire harpsichord revival, really proceeded at the pace of one instrument per year.¹⁹ Two of the harpsichords owned by Manuel and Williamson had especially beautiful decoration: the motto on one (from 1926) read “Omnis spiritus laudet Dominum,” while the jackrail of another carried an inscription from the French poet LeJeune.²⁰

With multiple harpsichords available it was natural to turn to the Bach repertoire for multiple keyboards. The duo appeared with the Minneapolis Symphony on 25 November 1927 playing Bach’s Double Concerto in C major. On 27 December 1932, for the first of their four appearances with the Chicago Symphony, they played Bach’s Concerto No. 3 for two harpsichords, “the first-known tune for two quilled instruments” by Giles Farnaby, C. P. E. Bach’s Adagio for two harpsichords and strings, and Mozart’s Rondo from Sonata in D for two harpsichords.

Philip Manuel and Gavin Williamson, who made a stir at their first appearance as soloists with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra earlier in the week returned for the December 29 and 30 concerts in a program different from the one presented in the Tuesday afternoon series (!) The harpsichord has two able champions in these young men, and there was reason to rejoice in their performance of the Mozart Concerto in F. It was interesting also to hear them play two pieces by Couperin [Le Juillet and Musete de Choisi] and Bach’s Allegro from the Concerto [in C major]. Messrs. Manuel & Williamson are, as far as we can ascertain, the only pair of harpsichordists touring the country.²¹

At Ravinia the duo triumphed again. The headline read “Ravinia Festival Opens: Sir Adrian Boult wins Chicago; Manuel & Williamson, harpsichordists, play Bach.”

The obvious drawing power was the announced appearance of Philip Manuel and Gavin Williamson, harpsichordists, who played the Bach [Concerto in C minor] for two harpsichords with strings, and won an ovation. There is widespread interest in the exquisite music of the harpsichord and no-one in America is doing as significant a work in this field of music as these two gifted artists, who, incidently, live and work right here in Chicago.

There is a spirit and flowing line to their Bach that is buoyancy itself, while impeccable attention to detail and complete respect for the composer’s intention make it possible for you to hear in their work (and especially since it is played on harpsichord) exactly what Bach wanted heard—with no superficialities of what some might think he wanted. The small string accompaniment was properly delicate, restrained, and perfectly balanced. The audience was insistent in its applause—and wanted more—but the length of the program apparently did not permit of any extra numbers. ²²

Manuel and Williamson were associated with Community Concerts, Inc., directed by their old friend Dema Harschbarger. They toured extensively with four instruments: two harpsichords and two Steinway pianos. While that seems to be a monstrous task, it was not so complicated in the days of an efficient railway express. Sturdy crates for the instruments allowed them to be packed securely; the movers picked them up in Chicago and delivered them to the various halls—in many respects it was simpler than trying to move a harpsichord today.²³ A typical itinerary was that of 1928, with concerts starting in early November in El Paso, Texas, for Mrs. Hallett Johnson’s Twilight Musicales; the following day, the opening of the Junior Artist series in Ogden, Utah; then on to Denver, Colorado Springs, and Boulder, Colorado; Marshalltown, Iowa; Fond du Lac, Wisconsin; Evanston, Illinois; Ashland, Kentucky; Raleigh, North Carolina, and a tour of the southern states.²⁴ For the American premiere of Bach’s Concerto for Three Harpsichords in Chicago on 7 April 1929 Manuel and Williamson were joined by their student Margaret Davies. Eventually the duo went on to form a larger harpsichord ensemble, and with Dorothy Brown and Dorothy Lane they were able to present even more unusual works to the American public.

Equipped with the most extraordinary specimens of the harpsichord-builder’s craft, and associated with an outstanding artistic personnel . . . Manuel and Williamson offer musical experiences heretofore unknown in this country. The four harpsichords in their sweep across the stage are a spectacle in themselves. . . .²⁵

Landowska was not especially pleased with the success of her friends. “These children are taking the food out of my mouth,” she complained at dinner with Arthur Judson’s submanager. Her ire was raised because the duo, not Landowska, had been engaged for a concert in Milwaukee. Later she canceled a European engagement (the Bach triple concerto under Furtwängler) because the duo dealt directly with Pleyel in buying its second pair of harpsichords, and she resented the lost commission.²⁶

Although Manuel and Williamson were reported to be aghast at “modern” music, they did play a two-harpsichord arrangement of Poulenc’s Concert Champetre for a concert in connection with an exhibition of tapestries at Chicago’s Art Institute. The working-out of the arrangement was done with the composer’s help.

“Past Masters,” their series of radio broadcasts for NBC’s Blue Network, was the most far-reaching result of their years of research and study. It was an immensely popular program, even eliciting a telegram from some steel workers who heard the end of a broadcast while waiting for a prizefight to begin! The duo was touched that these men would chip in ten cents each to send a congratulatory word to two classical musicians.

Philip Manuel (left) and Gavin Williamson playing a radio concert. (Courtesy of Gavin Williamson.)

Echoes of these elegant programs were captured by Musicraft Records in four albums: the Manuel and Williamson Harpsichord Ensemble play Bach concertos for two harpsichords and strings, the Violin Concerto in A major and the Pastorale in A of Vivaldi, Handel’s Oboe Concerto in G minor and Harpsichord Concerto in F, and the Bach C-major Concerto for Three Harpsichords. The original 78 rpm recordings have never been reissued; they might be found in antiquarian shops or in the archives of historical sound recordings in the Sterling Library of Yale University, which holds the collection of Samuel Puner, founder of Musicraft.²⁷

ALICE EHLERS

“Do come in and sit down! Madame Ehlers is going to play the harpsichord.” With these words in William Wyler’s 1939 film Wuthering Heights, the harpsichord was ushered into the motion picture era. Ehlers’s nimble performance of Mozart’s Rondo alia Turca was heard by more people than had any previous harpsichord performance. Popular on late-night American television, the movie continues to present her playing to modern audiences.

It was fitting that it should be Alice Pauly Ehlers (1887-1981) who filled the screen, for in many ways she had always seemed “larger than life.” She was born in Vienna and went to the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin in 1909 to study piano. In 1913, when Wanda Landowska was appointed to the faculty as the first twentieth-century professor of harpsichord, Ehlers became her first harpsichord student and began a five-year association with the famous artist. Thus Ehlers was the first member of a second generation of revival harpsichordists.

The relationship with Landowska was a difficult one: a true love-hate story. Throughout her long life, Ehlers maintained an admiration for Landowska’s artistry but resented her self-centered personality and her overwhelming identification with the instrument they both played. To questions about Landowska, Ehlers would respond, “Why are you so interested in her?” She would then tell the story of her own harpsichord debut in Berlin: how she was scheduled to play Bach’s Concerto in F minor but how her teacher upstaged her and put Ehlers in an unfavorable situation by playing the same concerto (to be reviewed by the same critics) only a few days before the scheduled debut.²⁸

“We didn’t talk much in lessons, but I listened to her playing,” Ehlers reported in later years.²⁹ She was not impressed with Landowska’s pedagogical abilities, especially her work with her untalented students. She remembered that there were not many with talent, perhaps the only other one being the organist Max Drischner.) Eventually Ehlers functioned rather as a graduate assistant for Landowska, taking over the instruction of some of the other students at Landowska’s plea, “My child, work with them.”³⁰ Many years later Landowska still figured in an apocryphal tale of Ehlers’s lesson with student Malcolm Hamilton, who had had the temerity to add a trill to the subject in a fugue by Bach. When Ehlers stopped him, he explained, “I heard a recording by Landowska and she put a trill there.” Ehlers snorted, “Wanda Landowska was a genius; you and I, Malcolm, we are not geniuses—’spaacially you!”

During these student years in Berlin, Ehlers had access to several Pleyel harpsichords: those belonging to Landowska and one purchased by the Hochschule only to be sold again as soon as Landowska’s master classes ended in 1918. Ehlers, too, owned a Pleyel instrument early in her career. Her first instrument was the harpsichord Mahler had purchased for the Vienna State Opera. It had been relegated to the basement after his tenure there. Ehlers disliked its “sour tone.”³¹ She preferred the instruments of Johann Georg Steingräber, a Berlin builder who had begun his work as a restorer of antique instruments. His instruments were constructed entirely from wood, with no metal framing. “All wood-constructed instruments have a wonderful advantage of resonance and vibration all through, but also this disadvantage [of expansion and contraction],” Ehlers remarked some years later.³² Steingräber worked slowly and carefully, producing only a small number of instruments.³³

Ehlers had access to a Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord at this time, which may have helped to shape her liking for Steingräber’s metal-free instruments:

Busoni was, strange as it might sound, a lover of the harpsichord. He had a small harpsichord in his house in Berlin, and sometimes called me to come over and play for him. I felt so stupid, me, nobody, going to play for Busoni. But he couldn’t handle the harpsichord with his big hands, and being used to the sound of the piano, he wanted to get the same sounds out of the harpsichord. . . .³⁴

At the conclusion of her Hochschule study Ehlers was the co-recipient of a high honor, the Mendelssohn Prize, which she shared with pianist Wilhelm Kempff. She was engaged to succeed Landowska as teacher of harpsichord at the school, where she remained until 1933. During these years her concert career blossomed, with trips throughout Europe, to South America, to Russia (where she met Otto Klemperer in Leningrad³⁵), and, especially, to Italy, where she gave lecture classes at the Milan Conservatory and toured as far south as Palermo. There were concerts with her friend Paul Hindemith, who had made realizations of six of the Biber Mystery Sonatas for them to perform as a viola-harpsichord duo. South of Rome, “they liked only light things. They could cry ten times for ten times my playing Il Coucoula; il coucoula, coucou by Daquin. Finally Hindemith said, ‘If you play that once more I will take the next train home.’ Ehlers, ‘What should I do?’ Hindemith, ‘Come out and smile, bow, but don’t play!’ ”³⁶

In 1927 Ehlers appeared on a Beethoven centenary concert in Vienna. Carl Engel was impressed with her playing and reported his opinion to Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge, who invited Ehlers to perform at the Library of Congress in 1936, three years after Ehlers had prudently decided to leave Nazi Berlin and make her home in London. “I am Jewish,” she declared triumphantly.

During her first visit to the United States, in 1936, Ehlers gave several concerts. Putnam Aldrich reviewed her appearance in Boston:

Alice Ehlers, harpsichordist, gave a recital at Paine Hall, Cambridge, last night, under the auspices of the division of music of Harvard University. Miss Ehlers played the following program: Fantasia in C minor, Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, Italian Concerto, Bach; The Bells, Byrd; Fugue on the Magnificat, Pachelbel; Harmonious Blacksmith Variations, Handel; The Battle Between David and Goliath, Kuhnau; Les Vendangeuses and La Bandoline, Couperin; La Poule and Le Rappel des Oiseaux, Rameau; three Sonatas, Domenico Scarlatti.

Miss Ehlers wisely selected a program composed largely of works which are familiar to the concertgoer. The three compositions by Bach are frequently performed at piano recitals, as are Handel’s “Harmonious Blacksmith” variations. Kuhnau’s “Battle” is offered by every course in the appreciation or history of music as one of the early examples of program music. The listener at last night’s concert was therefore prepared to make direct comparison between the piano and the harpsichord as medium for the interpretation of these works. One need not be a rabid purist to recognize the superiority of the harpsichord for this purpose. Broadly speaking its advantages are greater precision and distinctness and the possibility of obtaining variety of tone color.

The clear, precise tone of the harpsichord was particularly grateful, last night, in Bach’s Chromatic Fugue, since one’s understanding and enjoyment of such a work is almost entirely dependent upon one’s ability to follow several melodies simultaneously. Similarly the highly ornamented pieces by Rameau, Couperin and Scarlatti acquire a new meaning when their filigree is traced in the sharply defined lines of the harpsichord tone. Miss Ehlers played these pieces with good taste and a fine sense of style. She has a good touch, which is the first essential attribute of the harpsichordist; the heavy-handedness of the average pianist will thwart the best qualities of the instrument. Her phrasing was interesting and musical. The audience was extremely appreciative, and Miss Ehlers was called back to add several encores to her program.³⁷

A week later she gave her first concert in New York, at Town Hall. The critics liked what they heard: “Throughout, Miss Ehlers gave interpretations of notable clarity, as well as digital fluency, and did notable work ... in setting forth the fine points of color and volume,” wrote Francis D. Perkins in the Herald-Tribune. Downes, of the Times went even further: “As a harpsichordist, Alice Ehlers has every desirable quality including amazing virtuosity, precision, capacity to sing a phrase, which is as conspicuous as her clean articulation, taste and temperament, which carries everything before it.”³⁸ Ehlers returned to London following these American engagements. Her assessment of the harpsichord scene in England was typically pithy: “Harpsichordists were utterly nonprofessional in every way. I was the first professional [there].”³⁹

Two years later, in 1938, she gave a summer class at the Juilliard School in New York City and later went to see her daughter Maria, a film actress, in California. This visit led to Ehlers’s making the United States her home. While visiting Maria, Ehlers met director William Wyler, and the following year she and the harpsichord made their motion-picture debut.⁴⁰

Her American career flourished: Ehlers appeared twice with Bing Crosby on his radio hour. Then she was offered a teaching position by Dean Max Krone of the University of Southern California. When Ehlers told her daughter the news, the younger woman thought her mother must have had a heat stroke. “Mother, come have an ice cream!” was her reaction.⁴¹ Thus began Ehlers’s twenty-six-year association with the Los Angeles university, where her harpsichord class was to include Malcolm Hamilton (of anecdotal fame), Bruce Prince-Joseph (“Enormously talented and a born showman. I liked him very much—warm-hearted, talented, impulsive”⁴²), John Gillespie (“my first student”⁴³), Harold Chaney, and John Hamilton. Her popular class on Baroque interpretation attracted students Charles Hirt, Roger Wagner, and Michael Tilson Thomas among conductors-to-be, as well as singers Marilyn Home and Carol Neblett.

Alice Ehlers as she appeared in William Wyler’s film Wuthering Heights. (Collection of the Library of Congress.)

Ehlers became the prominent figure in early music on the West Coast. She played many solo and chamber music concerts, appeared with her old acquaintance Otto Klemperer in the Bach Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and was heard with Eugene Ormandy in Philadelphia and New York. In addition to her tenure at USC she held a Walker Ames Professorship at the University of Washington, the first Brittingham Professorship of Music at the University of Wisconsin, honorary doctorates from Lewis and Clark College and the University of Cincinnati, a merit award from the University of Southern California Alumni Association, and the distinguished service medal of the German Republic (bestowed during her eightieth year).

For more than fifty years Ehlers played the same Pleyel harpsichord. It was an unusual-looking instrument painted vermilion inside, and, at the urging of her sculptor-artist husband, green on the outside (since the original mahogany did not go well with the brillant red lid). The instrument was Pleyel’s tenth of the Landowska 16-foot models; it was constructed in 1922.⁴⁴ Although Ehlers was aware of the superior sounds produced by period instruments with nonmetal frames, years of concert playing utilizing a colorful style of registration made the Pleyel instrument a comfortable one for her. “I’d rather have it with the metal frame!” she explained. “Wood cracks, [creating a] danger for instance which I have gone through, travelling in all the different climates. I don’t think an instrument built in the old way could have taken it.”⁴⁵