Acknowledgments

My debts to many people must be acknowledged, now that the story has been written: To Madeleine Aldrich (Momo), who shared her memories and her photographs as well as the good life during my annual trips to Honolulu; to the late Sue Stidham, my closest friend and sometime student, who believed in this project so passionately that she provided the word-processing equipment on which it could be written; to Shannon Steel, who made the equipment work; to Richard Barnes, who read the complete manuscript with a critical eye and helped to ferret out information about recordings and the use of the harpsichord in jazz; to Howard Schott, Richard Pearce-Moses, and Charles M. Gatlin, Jr., who corrected factual and stylistic errors in the manuscript; and to Isolde Ahlgrimm, my first harpsichord teacher and abiding friend, especially for sharing her notes about Mrs. Thomas’s lesson with Landowska, as well as for the inspiring musicianship and teaching that made me love the harpsichord and its music in the first place.

To my students, over the years, in the biennially offered course at Southern Methodist University, “The Harpsichord in the 20th Century”; especially to Lewis Baratz, Dean Billmeyer, Henry McDowell, Jonathan Maedche, Robert Poovey, Marilyn Roark, Marilyn Saker, Jane Schmidt, Jan Van Otterloo, and Thomas Whiteside for research projects that provided information used directly in the writing of this book. Their questions and interest often led me to examine the depths of my own lack of knowledge about the subject and eventually convinced me that this book was needed.

To librarians (may their tribe increase), especially the invaluable Joan Schuitema (also a harpsichord major) for her countless hours of research help; to Robert Skinner, Fine Arts Librarian at SMU, for encouragement and tangible support; to Harold E. Samuel of Yale University’s Music Library, for his help in locating photographs; and to William Parsons, of the Library of Congress, for his abiding interest in this project.

To friends and colleagues on two continents who provided information, pictures, transportation, and lodging: John Ardoin, Roban Bieber, Margaret Power Biggs, Kenneth Cooper, William Dowd, Catherine Dower, Miriam Clapp Duncan, Stan Freeman, Mano Hardies, James Holloway, Ben Hyams, Fred Hyde, Jane Johnson, Roy Kehl, Igor Kipnis, Richard Kurth, Dorothy Lane, Arthur Lawrence, Willard Martin, Helen Merrill, Daniel Pinkham, Virginia Pleasants, Clyde Putman, D. Samuel Quigley, Denise Restout, Elsa Richards, John Chappell Stowe, Temple S. Timberlake, Richard Torrence, Ephraim Truesdell, Gavin Williamson, H. Ross Wood, and Brett Zumsteg.

To Eugene Bonelli, Dean of the Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University, for sabbatical support in 1979; and to Robin Robertson, Associate Dean for General Education, Dedman College, SMU, for a generous CORE research grant that enabled me to spend a summer writing.

And, finally, a very large debt of gratitude to Hal Haney, who made The Harpsichord a viable journal during his eight years as editor and publisher. In so doing he preserved a considerable segment of the revival’s story for succeeding generations.

I also gratefully acknowledge permissions to quote extensively from the following sources:

Mabel Dolmetsch, Personal Recollections of Arnold Dometsch (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1957). By permission of the Mabel Dolmetsch Estate.

Robert Evett, “The Romantic Bach,” New Republic, 28 July 1952.

Hal Haney, interview with Claude Jean Chiasson, The Harpsichord V:3 (1972).

Eta Harich-Schneider, Charaktere und Katastrophen, copyright 1978. By permission of Verlag Ullstein.

Ralph Kirkpatrick, Early Years, copyright © 1985. By permission of Peter Lang Publishing, Inc.

Musical America: John Caffrey, “John Challis and Julius Wahl: Harpsichords for Americans,” February 1950; review of Wanda Landowska’s Town Hall recital (signed R.S.), March 1949; review of Ralph Kirkpatrick’s Town Hall recital (signed R.K.), 1 February 1954.

Newsweek, article about Wanda Landowska, 23 February 1948.

Alice Pentlange, script for the radio program “So You Haven’t the Time,” Van Buren Papers, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University.

Josephine Robertson, “Harpsichord Popularity Is Seen Growing,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 15 December 1960.

Halina Rodzinski, Our Two Lives, copyright © 1976 Halina Rodzinski. Reprinted with the permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, an imprint of Macmillan Publishing Company.

Virgil Thomson, “Rhythmic Grandeurs,” reprinted in The Musical Scene (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945).

Time: “Harpsichordist,” 12 October 1936; “Musical Antiques,” 30 October 1939; “Man from Ypsilanti,” 24 January 1944; “Harpsichordists Out of Tune,” 3 February 1947; “Grandma Bachante,” 20 June 1949; personality story about Wanda Landowska, 1 December 1952; “Midnights in Manhattan,” 24 May 1954; “The Plectra Pluckers,” 15 August 1960; “Romantic Revival,” 30 May 1969. Copyright © Time, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission from TIME.

Fernando Valenti, “Scarlatti Forever,” High Fidelity, November 1954. All rights reserved.

Yale Alumni Publications: Eva J. O’Meara, “Historic Instruments in the Steinert Collection,” The Yale Alumni Weekly, 29 March 1928; Willie Ruff, “A Musician’s Legacy: Ralph Kirkpatrick Remembered,” Yale Alumni Magazine, April 1985.