Notes

PROLOG

1. An inventory of confiscated instruments drawn up by Antonio Bartolomeo Bruni (1759–1823) listed 346 harpsichords and spinets. In a fascinating bit of supplementary information Bruni noted that only thirty-two of the raided houses did not also contain a piano. See Albert G. Hess, “The Transition from Harpsichord to Piano,” Galpin Society Journal VI (1953): 83-87.

2. Raymond Russell, The Harpsichord and Clavichord: An Introductory Study, 2d ed., revised by Howard Schott (New York: Norton, 1973), p. 119.

3. Donald H. Boalch, Makers of the Harpsichord and Clavichord 1440–1840, 2d ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), p.86.

4. Raymond Russell. “The Harpsichord Since 1800,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 82 (1955/56): 62 (reprint, Nendeln/Lichtenstein: Kraus, 1968).

5. Ibid. The instrument is described and pictured in Stefano Vittadini, Catalogo del Museo Teatrale alia Scala (Milan, 1940), pp. 182-183.

6. Russell “1800,” p.62.

7. Now in the Steinert Collection of Yale University.

8. Built by Pet Forsman, a maker not listed in Boalch’s catalog. See P. Sween, “The Nineteenth Century View of the Old Harpsichord,” The English Harpsichord Magazine 11:7 (April 1979): 92.

9. Alfred J. Hipkins, A Description and History of the Pianoforte and of the Older Keyboard Stringed Instruments, 3d ed., 1929 (reprint, Detroit: Detroit Reprints in Music, 1975), p.64.

10. Sween, p.92. “In London, several clavichords have been seen which were made in Finsbury Park, and from their appearance they were made in the 1880-1900 period. . . . Another late nineteenth-century maker was Mr Dove, who made spinets so like those of Baker Harris, that there is doubt as to whether they were rebuilds of old spinets or new creations. Mr Dove is reputed to have made a beautiful copy of a harpsichord which survived the blitz in a house in London, but was destroyed, according to an eye witness, by firemen when they came to demolish the house and refused to carry it out.”

11. The first editions of these Liszt works may be seen in the British Library, London; all three bear only the designation “Pro Clavicembalo.”

12. “We knocked. A loud, rough voice bid us come in. We found the old giant in a thick cloud of smoke, his long pipe in his mouth, sitting at his old two-manual harpsichord. The quill pen he used in writing was in his hand, a sheet of music paper before him . . .” (Arthur Mendel and Hans T. David, The Bach Reader, rev. ed. [New York: Norton, 1966], p.381).

13. Letter to Cav. Luigi Ferrucci, Librarian of the Mediceo-Laurenziana of Florence, dated Passy, 18 October 1868; see chapter 1, p. 12, below. In conversation with Richard Wagner, Rossini is quoted as saying, “On the evening of the premiere of Il Barbiere, when, as was customary then in Italy for opera buffa, I played the clavicembalo in the orchestra to accompany the recitatives . . .” (Edmond Michotte, Richard Wagner’s Visit to Rossini, translated from the French by Herbert Weinstock [Paris, 1860; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968], p. 32). The Barber of Seville was first performed on 20 February 1816.

14. Boalch, p. 111. There is no positive documentation that Chopin did use a harpsichord but he was passionately fond of the music of J. S. Bach and, more surprisingly for his century, that of Domenico Scarlatti. See Larry Palmer, “In Search of Scarlatti,” The Diapason, December 1985, p. 13.

15. Robert Browning, Men and Women and Other Poems, edited by J. W. Harper (London: Dent, 1975), p.23.

16. Rev. Francis Kilvert, Selections from the Diary, edited by William Plomer (London: J. Cape, 1938–40), p.255.

17. Charlotte Moscheles, Life of Moscheles, adapted from the original German by A. D. Coleridge (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1873), pp.236-237.

18. Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1963), p.118.

19. Russell, The Harpsichord and Clavichord, pp. 121-122. For a listing of Engel’s instruments now in the museum, see Howard Schott, Victoria and Albert Museum: Catalogue of Musical Instruments (London, 1985), pp.9-10.

20. The Musical Times, 1 November 1885, p.649.

21. Hipkins, Introduction by Edwin M. Ripin, p.xi; and Russell, “1800,” p.63.

22. Hipkins, p.91. Hipkins’s comment raises some questions, however, since English double harpsichords of the period were always equipped with a dogleg arrangement so that the upper-manual 8-foot register was available on the lower manual. See Frank Hubbard, Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), pp. 153-160. Did Hipkins, perhaps, play a non-English-style instrument for the Goldberg Variations? See note 29 below.

23. Hipkins, p.64.

24. Zeitschrift für Instrumentenbau, 1 March 1888; quoted in Eta Harich-Schneider, Die Kunst des Cembalospiels, 3d ed. (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1970), p. 14.

25. Both comments were quoted in Schonberg, p.269.

26. The World (London), 24 May 1893.

27. The instrument is now in the Russell Collection of the University of Edinburgh.

28. This instrument is now in the Musical Instrument Museum, Berlin (Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, Preussischer Kulturbesitz), no. 17 in the catalog of the collection: cembalo of Pleyel, Wolff, Lyon & Cie. Another early example of Pleyel’s work is in the collection of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.

29. Information based on Howard Schott, “The Harpsichord Revival,” Early Music II:2 (April 1974):85-95; and Staatliches Institut für Musikforschung, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Das Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin—Eine Einfiihrung in Wort und Bild (Berlin, 1968). Concerning the sound of these instruments, George Bernard Shaw’s description of the Pleyel harpsichord used in a concert by Alfred Hipkins early in 1893 is a classic: “Is there the smallest reason to suppose that if we took to making harpsichords we would make good ones? Alas! the question is already answered. . . . Mr. Hipkins [played] . . . on a new harpsichord manufactured by a very eminent Parisian firm of pianoforte makers; and not only did it prove itself a snarling abomination, with vices of tone that even a harmonium would have been ashamed of, but it had evidently been deliberately made so in order to meet the ordinary customer’s notion of a powerful and brilliant instrument” (The World, 11 January 1893; quoted in G. B. Shaw, Music in London 1890-94 [London: Constable, 1932], vol. II, p.225.

30. Program by the Societe des Instrumens Anciens given in the Salle Erard, Paris, 1 April 1893; collection of the author.

31. Schonberg, pp.269-270. Diémer’s student Alfredo Casella played harpsichord professionally beginning in 1906 as a member of Henri Casadesus’s ensemble of ancient instruments. “This was a new type of activity for me, and I received some good advice from Diemer, who played the instrument very well” (Alfredo Casella, Music in My Time, translated by Spencer Norton [Florence, 1941; Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1955], p.72).

32. Angel Record S-36095 (1976). The work was published by Henri Lemoine, Brussels; no. 9598.H.P.690.

33. Isidor Philipp, “Charles-Marie Widor: A Portrait,” The Musical Quarterly 30 (April 1944): 130-131.

34. See Michael de Cossart, The Food of Love. Princesse Edmond de Polignac (1865-1943) and her Salon (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1978), pp.51-52.

35. The composition is the second of the Epigrammes de Clement Marot, published by Max Eschig (Paris), no. E-571.D.

36. Information about this premiere is found in Arbie Orenstein, Ravel, Man and Musician (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), p.21. The discography (p. 249), lists a recording of the work by Paule de Lestang, soprano, in which she accompanies herself at the harpsichord: electrical disc, 25 cm. Gramophone [France] K5338; 1927.

37. The harpsichord had already been used in the opera orchestra in Vienna, under Gustav Mahler; and at London’s Covent Garden, where the conductor Hans Richter led several Mozart perforances using the instrument to accompany the recitatives.

38. James Harding, Massenet (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1970), p. 170. An example of the music for harpsichord is given. In describing the musical and dramatic qualities of the opera Harding writes, “The most effective stroke of all is the harpsichord passage noted earlier” (p. 172).

39. From notes to a recording of Thérèse, London AOSA 1165, conducted by Richard Bonynge.

1.
A PASSION FOR COLLECTING

1. Morris Steinert, Reminiscences, compiled by Jane Marlin (New York: Putnam’s, 1900), pp. 195-196.

2. Ibid., p. 196.

3. Ibid., p.210.

4. Ibid., pp.210-211.

5. Steinert probably owned the only harpsichords in playing condition in Boston, and possibly in all of the United States! In 1885, when Mr. B.J. Lang organized a celebration of J. S. Bach’s 200th birthday, he needed a harpsichord for a performance of the Coffee Cantata, so he borrowed one from the Steinert Collection. It was almost certainly the first time in sixty years or more that a harpsichord had been heard in public concert in Boston (William Lyman Johnson, “Musical Life in Boston,” Bulletin of the Library of the Harvard Musical Association, April 1946).

6. Steinert, p.221.

7. The 1710 date on the Hass harpsichord is very doubtful. A checklist of the Yale Collection of Early Instruments (1968) notes that “the third digit has been altered” and gives the date ca. 1770. The Ruckers mother-and-child virginal (a regular 8-foot instrument in the same case with an octave-sounding 4-foot instrument) is dated ca. 1590 in the same checklist.

8. Reprinted from The New Haven Register in Musical Courier 26:24 (14 June 1893): 32. The instrument is pictured in Eva J. O’Meara, “Historic Instruments in the Steinart Collection,” Yale Alumni Weekly, 29 March 1929, p.795.

9. Belle Skinner of Holyoke, Massachusetts, discovered a Ruckers double-manual harpsichord rebuilt by Blanchet (1756) during an early trip to Europe. The purchase of this instrument whetted her appetite for more. Her collection eventually included an additional five harpsichords (among them the large Hass that Steinert had found in Vienna), two clavichords, three virginals, and four spinets (including an ottavina by Taskin). In 1960 this collection, too, was presented to Yale University. More of the Steinert instruments have been added to the original gift, including the long-term loan of the Albert Steinert Collection from the Rhode Island School of Design.

10. Musical Courier 19:25 (18 December 1889): 520. The instrument did not remain in Milwaukee forever. It was presented to the Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts, in 1939 by Mrs. Fanny Reed Hammond. The history and full description of the instrument are given in M. Sue Ladr’s notes to Titanic Records, Ti-49 (1979), a recording of works by Handel and Scarlatti, played by Mark Kroll.

11. Eloise Lownsberry, “Nelly Custis’ Harpsichord,” The Etude 59 (February 1941):92.

12. The Music Trade Review 38:17 (1904): 26.

13. Emanuel Winternitz, Keyboard Instruments in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 1961), p.6. The Catalogue of Keyboard Musical Instruments in the Crosby Brown Collection (New York, 1903) is a profusely illustrated volume of more than 300 pages. The scholarly introduction on the history of keyboard instruments was written by A. J. Hipkins.

14. See Cynthia Hoover, “Music at the Smithsonian,” The Smithsonian Journal of History II:l (Spring 1967):55-56.

15. Albert A. Stanley, Catalogue of the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, 1921), p. 11.

16. Important instruments from the collection were sold at auction during the 1970s.

17. Raymond Russell, The Harpsichord and Clavichord: An Introductory Study 2d ed., revised by Howard Schott (New York: Norton, 1973), p. 124.

18. Raymond Russell, “The Harpsichord Since 1800,” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 82 (1955/56): 62 (reprint, Nendeln/Lichtenstein: Kraus, 1968.)

2.
AN EXPLORER ARRIVES

1. The life story of Arnold Dolmetsch is an absorbing one; fortunately there is a well-researched biography by Margaret Campbell, Arnold Dolmetsch: the Man and his Work (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1975), from which these and other details unascribed to other sources have been taken.

2. Mabel Dolmetsch, Personal Recollections of Arnold Dolmetsch (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), p.8.

3. Gevaert’s obituary in Musical Courier 57:27 (30 December 1908):37 includes a portrait of the old gentleman seated at a two-manual harpsichord.

4. Campbell, pp. 15-23.

5. Ibid., pp.29-30.

6. “Dolmetsch and His Instruments,” brochure from Arnold Dolmetsch, Ltd. (Haslemere, Surrey, 1929), p.3.

7. George Bernard Shaw, in The World, 4 July 1894, quoted in Campbell, p.83.

8. “Dolmetsch and His Instruments,” p.3.

9. At number 6 Queen Square one may now see Dolmetsch’s name inscribed with those of his fellow members in the Art Workers’ Guild (founded by his friend Morris), who took over the spot when Dolmetsch vacated it; fittingly a conference on Early Music in Britain was held here in 1979, chaired by Dolmetsch’s student Robert Donington.

10. John Runciman, Saturday Review, 11 May 1895; quoted in Campbell, pp.87-88.

11. A description of this instrument, with pictures of the decoration, appeared in International Studio 10 (New York): 187-194. This opus one, which Russell compares to an Italianate instrument, had but one 8-foot stop, with a compass of GG-f3. The decorative painting was done in tempera. It must have been the haste of finishing the instrument for the exhibition that precluded a second register, as there seems to be room for one in the instrument. The three pedals include one for a harp stop and one for shifting the pitch of the instrument up or down a half-step. The harpsichord had to be sold during Dolmetsch’s bankruptcy proceedings in 1901; it was returned to him thirty years later through the generosity of a friend, Gerald Cooper. The harpsichord is now in the portion of the Dolmetsch Collection owned by the Horniman Museum, Forest Hill, London, on display at the Ranger’s House, Blackheath, London (Howard Schott, “The Harpsichord Revival,” Early Music 11:2 [April 1974]: 87).

12. Campbell, pp. 117-118.

13. George Moore, Evelyn Innes (1898), pp. 1-2. For comments on this work, see Elizabeth Roche, “George Moore’s Evelyn Innes: a Victorian ‘early music’ novel,” Early Music, XI: 1 (January 1983):71-73.

14. Mabel Dolmetsch, p.31.

15. Campbell, pp. 137-141.

16. A program for this event is in the collection of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

17. Richard Aldrich, Concert Life in New York 1902-1923 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), p. 18.

18. The Boston Public Library has a collection of clippings dealing with Arnold Dolmetsch’s American years: ML46, B6D55, Brown Collection, compiled by the Music Department, Boston Public Library, 1946.

19. “From the Makers of Music,” The Music Trades, 24 January 1903; p.7.

20. Campbell, p. 148.

21. The libretto of Ariadne auf Naxos presents the comic scenario of an opera buffa and an opera seria being performed together with scenes intermingled rather than as two separate musical works.

22. Campbell, pp. 161-162.

23. Ibid., pp.163, 165

24. “Dolmetsch and His Instruments,” p.3.

25. C. M. Ayars, Contributions to the Art of Music in America (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1937), pp. 113-116.

26. Margaret Campbell, “Dolmetsch’s American Years,” Bulletin of the Dolmetsch Foundation 19 (August 1972):4.

27. Jo-Shipley Watson, in The Musician (Boston) 17 (January 1912): 11.

28. “As auxiliary harpsichordist for our chamber concerts we had a young Californian (one-time infant prodigy) named Charles Adams, employed by Chickering to demonstrate pianos. He took to the harpsichord with immense enthusiasm and acquired a nice easy touch. Thus we were able once more to complete our ensemble which had suffered a loss through the return to England of Kathleen Salmon” (Mabel Dolmetsch, p.69).

29. “President Roosevelt Greatly Interested in Clavichord,” The Music Trades, 26 December 1908, p.9.

30. Mabel Dolmetsch, pp.69-70.

31. “A Small Plaster House—Luquer and Godfrey, Architects,” The House Beautiful and American Shrubs, April 1912, pp. 135-136.

32. Campbell, “Dolmetsch’s American Years,” p.3.

33. William Lyman Johnson, “Musical Life in Boston,” Library of the Harvard Musical Association, Bulletin No. 14 (April 1946): n.p.; in Dolmetsch Scrapbook, Boston Public Library.

34. Dolmetsch Scrapbook, Boston Public Library Collection, n.p.

35. Mabel Dolmetsch, pp.77-78. The description of the harpsichord includes the phrase “the first to be equipped with a sixteen-foot register.” This appears to be an error, as will be pointed out below; I have, thus, omitted this phrase at the ellipsis marks.

36. Ferruccio Busoni, Letters to his Wife, translated by Rosamond Ley (London: E. Arnold, 1938), p. 172. A picture of Busoni at his harpsichord was published in Early Music XI: 1 (January 1983):32.

37. Mabel Dolmetsch, p.78.

38. Translated in Campbell, Arnold Dolmetsch, p. 177. The original French text of this letter appears on p. 176.

39. Breitkopf & Hartel Nr. 4836.

40. See Anthony Beaumont, Busoni the Composer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985), p.215 and Plate 15.

41. See Larry Palmer, “Harpsichord Repertoire in the 20th Century: the Busoni Sonatina,” The Diapason, September 1973, pp. 10-11, for a full discussion of this work. The first recording on the harpsichord was made by the author for The Musical Heritage Society on MHS 3222, The Harpsichord Now and Then.

42. Mabel Dolmetsch, pp.81-82.

43. This should put to rest, once and for all, the controversy concerning the date of Dolmetsch’s introduction of the 16-foot register into his harpsichords. Busoni’s instrument, number sixty of the Chickering production, was eventually repurchased by the firm from Busoni’s widow. It was sold first to the American harpsichordist Lotta Van Buren and then to Ralph Kirkpatrick, who used it for his early concerts and recordings. This instrument does not contain a 16-foot register. It should be noted that Dolmetsch’s 16-foot evidently predated the first such register in the Pleyel harpsichords. Their Landowska model, so-endowed, was introduced in 1912. German builders had included the 16-foot stop even earlier. The Gemeentemuseum in The Hague owns a Wilhelm Hirl Harpsichord of 1899 modeled on the spurious “Bach harpsichord.” Hirl’s instrument was built for the Dutch musical amateur Daniel Scheurleer.

44. Johnson, Boston Public Library Collection.

45. Mabel Dolmetsch, pp.88-89.

46. Johnson, n.p.

47. Campbell, Arnold Dolmetsch, pp. 181-182.

3.
DOLMETSCH’S AMERICAN LEGACY

1. Quote from the New York American printed in a Namara advertisement, Musical Courier, 17 January 1918, p.23. A portrait of Namara and friends with pianist-accompanist Rudolph Ganz seated at the two-manual harpsichord appeared on p. 24.

2. John Ardoin, “Namara: A Remembrance,” The Opera Quarterly 1:4 (Winter 1983):76. Namara, who had toured with Caruso and McCormack, danced with Isadora Duncan and starred in a silent film with Rudolph Valentino. She sang into her eighties (she died in Spain in 1974). She recorded Falla’s Nana accompanying herself at her spinet.

3. Richard Aldrich, Concert Life in New York 1902-1923 (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), pp. 528-529.

4. From a brochure in the Koussevitzsky Bequest, the Library of Congress, Le Celebre Societe des Instruments Anciens (Paris, printed by M. Surugue).

5. New York Times, 17 January 1926. Mason was a member of a distinguished American musical family and professor of music at Columbia University beginning in 1909. For a fascinating picture of musical life in the United States in the early years of the twentieth century, see his Music in My Time and Other Reminiscences (New York, 1938). The full text of Landowska’s letter is given in chapter 4 below.

6. Sigmund Spaeth, “Musical Uplift for the Collegian,” Opera Magazine 1 (April 1914):32.

7. New York Times, 12 December 1907.

8. Arthur Whiting, The Lesson of the Clavichord, [n.d.], pp. 5-6. From the collection of The Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

9. Mabel Dolmetsch, Personal Recollections of Arnold Dolmetsch (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957), pp.75-76.

10. Whiting, p.6.

11. Ibid., p.8.

12. Ibid., p.9.

13. Mabel Dolmetsch, p.82.

14. Spaeth, pp.31-32.

15. Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Music, 6th ed., edited by Nicholas Slonimsky, p. 1304.

16. Musical Courier, 22 April 1914, p.37.

17. The Musical Monitor, May 1918, p.425.

18. New York Times, 7 March 1926, sec. VIII, p.6.

19. Ibid., 22 March 1918, p. 11.

20. Ibid., 6 January 1937, p. 19.

21. “Deep River Antiques,” Time, 19 August 1935, p.32.

22. Biographical information is taken from a typescript sketch for a biography made by Lotta Van Buren’s husband, Henry Bizallion (Van Buren Papers, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah).

23. Musical Courier, 12 June 1912.

24. Ibid., 26 January 1922.

25. Musical America, 9 August 1924.

26. Musical Courier, 11 March 1926, p.47.

27. Musical Observer, October 1923.

28. Script for radio program “So You Haven’t the Time?” by Alice Pentlange, Station WQXR, New York 26 May 1937 (Van Buren Papers).

29. Eva J. O’Meara, “Historic Instruments in the Steinert Collection,” The Yale Alumni Weekly, 29 March 1929, pp.795-796. O’Meara was the librarian of the School of Music.

30. Fortune, August 1934, p. 10.

31. A Recital Upon Old Instruments, 2 April 1940, Palmer Auditorium, Connecticut College, New London, Connecticut (Van Buren Papers).

4.
THE INCOMPARABLE WANDA LANDOWSKA

1. Pitts Sanborn, “Wanda Landowska,” The Nation 118:3066 (9 April 1924).

2. Harriette Brower, Modern Masters of the Keyboard (New York: Frederick A. Stokes, 1926), p.85.

3. Denise Restout and Robert Hawkins, eds., Landowska on Music (New York: Stein and Day, 1964), p. 19.

4. The Etude 23 (November 1905):444; translated from the French by Edward Burlingame Hill.

5. Musical Courier, 29 November 1923, p.20.

6. Ibid., 3 January 1924, p. 14.

7. Ibid., 24 January 1924, pp.24-25.

8. Ibid., 28 February 1924, p.32.

9. Charles E. Watt, Musical News, 21 March 1924, p.6.

10. Musical Courier, 20 March 1924, p.60.

11. See Restout and Hawkins, Discography, pp.411-422. See also Julian Morton Moses, Collector’s Guide to American Recording, 1895-1925 (New York, 1949), where these selections are listed as Victor Records 973 and 1038, recorded in 1924.

12. Arthur Shattuck, The Memoirs of Arthur Shattuck, edited by S. F. Shattuck (Neenah, WI: privately printed, 1961), pp. 106-108. Shattuck (1881-1951), a touring artist of some reputation, had an enduring interest in older music. In 1928 he acquired a Beethoven piano that had been restored by Lotta Van Buren and presented it to the Beethoven Association. A large Pleyel harpsichord acquired in 1929 was inaugurated in his Paris apartment by Landowska’s pupil Ruggiero Gerlin. The same instrument eventually was brought to Shattuck’s New York apartment, from which it was borrowed on at least one occasion by Landowska. The harpsichord was bequeathed to the Lawrence Conservatory of Music in autumn 1952) Memoirs, pp.224-225).

13. George Painter, Marcel Proust: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1959—1965), “An Indian Summer,” vol. 2, pp.334-335. I am grateful to Momo Aldrich for pointing out this citation to me. She also mentioned that according to Landowska, her husband, Henri Lew, was something of a sadist, and that he insisted that Wanda try every experience possible—a necessity, in his opinion for an artistic personality.

14. Brower, p.83. Brower interviewed Landowska in “her artistic studios, high up in one of New York’s residential hotels, situated in the heart of the city. . . .”

15. Musical Courier, 20 November 1924, p.34.

16. Time, 27 October 1924, p. 12.

17. Pitts Sanborn, “The 1925-26 Season,” Modern Music 3:4 (May-June 1926):3-9.

18. New York Times, 3 January 1926.

19. Musical Courier, 4 February 1926, p.20.

20. Time, 15 March 1926, p. 18.

21. Olin Downes, New York Times, 7 January 1927.

22. The Boston program was the eleventh of the orchestra’s forty-sixth season, given on Friday, 31 December 1926 and Saturday, 1 January 1927 (information from Boston Symphony program books). See also Larry Palmer, “The Concertos of Falla and Poulenc,” The Diapason, July 1979, pp.9-11. The statement in Ronald Crichton, Manuel de Falla: Descriptive Catalogue of his Works (London: Chester Music, 1976), p.45, that Landowska “never played the work again [after the Barcelona première]” is in error in view of existing programs and published critiques.

23. Musical Courier, 3 February 1927, p.45.

24. Conversation with Momo Aldrich, Honolulu, 29 December 1979.

25. Musical Courier, 22 December 1927, pp.22, 24. This is the only notice found of any Landowska appearances during this mysterious visit; the next press note details her sailing.

26. Ibid., 26 January 1928, p. 10.

27. Momo Aldrich, “Reminiscences of St. Leu,” The Diapason, July 1979, pp.3, 8.

28. Musical Courier, 10 February 1927, p.44.

29. Ibid., 3 March 1927, p.41; a report by Edouarde Combe from the Tribune, Geneva, Switzerland.

30. Eta Harich-Schneider, Charaktere und Katastrophen (Berlin: Ullstein, 1978), pp. 81-83; freely translated by the author.

31. Ralph Kirkpatrick, Early Years (New York: Peter Lang, 1985), p.68.

32. Ibid., p.69.

33. Ibid.

34. Lucille Wallace (1898-1977) was born in Chicago. In 1931 she became the wife of the noted British pianist Clifford Curzon, also an interpretation student of Landowska’s.

5.
LEWIS RICHARDS, AMERICAN HARPSICHORDIST

1. Landowska’s debut with the Philadelphia Orchestra took place twelve days later.

2. Musical Courier, 31 January 1924.

3. From Lewis Richards program of 2 March 1932, Peoples Church, East Lansing, Michigan; courtesy of Elsa Richards.

4. Quoted in Musical Courier, 31 January 1924, p. 19.

5. Ibid.

6. Muskegon-Brunswick 3205A/B and Brunswick 2930A/B.

7. Musical Courier, 11 February 1926, p.46.

8. Damrosch was no stranger to the harpsichord; he had purchased an instrument from Arnold Dolmetsch.

9. Musical Courier, 9 December 1926, p.33.

10. Ibid., 2 December 1926, p.20.

11. Ibid., 30 December 1926, p.25.

12. New York Times, 13 October 1929; Musical Courier, 9 November 1929, p.39.

13. Musical Courier, 5 November 1925, p.26.

14. Ibid., 4 October 1930, p.5.

6.
LANDOWSKA’S AMERICAN CIRCLE

1. Momo Aldrich, “Reminiscences of St. Leu,” The Diapason, July 1979, p.8.

2. Ibid., p.3.

3. According to Momo Aldrich, this was Putnam’s view in the 1930s. But when Landowska returned to the United States in the 1940s, his judgment was that she was “considerably mellowed.”

4. Paul Emerson, “Stanford’s Aldrich . . . to retire,” Palo Alto Times, 30 May 1969.

5. Nicolas Slonimsky, Perfect Pitch (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 142.

6. Letter from Momo Aldrich to the author, dated 29 April 1988.

7. Elizabeth Borton, “Talking it Over With Unusual Bostonians: Putnam Aldrich,” Boston Herald, 25 June 1933, p. B7.

8. For the full text of Aldrich’s complimentary review, see pp. 79-80.

9. Emerson, Palo Alto Times. Actually, Aldrich had been a visiting lecturer at Princeton University in 1939 and, from 1939 to 1942, both lecturer and performer at the Berkshire Music Center in Tanglewood.

10. Putnam Aldrich, “Classics of Music Literature: Wanda Landowska’s Musique Ancienne,” Music Library Notes 27:3 (March 1971):466.

11. Conversation with Arthur Lawrence, 21 September 1979.

12. Information on Aldrich’s performing career, when not otherwise credited, comes from a “Putnam Aldrich Bibliography” compiled by Edward Colby, head music librarian of Stanford University and Elizabeth Hays, a Ph.D. student and harpsichordist. This eleven-page listing of publications and performances with dates was provided by Momo Aldrich.

13. Emerson, Palo Alto Times.

14. Time, 30 October 1939, p.36.

15. Musical Courier, 5 January 1928, p. 16. The article is signed “C.” and was apparently written by Jeannette Cox, who is listed as the journal’s correspondent from Chicago. During a conversation with Gavin Williamson in Chicago on 22 September 1979 the author was assured that the story was true.

16. Music News (Chicago), 12 January 1923, p. 18.

17. Musical Courier, 25 October 1928, p. 10.

18. Conversation with Gavin Williamson.

19. Bjarne Dahl, “Pleyel,” The Harpsichord VI:2 (1973): 3.

20. “Le Printemps rejeunit la terre,/Et les semences qu’elle enserre/ Se respandent en mille fleurs:/ Ainsi ceste douce harmonie/ Nous changes,/ Et rejeunit la vie,/ Par ses traitz de mille couleurs.” (Spring rejuvenates the earth,/ And the seed which she nurtures/ Blossoms into a thousand flowers./ Thus doth sweet harmony/ That changes us and rejuvenates life/ With its many-toned colors.—Translated by Allegra Aldrich Tarentino.)

21. Musical Courier, 14 January 1933, p.22.

22. Lois Watt North, Musical News (Chicago), 13 July 1939, p. 18. Also on the program was the Chicago premiere of Job by Vaughan Williams, conducted by Adrian Boult. The Bach had been directed from the harpsichords by the soloists.

23. Conversation with Gavin Williamson.

24. Musical Courier, 22 March 1928, p.41.

25. The Manuel and Williamson Harpsichord Ensemble, circular from Louise Spoor, Chicago; quoted in Sr. Stephen Marie Lyons, “Reawakening Interest in the Harpsichord,” M.A. thesis, St. Joseph College, 1966, p.84.

26. Conversation with Gavin Williamson.

27. Letter from Samuel P. Puner to the author dated 13 June 1983.

28. Hal Haney, “Interview with Alice Ehlers,” The Harpsichord VI: 1 (1973):5.

29. Oral History Transcript, UCLA Library 300/57, p.24.

30. Ibid., p. 15.

31. Ibid., p.21.

32. Ibid.

33. Alice Ehlers, Vom Cembalo (Wolfenbüttel-Berlin: G. Kallmeyer Verlag, 1933), p.6.

34. Oral History, p. 171.

35. Ibid., p.59.

36. Ibid., pp.32, 38, 62. Hindemith (1895-1963) professed a strong dislike for the harpsichord as an instrument (could it have had anything to do with too much Daquin?). Sadly, he never wrote a solo work for the instrument, although his musical aesthetic would have seemed perfectly suited to the medium. He did, however, introduce the harpsichord into the score of his opera The Long Christmas Dinner (Mainz: Schott’s Sohne, 1986).

37. Boston Herald, 19 February 1936.

38. Reviews quoted in David Ewen, Living Musicians (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1940), p. 109. Ewen misstates that this New York concert was Ehlers’s “American” debut.

39. Oral History, p.50.

40. Ibid., p.47.

41. Ibid., pp.47-48.

42. Ibid., p.204.

43. Ibid., p. 193.

44. Dahl, p.3.

45. Oral History, p.21.

7.
MADE IN AMERICA: HARPSICHORDS?

1. Una L. Allen, “A Dolmetsch of the Middle-West,” The Musician, November 1932, pp. 5-6.

2. Hal Haney, “Portrait of a Builder: John Challis,” The Harpsichord 11:3 (1969): 16.

3. William Dowd, lecture, “The 20th-century Harpsichord Revival,” Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 24 April 1980.

4. Conversation with Dowd’s former apprentice Willard Martin; Dallas, 30 June 1987.

5. Haney, p. 16.

6. Time, 24 January 1944, pp.92-93.

7. “Many have been interested in the beautiful woods I use in the instruments. The outside casework is of American walnut, beautifully figured, and finished with linseed oil, which brings out the natural beauty of the wood. This, a very old method of finishing, is not used today because of the length of time needed; it requires that the wood be of beautiful grain—which is too expensive for modern manufacturers. The sharps are made of boxwood—a very hard, golden colored wood—and the naturals of ebony. This reversed coloring of the keys was the old custom. While I like the following of custom, this is not the real reason for holding to it. Keys made entirely of wood are much more pleasant to play, and they harmonize with the rest of the instrument which is also of wood” (John Challis, “The Harpsichord’s Revival,” The American Organist 18 [October 1935]: 382).

8. Wolfgang Zuckermann, The Modern Harpsichord (New York: October House, 1969), p.93.

9. Information from Haney, p. 17, and from Dowd lecture.

10. Zuckermann surmised that the metal was actually anodized aluminum, less than ¹/₁₆ inch thick (p.94).

11. Haney, pp.20-21.

12. Zuckermann, p.97.

13. Brochure, Instruments Made by John Challis, pp.4-5

14. Dowd lecture.

15. Time, 15 August 1960, p. 56.

16. The author, by fortuitous chance, happened to be present for Biggs’s first encounter with this instrument.

17. The author was seated in an adjacent row at this concert. It was pleasant to renew acquaintance with John Challis and to receive an invitation to visit his new quarters, the shop on lower lower Fifth Avenue.

18. The Diapason, January 1975, p. 14.

19. Bernard Asbell, “After Hours: The Harpsichord with the Forward Look,” Harper’s 216 (June 1958): 80.

20. John Caffrey, “John Challis and Julius Wahl: Harpsichords for Americans,” Musical America, February 1950, p. 131. Zuckermann, p. 194, relies exclusively on these facts from Musical America.

21. Letter to the author from Max E. Wahl, Julius Wahl’s son, dated 5 August 1988.

22. Caffrey, p. 131.

23. Ibid.

24. Ibid., p.248.

25. Hal Haney. “Conversation with Builder-Harpsichordist Claude Jean Chiasson,” The Harpsichord V:3 (1972):9.

26. Ibid., p.6.

27. Ibid., p.7.

28. Ibid., pp.7-8.

29. Ibid., p.9.

8.
NEW GENERATION, NEW AESTHETIC

1. Time, 3 February 1947, p.46.

2. Ralph Kirkpatrick, “Fifty Years of Harpsichord Playing,” Early Music XI: 1 (January 1983): 31.

3. Ibid., p.33.

4. Ralph Kirkpatrick, Early Years (New York: Peter Lang, 1985), p.65.

5. Ibid., p.77.

6. Ibid., p.71; dated Tuesday, 20 October 1931.

7. Ibid., p.80.

8. Ibid., p.86.

9. Ibid., pp.92-93.

10. Kirkpatrick later gave a concise overview of this spurious “Bach harpsichord” and its effect on registration in Bach’s harpsichord music: “Although it never did belong to the Bach family, it came to be regarded as a typical Bach instrument. It now has eight-and four-foot on the upper manual and eight-and sixteen-foot on the lower. . . . Until recent years at least ninety percent of modern harpsichord building in Germany was influenced by this ‘Bach instrument.’ Friedrich Ernst has proved not only that the four-foot was originally on the lower manual but that the sixteen-foot was actually a later addition to the instrument”) Interpreting Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier [New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984], p. 10).

11. “I took two hours with Ramin, during which I played the rest of the Goldberg Variations and we went over the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto and a Handel Chaconne. Ramin played a certain amount, with a great deal of vitality and a certain grand and very exciting style, along with many false notes and general indifference to detail. His playing is certainly that of a man of great talent, but distinctly personal, romantic and often rather restless” (Kirkpatrick, Early Years, p. 100).

12. Ibid., p.99.

13. Ibid., pp. 102-103.

14. Musical America, 25 April 1934, p.33.

15. Paul Rosenfeld, “J. S. Bach: Three Glimpses. I. Bach the Colorist,” in Discoveries of a Music Critic, (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1936; reprint 1972), pp. 28-30. See also the description of Kirkpatrick’s clavichord program in Ralph Kirkpatrick, “On Playing the Clavichord,” Early Music IX:3 (July 1981):301, where he quotes the review from the New York Times of 11 April 1934: “Mr. Kirkpatrick’s technique, the precision and delicacy of his touch, are almost faultless. But the remarkable thing about his playing, after one accustoms one’s ears to the Lilliputian dynamics of the clavichord, is the illusion of great range in volume he establishes through the complete identification of himself with his subject and the variations of tone color and tonal power, hence emotional vividness, that his sublety achieves, from the tiny, exquisite vibrato of a saraband’s slow melody to the brilliant friskiness of a gigue.

“So complete was one’s transportation into another and more delicate realm of sound that one left the recital feeling that the most whispered utterance of a piano must henceforth sound gross.”

16. Kirkpatrick, “Fifty Years,” p.35.

17. Ibid., p.35.

18. Ibid., p.34.

19. Julius Bloom, ed., The Year in American Music, 1946-1947 (New York: Allen, Towne, and Heath, 1947), pp.57-58.

20. J. S. Bach, Goldberg Variations, edited for the harpsichord or piano by Ralph Kirkpatrick (New York: G. Schirmer, 1938), p.ix.

21. Ibid., p.xxviii.

22. Willie Ruff, “A Musician’s Legacy: Ralph Kirkpatrick Remembered,” Yale Alumni Magazine, April 1985, p.20.

23. Virgil Thomson, The Musical Scene (New York: Knopf, 1947), pp.62-63.

24. Musical Courier 139 (15 February 1949):37-38 signed “R.K.” [Rafael Kammerer].

25. Musical America 72 (February 1952):212; signed “A.H.”

26. Published by G. Schirmer as volumes 1774 and 1775 in Schirmer’s Library of Musical Classics.

27. Musical America, 1 February 1954, p.24; signed “R.K.” [Rafael Kammerer].

28. Kirkpatrick, “Fifty Years,” pp.37-38.

29. Newsweek, 7 October 1957, p.80.

9.
TWO “FIRST LADIES OF THE HARPSICHORD”

1. Nicolas Slonimsky, ed., Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Musicians, 5 th ed. (New York: G. Schirmer, 1958), p. 1232.

2. Time, 12 October 1936, p.50. The article was illustrated with a Bernard Hoffman photograph of Pessl at the harpsichord.

3. Biographical information from The International Who Is Who in Music, 5th ed. (Chicago, 1951), p.328; and David Ewen, Living Musicians (New York: H. W. Wilson, 1940), p.274. See also Catherine A. Dower, Yella Pessl: A Life of Fire and Conviction (Westfield, MA: Westfield State College, 1986), p.34, concerning the date of Pessl’s retirement from Columbia University.

4. New York Times, 2 February 1941; signed “R.P.”

5. New York Times, 3 February 1942.

6. Conversation with Ben Hyams, Honolulu, Hawaii, 12 January 1983.

7. New York Times, 27 March 1945.

8. As a novice harpsichord student at the Salzburg Mozarteum in 1958 the author occasionally practiced on that institution’s Maendler-Schramm “Bach-model” harpsichord. It was common talk among the students that if the instrument were moved the outside wall against which it was placed would probably collapse. For all its heavy construction the instrument was of that variety known as a “whisperchord.” Hearing it at all was a triumph.

9. Wolfgang Zuckermann, The Modern Harpsichord (New York: October House, 1969), p. 143.

10. New York Times 29 December 1946; signed “R.L.”

11. Ibid., 4 March 1958; signed “E.D.”

12. Information from Press Book: Sylvia Marlowe, Harpsichordist, p.5. Mimeographed manuscript from The Harpsichord Music Society, courtesy of Kenneth Cooper.

13. Hal Haney, “Interview with Sylvia Marlowe,” The Harpsichord IV:3 (1971):6-7. It might be with a bit of a vested interest that Virgil Thomson wrote of Marlowe and her harpsichord in 1947: “One cannot be too grateful to Miss Marlowe and the Boston group for giving us great music from the past on instruments closely resembling those for which it was conceived. I say closely resembling because Miss Marlowe plays a modern harpsichord—a Pleyel, the finest in town, I should think . . .”) The Art of Judging Music [New York: Knopf, 1948], p.64).

14. Haney, p.7.

15. Newsweek, 8 May 1939, pp.36-37.

16. Haney, p.7.

17. “Musicians mostly don’t hold, either, with the popular practice of swinging the classics, though they constantly do it to amuse one another at social gatherings. And yet every age has forced the music of previous ages to obey the rhythmic customs of its own. . . . And I have found charming entertainment in an evening radio hour during which Miss Sylvia Marlowe at the harpsichord and some excellent jazz musicians improvise in the American rhythmic style on melodies from Haydn and Rameau” (Virgil Thomson, “Transcriptions,” in The Music Scene [New York: Knopf, 1947], p.276.

18. David Keith [pseudonym for Francis Steegmuller], Blue Harpsichord (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1949), p. 18.

19. Ibid., pp. 178-179.

20. Noel Straus, “Sylvia Marlowe in Classic Works,” New York Times, 17 January 1946.

21. New York Times, 29 November 1948; signed “N.S.”

22. Harold C. Schonberg, “American in Orient,” New York Times, 22 April 1956.

23. Else Stone and Kurt Stone, eds., The Writings of Elliott Carter (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), p.272.

24. Musical Courier 159 (March 1959):19; signed “J.L.B.”

25. Ibid.

26. An additional composition by Rieti, Concertino for Five Instruments, was scored for harpsichord, flute, viola, cello, and harp.

27. Letter to the author, 29 September 1970.

28. Donal Henahan, New York Times, 14 January 1972. In the Preface to Mikrokosmos Bartók suggested the use of the harpsichord for some of the pieces. A recording, “Two Harpsichords Live,” with works of Stravinsky, Bartók, Satie, and Thomson from this recital and from Marlowe’s last public concert appearance (30 March 1976) was issued by The Harpsichord Music Society Archive as HMS 901 in 1988.

29. Haney, p.20.

30. Newsweek, 2 April 1962, p.50.

31. Written in 1948, quoted in Kenneth Cooper, “Sylvia Marlowe: Wit, Warmth, and Wisdom,” High Fidelity, June 1982, p.55.

32. New York Times, 19 January 1973.

33. Ibid., 15 October 1975.

34. Cooper, discography, p.56.

35. Music Journal 20:1 (January 1962):71.

10.
A GOLDEN AGE

1. Obituary, Musical America, September 1959, p. 12.

2. Virgil Thomson, The Musical Scene (New York: Knopf, 1947), pp.201-202.

3. For a first-hand account of these harrowing days, see Hal Haney, “Conversation with Harpsichordist Denise Restout,” The Harpsichord VII: 1 (1974): 11, 14-15.

4. Ibid., pp. 15-16.

5. Ibid., p. 16.

6. Hal Haney, “Conversation with Claude Jean Chiasson,” The Harpsichord V:3 (1972): 12.

7. Newsweek, 23 February 1948, p.84.

8. Julius Bloom, ed., The Year in American Music, 1946-1947 (New York: Allen, Towne, and Heath, 1947), pp.230-231.

9. This account, originally in English, was transcribed into German by Isolde Ahlgrimm who was a teacher of Mrs. Thomas. The retranslation into English, made in 1979 by the present author, has been checked for accuracy by Ahlgrimm. The Thomases, listed previously as purchasers of a Challis harpsichord, were residents of Ohio for many years. They retired to California.

10. Thomson, “A Shower of Gold,” 22 October 1942, in The Musical Scene, p.203.

11. Virgil Thomson, “Definitive Renderings,” 20 November 1944 in The Art of Judging Music (New York: Knopf, 1948), p.61.

12. Haney, “Conversation with Denise Restout,” p.7.

13. Newsweek, 23 February 1948, p.84.

14. New Republic, 28 July 1952, pp.22-23.

15. Halina Rodzinski, Our Two Lives (New York: Scribner’s, 1976), pp.262-263. Further details are offered: “The night of her first Philharmonic appearance, I looked in on her dressing room which adjoined Artur’s. She and her assistants had recreated the Landowska environs, yellow roses in a vase atop a piano, clothes, mostly velours, spilling from open suitcases, and, of all things, a chamber pot. Wanda scorned public facilities, perhaps for sanitary considerations, but undoubtedly through a sense of her worth. In either case, it was among the duties of the two assistants to minister to her thunder mug, and even this they did with grace and smiles, so loyal and dedicated a pair they were” (ibid.).

16. Wanda Landowska, “Modern Music at the Harpsichord,” quoted by Denise Restout in notes to Poulenc, Concert Champetre, International Piano Library Limited Editions recordings, IPL-107, p.9.

17. Poulenc to Lucien Chevallier in 1929; quoted in Restout, pp.9-10.

18. See note 16. Poulenc had played the work at the piano (the alternative version) with Mitroupoulos in New York in November 1948. Two previous performances with harpsichord had been radio broadcasts: the first movement only, with Yella Pessl as soloist, in 1946; and a complete performance with Sylvia Marlowe in May 1948.

19. Restout, p. 13.

20. Ibid., p. 11. Before the performances, Poulenc wrote Landowska on 17 October 1949, “That summer in 1928 when I worked with you at St.-Leu remains for me certainly a blessed time. I can still remember our long hours of work in your hall—our recesses, filled with jokes—our laughter around your famous dinner table, covered with delicious dishes—and the cherries we stole in the garden from the birds who really deserved them. How far away it seems—and yet so near to my heart. But you are a magician and the wrinkles on my old Concert Champetre will disappear under your fingers. . . . Your child musician (as you christened me at St.-Leu), Francis” (Robert Sabin, “Poulenc: ‘The Essence Is Simplicity,’” Musical America [15 November 1949], p.27).

21. Musical America, March 1949, pp.20, 22; signed “R.S.”

22. Time, 20 June 1949, pp.41-42.

23. Howard Taubman, “Priestess of the Harpsichord,” New York Times Magazine, 11 February 1951, p. 16.

24. Time, 1 December 1952, p.31.

25. Harold Cantor, “High Priestess of Happiness,” The American Mercury, July 1955, pp. 82-83.

26. An editorial extolling the success of this program appeared in Musical America for 15 November 1953: “It appeared on NBC on a Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago.”

27. The audio portion of this interview was issued on record as side 2 of Veritas, VM 104, issued by the International Piano Library.

28. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Queen of All Instruments: An Amateur Player Recounts His Long Love Affair with the Harpsichord,” New York Times Magazine, 2 January 1983, pp.34—35.

29. “For the Ages: Record of WTC,” Newsweek, 11 July 1955, p.71. The price for the six-record set was $49.95.

30. Abram Chasins, “Bach’s Will, Landowska’s Testament,” Saturday Review, 27 November 1954, pp.56-57.

31. Vis-a-vis Landowska’s Couperin, Ben Hyams, a program annotator for CBS in New York, relates a story told to him by the conductor Bernard Herrmann: “Landowska described a certain place in a Couperin piece, ‘And here is the spot where he puts his hand in her blouse’ ” (conversation with Ben Hyams, Honolulu, Hawaii, 12 January 1983).

32. Haney, “Conversation with Denise Restout,” p.23.

33. See David Stevens, “A Harpsichordist Who Dares to Buck the Tide,” New York Times, 6 October 1985.

34. Interview with Marie Zorn reported in a letter to the author from Lewis Baratz, 14 May 1987.

35. Joseph Hansen, Skinflick (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1979), p. 108.

36. William M. Hoffman, ed., Gay Plays (New York: Avon Books, 1979), pp.420-421.

37. Stereo Review, December 1984, p.39.

11.
THE PAST IS FUTURE

1. William Dowd, lecture at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 25 April 1980.

2. Hal Haney, “Portrait of a Builder: William Dowd,” The Harpsichord IV:1 (1971):10, 12. Concerning the actual chronology of these events, William Dowd commented, “Chiasson played his own ‘monster’ named ‘Penthesilea’ Queen of the Amazon[s]. I met another freshman and classmate, Dan Pinkham, there and he invited me to see his new Challis ‘portable.’ The first time I heard the Chickering in concert, Dan played it in one of the Harvard Houses” (letter to the author, 15 October 1987).

3. Frank Hubbard, “Reconstructing the Harpsichord,” in The Historical Harpsichord, I, edited by Howard Schott (New York: Pendragon Press, 1984), p.6.

4. Ibid., pp.7-8.

5. Ibid., p.9.

6. Haney, p. 12.

7. Dowd letter, 15 October 1987.

8. Haney, p.9.

9. Hubbard, p. 10.

10. Dowd letter, 15 October 1987.

11. Haney, p. 18.

12. From personal experience the author is able to report that his Dowd French double after Blanchet, completed in 1968, was built with pedals. After placing the order it took a trip to Cambridge to convince William Dowd that the pedals would be used in the twentieth-century literature and that they would not be misused in the standard repertoire. Dowd agreed to supply the instrument as ordered. When this harpsichord (his number 167) was returned in 1977 for the removal of its original brass jack slides (replaced with the now standard wooden, leather-covered ones), lightening of the key action, and requilling, Dowd was given the option of removing the pedal mechanism and replacing it with hand stops. His reply was characteristic: “I built the best pedals in the business, so let’s just leave them! ”

13. Hal Haney, “Interview with Frank Hubbard,” The Harpsichord VI: 1 (1972):14.

14. Gustav Leonhardt, “Preface,” The Historical Harpsichord I, p.vii.

15. The Dowd-von Nagel partnership ended in the summer of 1983.

16. Ralph Kirkpatrick, “Fifty Years of Harpsichord Playing,” Early Music XI: 1 (January 1983):38.

17. Josephine Robertson, “Harpsichord Popularity Is Seen Growing,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 15 December 1960. The harpsichord used at the concerts was described as “in a case of American walnut; it is patterned after one by the 18th-century French harpsichord maker Pascal Taskin. It has two manuals, three sets of strings, and five pedals: an eight-foot stop for the upper manual, an eight-foot and a four-foot for the lower, plus coupler and lute stop. Its full range is more than six octaves. The tone of the instrument is unusually reverberant and ‘long-lived,’ which fits it well for concert performance in a large hall” (Cleveland Orchestra program book [15 and 17 December 1960], p.352).

18. The work is published by Boosey and Hawkes, B&H 16239; and the recording is Columbia Records, ML 4495.

19. Oliver Daniel, quoting a letter from Kirkpatrick, in Foreword to Henry Cowell, Set of Four, (New York: Associated Music Publishers, 1976 [AMP-7436]).

20. Six Sonatas by Lou Harrison are lovely two-voice works. “I wrote them individually or in groups of two at several times, thus, the first one actually dates from the mid-30s, but the whole set was not completed until the early ‘40s. The original impulse came from two sources as the Sonatas themselves have probably already made clear to you. The first of these was my intense admiration for Manuel de Falla and especially for his use of the harpsichord in several instances including the famous Concerto. This was, in my own feelings, perhaps erroneously embedded in a matrix of feeling which concerned California. The ‘Mission Period’ style of life, artifacts, and feelings intrigued me very much. You will, of course, remember that this was the WPA period and that the dominant impulse was ‘Regionalism.’ Thus, the Cembalo Sonatas reflect ‘Nights in the Gardens of Spain,’ ‘Flamenco,’ as well as ‘Indian Dances’ and ‘Provincial Baroquery’ in the West . . .” (letter to the author from Lou Harrison, dated 11 September 1979).

21. Larry Palmer, “Ralph Kirkpatrick and Bach’s ‘Goldberg Variations,’ ” The Diapason, May 1973, p.7.

22. Ralph Kirkpatrick, Early Years (New York: Peter Lang, 1985).

23. Ralph Kirkpatrick, Interpreting Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, A Performer’s Discourse of Method (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

24. Richard Dyer, “A Master Returns to the Stage,” The Boston Globe, 24 May 1981.

25. Kirkpatrick, “Fifty Years of Harpsichord Playing,” p.40.

26. Haney, “Interview with Frank Hubbard,” pp. 16-17.

27. William Dowd Harpsichords brochure, 1983.

12.
MARATHON MAN

1. Time, 24 May 1954, pp.48, 50.

2. Hal Haney, “Interview with Fernando Valenti,” The Harpsichord 11:1(1969): 5.

3. New York Times, 16 October 1950.

4. See Larry Palmer, “Vincent Persichetti: A Love for the Harpsichord. Some Words to Mark His Seventieth Birthday,” The Diapason, June 1985, p.8.

5. Typical of Valenti’s style is the brief statement at the beginning of his The Harpsichord: A Dialogue for Beginners (Hackensack: Jerona Music, 1982): “Many years ago I promised myself that I would never put in print anything that even vaguely resembled a ‘method’ for harpsichord playing and this is it.”

6. Fernando Valenti, “Scarlatti Forever! ” High Fidelity, November 1954, p.37.

7. Ibid.

8. Scarlatti: Sonatas for Harpsichord Longo 463, 321, 209, 386, 388, 136, 418, 103, 205, 381, 475, 323. Reviewed in Musical America, July 1953, p. 17. Signed “R.S.”

9. “Scarlatti Forever! ” pp.108, 112.

10. Haney, p.5.

11. New York Times, 7 December 1974. At a recital on 28 September 1973 in London’s Purcell Room, Valenti played twenty sonatas, which were identified by Virginia Pleasants as follows: Group I—Kk. 419-239, 84-105, 421-54. Group II—Kk. 27-87, 394-395, 314-146. Group III—after an intermission—Kk. 132-133, 460-461, 426-427, 274-535. This gives a window into Valenti’s free-ranging programming of these works.

12. John Duarte, “Plucked Strings,” Music and Musicians 26:12 (August 1978):38. This is a witty way of referring to Scarlatti himself, “Queen Maria Barbara’s teacher.”

13. According to Ned Rorem, Landowska’s “First words to D.P. had been: ‘You look so sympathique, young man! Are you a pederast?’ ‘Oui, Madame.’ ‘Good. Now let’s talk about music! ” (The Paris Diary [New York: George Braziller, 1966], p. 17.

14. Partita appeared as Peters Edition 6519; Lessons, as Peters Edition 66425.

15. Owen Goldsmith, “Fernando Valenti, Grand Master of the Keyboard,” Contemporary Keyboard, April 1980, p.31.

13.
KITS, RECORDS, AND ALL THAT JAZZ

1. Down Beat 18 (16 November 1951):3; signed “len.”

2. Roger Pryor Dodge, “Harpsichords and Jazz Trumpets,” Hound and Horn, July 1934, pp. 587-608.

3. “Special Delivery Stomp reflected a style thought to be lyrically witty and pungent. . . . It presented a distinctive sound for the group . . . derived of course, from the use of the harpsichord” (Vladimir Simosko, “Artie Shaw and his Gramercy Fives,” Journal of Jazz Studies 1 11973]:39).

4. Richard Williams, “The Syncopated Harpsichord,” House Beautiful 95 (January 1953): 10. This issue of the magazine includes a picture of an antique spinet, with commentary (p.83). See also Arthur Loesser, “Return of the Harpsichord,” House Beautiful 98 (January 1956): 82ff.

5. Columbia LP, CL 1212; notes by Martha Glaser.

6. New Grove Dictionary of American Music, 1986, vol. 2, p.37.

7. Actually Messiaen did not compose for Vischer.

8. Charles McWorther to Joe Morgan, 8 June 1965; quoted in Ule Troxler, Antoinette Vischer: Dokumente zu einem Leben für das Cembalo (Basel: Birkhäuser, 1976), p.98.

9. Das moderne Cembalo der Antoinette Vischer, Wergo WER 60028.

10. Troxler, Dokumente.

11. Igor Kipnis made a solo arrangement in 1985 for his own use as a concert encore.

12. Howard Goodkind, “The Return of the Harpsichord,” American Mercury, March 1949, p.350.

13. AFKA Records 276, 274, 278. Don Angle has worked as a voicer in the Dowd Shop since 1962.

14. Notes to Columbia MS 6878 by E. Power Biggs. The repertoire included Schubert’s Marche Militaire, Chopin’s Military Polonaise, Saint-Saëns’s The Swan, Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King, and Falla’s Ritual Fire Dance.

15. Notes by E. Power Biggs to Columbia M 32495. Volume II bears the number M 33205.

16. Great Scott! Ragtime on the Harpsichord, Klavier Records, KS 510; and Scott Joplin Ragtime Harpsichord, vol. 2, KS 516.

17. Cook Records LP 113. The instrument had 16-foot, 8-foot, and 4-foot on the lower keyboard; 8-foot, 8-foot lute (a buff stop), and 4-foot on the upper; a separate pedal instrument had 16-foot and 8-foot stops.

18. Lester Trimble, Four Fragments from the Canterbury Tales for soprano, flute, clarinet, and harpsichord; Vittorio Rieti Concertino for flute, viola, cello, harp, and harpsichord.

19. Two major twentieth-century works, both dedicated to Larry Palmer, were included on this program: Rudy Shackelford’s Le Tombeau de Stravinsky, for solo harpsichord; and Gerald Near’s Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra, which received its premiere with the composer conducting.

20. Herbert Russcol, “Boom Goes the Harpsichord,” House and Garden, October 1968, p.74.

21. Richard Allen Schulze, How to Build a Baroque Concert Harpsichord (New York: Pageant Press, 1954). The book was not considered a serious contender for the do-it-yourself market.

22. Wolfgang Zuckermann, The Modern Harpsichord (New York: October House, 1969), pp.200, 201.

23. Zuckermann Harpsichords brochure.

24. Stanley H. Slom, “A Sort of Mild Mania For Doing It Yourself Hits the Music World,” Wall Street Journal, 25 January 1974.

25. Ibid., also Bernard Rosenberg and Deena Rosenberg, “Frank Hubbard, Harpsichord Maker,” in The Music Makers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979), p. 151.

26. Quoted in Russcol, p.76.

EPILOG

1. Time, 15 August 1960, p.56.

2. Ibid., 13 January 1975, p.53.

3. Ibid., 28 August 1972, p.37.

4. Ibid., 30 May 1969, pp.85-86. A shorter version of HPSCHD recorded for Nonesuch (H-71224) was sold with an individual computer printout for volume control adjustments throughout the playing, thus assuring the involvement of the listener. “You have all heard of desert-island recordings. Well, this is the one that I wouldn’t take along. . . . It lasts twenty-one minutes; I had a headache after the first five. . . . At first noisy, this ‘experience’ ultimately becomes one of tedium and almost unrelieved boredom. What a waste of three Harpsichords, which you can hardly hear through the din! Personally, I find the New York subway offers as much sonic anarchy, and at least there you are getting from one place to another” (Igor Kipnis, Stereo Review, May 1970, p. 121.) Some of the subsequent performances of HPSCHD were given in Buffalo, in Berlin, and at North Texas State University, Denton.

5. “The fairies are characterized by harps, harpsichord, celesta and percussion” (Eric Walter White, Benjamin Britten: His Life and Operas, 2d ed. [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983], p.224).

6. At the world premiere in Venice on 11 September 1951 the specified harpsichord was replaced by a piano, as it was in the first Metropolitan Opera production in 1953. Sylvia Marlowe had been asked to play Harpsichord at the Met, but before the production opened it was decided to substitute a piano because of the size of the house. Since these early substitutions, however, the opera, with harpsichord, has taken its rightful place as a repertoire staple in such outstanding companies as the Santa Fe Opera, the Opera Company of St. Louis, and the New York City Opera.

7. John W. Freeman, review of Angel DS-37869, Opera News, 4 December 1982, p.52.

8. Letter to Wolfgang Zuckermann, published in The Harpsichord III:2 (1970):18.