HKSNA, Duphly, Skowroneck, Leonhardt, and Kreisler: A Twisted Tale
The 2016 meeting of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America took place in Oberlin, Ohio, March 20–24. Eschewing the expensive rooms at the about-to-be-replaced Oberlin Inn I decided to book lodging at the Ivy Tree, a charming bed and breakfast accommodation only a few blocks south of the Oberlin Conservatory. At breakfast on the penultimate day of the meeting I met the New York City-based harpsichordist Aya Hamada, a Japanese-American graduate of Juilliard, who mentioned that she had made a compact disc of works by Jacques Duphly. The following day she gave me a copy of that disc, recorded in France on a harpsichord “attributed to the builder Nicholas Lefebvre”—an instrument from the collection of Gustav Leonhardt.
The fourteen tracks comprising Ms. Hamada’s recording reward the listener with fine examples of Duphly’s oeuvre, chosen from all four of his published Pièces de Claveçin. Included are many favorites: Chaconne, Medée, Les Grâces, and La Forqueray from among those that have been mentioned in several recent columns. The playing is stylish and satisfying, the sound of the instrument resonant and exciting, and the explanatory notes, presented in both Japanese and English, recount the fascinating tale of a late twentieth-century “experiment” contrived by Leonhardt and the builder Martin Skowroneck.
Although the “Lefebvre” instrument was introduced to the public in April 1984, it was not until 2002 that Skowroneck published an article giving forth the information that the instrument was not by an eighteenth-century French maker, but one that the contemporary German maker had crafted utilizing historical techniques, hand tools rather than electrically powered ones, and old materials. The fake date for the two-manual instrument was given as 1755 (in tribute to the fact that it was Skowroneck’s 55th instrument), and Leonhardt utilized the resulting harpsichord for recording works by Bach, Forqueray, and other classic French composers. The instrument passed muster with most of the listening public—after all, it was our revered Leonhardt who was playing: thus all was well.
Hamada’s 2014 recording, made in the Chapelle de l’Hôpital Notre-Dame de Bon Secours in Paris, marks the first use of Skowroneck’s imitation French double-manual instrument since Professor Leonhardt’s death in 2012. This disc, issued as WCC-7784 (Nami Records Co. Ltd., Japan, available at Amazon.com) is thus not only Hamada’s debut recording, but also a tangible memento of an extraordinary prank concocted by two friends, who between them provided some of the most exhilarating instruments and playing heard in our time. The tale of their gentle hoax is well laid out in Hamada’s notes, which are based on Skowroneck’s article “The Harpsichord of Nicholas Lefebvre 1755: Story of a forgery without intent to defraud,” published in the Galpin Society Journal, vol. 55 (April 2002), pp. 4–14.
And what about Kreisler?
Being reminded of the successful attempt to dupe most of the antique instrument experts with their prank brought back to memory the somewhat similar decades-long practice of the elegant violinist Fritz Kreisler (1875–1962), who, not wishing to have his own name appear so many times on his solo programs, labeled many of his own well-liked compositions with names from music’s past historical eras: Tartini, Boccherini, Porpora, Martini, Louis Couperin, Jean-Baptiste Cortier, Vivaldi, Friedemann Bach, Pugnani, Dittersdorf, Francoeur—most of them names not well known to audiences of the early twentieth century.
When, in 1935, the New York critic Olin Downs queried the composer about the sources for these “early manuscripts,” Kreisler revealed his hoax. When various members of the critical fraternity expressed outrage at this nose-thumbing of their “expertise,” Kreisler responded, “You have already found the compositions worthy; while the name on them now changes, the value remains.” Today, known as Kreisler’s own creations, these works form a fairly important part of the solo violin repertoire. Favorites, dating from my earliest record collecting days in the mid-1950s, remain the exhilarating Concerto in C in the Style of Vivaldi from 1927 and the hauntingly beautiful Chanson Louis XIII and Pavane ‘in the Style of Louis Couperin’ from 1910 (decades before that Couperin became a staple of the French keyboard repertoire). Incidentally, I made my own harpsichord transcription of Kreisler’s gentle pastiche to play in a house concert several years ago.
Dredging up these memories reminded me that I had purchased an original edition of Kreisler’s autobiographical book Four Weeks in the Trenches: The War Story of a Violinist (published by Houghton Mifflin, Boston and New York, in 1915). The “Great War”—now quite familiar to contemporary audiences since the Masterpiece Theatre segments of Downton Abbey—was in its early stages when Kreisler’s work, translated from the original German, appeared in print. How close the violinist came to dying in this conflict is touchingly chronicled in this brief memoir of 85 small-sized pages. I purchased the volume (at that time totally unknown to me) during an annual summer visit to the bookseller Nicholas Potter in Santa Fe. Re-reading Kreisler’s book provided yet another connection: my copy had once belonged to the prominent American composer Elinor Remick Warren (1900–91), as evidenced by her printed bookplate on the inside front cover. A Google search yielded fascinating insights into her long struggle to gain acceptance as a major composer—a status acknowledged when her 69-minute work The Legend of King Arthur became only the third American work of such magnitude to be presented at England’s Three Choirs Festival in Gloucester in 1995. (The only works from this side of the pond heard previously were both by Horatio Parker: Hora Novissima in 1900 and the third part of his St. Christopher in 1902.)
A twisted path indeed . . .
One further item of interest: while the Early Keyboard Journal (formerly published jointly by the Southeastern and Midwestern Historical Keyboard Societies) has fallen somewhat behind during the five years in which the successor organization, Historical Keyboard Society of North America, has been functioning, word from the recent board of directors meeting in Oberlin indicates that volume 30 is nearing publication. I encourage our readers to consider joining this excellent organization and thus receive this journal, which will include a thought-provoking, carefully reasoned article on Louis Couperin by the American harpsichordist Glen Wilson.
