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Harpsichord News

June 1, 2016
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Bytes to be proud of: A reader comments on tempi in early music

In mid-April I received a most welcome communication from musicologist and keyboardist Beverly Jerold Scheibert, whose extensive research adds considerable information supporting my comments about excessive velocity in the performance of some of Duphly’s more virtuosic harpsichord pieces. With her permission I am sharing her comments and, more importantly to our readers, the citations for her published work so those who are interested may explore more thoroughly the depth of this ongoing topic.

She wrote: 

 

Your article in the April issue of The Diapason is right on! A terrific disconnect exists between the early sources and what most performers do today. Take instruments, for example. How many performers realize that our (contemporary) reproductions are a dramatic improvement over the original ones, thereby enabling much, much faster tempos? The limitations of early instruments are documented in my article “18th-Century Stringed Keyboard Instruments from a Performance Perspective” published in Ad Parnassum: A Journal of 18th- and 19th-Century Instrumental Music, vol. 9, issue 17 (April 2011), pp. 75–100; and in my book The Complexities of Early Instrumentation: Winds and Brass (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2015).

Continuing, she noted: 

 

You mention L’Affilard and Pajot as being cited today in support of rapid tempos. My article in the Dutch Journal of Music Theory, 15/3 (November 2010), pp. 169–189, examines this question, finding that errors in those texts led to false conclusions. Other early sources that have been misinterpreted are discussed in “Numbers and Tempo: 1630–1800,” found in Performance Practice Review: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/ppr/vol17/iss1/4. There are also the famous Beethoven tempo marks, in which skullduggery plays a leading part, as shown in the article “Maelzel’s Role in Beethoven’s Symphonic Metronome Marks,” The Beethoven Journal, 24/1 (Summer 2009), pp. 14–27. Lastly, there is the matter of engaging the listener meaningfully, so that the composer’s details are not lost in a whirl of notes.

It has been a great pleasure to peruse such well-grounded research presented with style and grace and filled with cogent period quotations. One sample that induced tears of laughter was encountered on page 98 of the Ad Parnassum article, cited above: 

 

Consider the composer Anton Reicha’s engaging account of his duties at one of Beethoven’s recitals, which probably took place in Bonn before 1792:

One evening when Beethoven was playing a Mozart piano concerto at the Court, he asked me to turn the pages for him. But I was mostly occupied in wrenching out the strings of the piano which snapped, while the hammers stuck among the broken strings. Beethoven insisted on finishing the concerto, so back and forth I leaped, jerking out a string, disentangling a hammer, turning a page, and I worked harder than did Beethoven.” (Source footnoted: Prod’Homme, Jacques Gabriel: ‘From the Unpublished Autobiography of Antoine Reicha’ in The Musical Quarterly, XXII/3 [1936], p. 351).

The complete abstract of this Jerold article reads: 

 

Documentation about the practical usage of the clavichord, harpsichord, and piano in the eighteenth century indicates that the first two had considerably more volume than today’s reproductions, and that the mechanical limitations of all three instruments could not have permitted today’s advanced technique. In German-speaking countries, the expressive clavichord was favored for solo usage until late in the century, when the improving piano began to assume this role. In contrast, the harpsichord’s loud, penetrating tone was valued for leading and holding together ensembles of musicians who had never experienced metronome training. Its stiff keyboard action, however, could deform the fingers (except in France, where the quilling was lighter). Frequent repairs and strident tone quality, too, led to the harpsichord’s demise. The marked differences between the Viennese and English piano actions brought both advantages and disadvantages for each.

 

Revelatory indeed! So clavichords were not mere “whisper-chords” and harpsichords were able to dominate ensembles! And stiff actions may have required strengths similar to those needed for playing large tracker organs? Who else has researched these matters so thoroughly?

A second abstract (for “The French Time Devices Revisited” published in the Dutch Journal of Music Theory) observes:

 

Much disparity exists among the metronome marks derived from the tempo numbers for early eighteenth-century French time-measuring devices. While some are reasonable, others are implausibly rapid. A newly discovered source, which offers both the Paris dancing master Raoul Auger Feuillet’s tempo numbers for various dance forms and a detailed drawing of the pendulum device for which they were intended, solves the mystery of the conflicting numbers. A comparison of his numbers for pendulum lengths for various dance forms with those for the same dance forms from the two sources with consistently extreme tempos (Michel L’Affilard and Louis-Léon Pajot, comte d’Onzembray) indicates an almost exact correlation when all are measured according to pendulum length instead of the presumed sixtieths of a second. Other deductions of overly rapid tempos result from assuming an incorrect beat unit.

Author Beverly Scheibert first came to the attention of the wider world of harpsichordists with the publication of her excellent study Jean-Henry D’Anglebert and the Seventeenth-Century Clavecin School, issued by Indiana University Press in 1986. Even in this early book she dealt with possible misconceptions about French dance tempi in its third chapter (“Style and Tempo”). I first met Beverly Jerold (the name she most often uses for her current writing) during a Boston Early Music Festival event, and we have occasionally crossed paths (but happily not verbal swords) since then. She has been most kind in sending me various articles that I might have missed otherwise. Now, with this current correspondence, she has once again demonstrated generosity of spirit, and I am pleased that she included enough detailed information to buttress the comments in my small paragraph, and even more grateful that she has given us permission to share these quotations, sources, and abstracts.

 

Postludium: Two contemporary clavichords

In March, during the Oberlin meeting of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America, two clavichords of exceptional tonal beauty and considerable volume (at least in comparison to many other clavichords, including those in my own collection) were heard in half-hour programs. For her program of two Württemberg Sonatas by Carl Philip Emmanuel Bach, Carol Lei Breckenridge played an instrument built by Paul Irvin (Portland, Oregon: www.pyirvin.com), and in the second program devoted to music of Samuel Scheidt, Judith Conrad used a clavichord by Douglas Maple (Lemont, Pennsylvania: www.douglasmaple.com). Both highly skilled players were well served by these experienced builders who had created instruments of credible volume and exciting resonance. Each instrument had a keyboard that welcomed comfortable and assured playing; and, to my knowledge, no broken strings or recalcitrant keys caused undue hardships. Rather, these exciting instruments allowed both artists to play with taste, palpable feeling, and a communicated sense of suitably musical tempi. Bravi to all involved!

 

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