Summer Workshops, Past and Future
One of the greatest benefits of an academic life is the annual summer break, usually a time for professional renewal as well as for rest and relaxation. For the past decade and a half an anchoring activity has been my involvement with a yearly harpsichord workshop, most of them held at Southern Methodist University's satellite campus near Taos, in the majestic forested mountains of northern New Mexico.
Of course there are other summer offerings devoted to the harpsichord. For this report I have invited two eminent colleagues to join me in describing our summer programs from 2002 and in sharing information about plans for 2003.
Arthur Haas spends his summers involved with a number of festivals and workshops. The earliest among them occurs in California. Sponsored by the San Francisco Early Music Society, baroque solo and chamber music workshops, including the Dominican Ba-roque Workshop, are offered at Do-minican College in San Rafael. Here each day's activities divide into solo master classes in the mornings and chamber music coachings in the afternoons. Last year's faculty included Michael Sand, baroque violin; Marion Verbruggen, recorder; Martha McGaughey, viol; and others. Well balanced between hard work and relaxation, the workshop took place during the last week of June, which is also the time for next summer's course.
Mid-July brings an intense International Baroque Institute at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Solo master classes and chamber music coachings fill the mornings. During the afternoons there are lectures on performance practice topics as well as baroque orchestra rehearsals. Colleagues here last year included co-directors Phoebe Carrai, baroque cello, and Paul Leenhouts, recorder.
In Rochester, New York, the Eastman [School of Music] Continuo Institute met from July 10–15. The full-time, all-day course provides two sections: one for beginners, who concentrate on learning to read the figures, and another for more advanced players, who "romp" through 150 years of continuo repertoire.
Last year was Haas' first year as director of the Baroque Academy at the Amherst Early Music Festival, which, despite its name, meets on the campus of the University of Connecticut in Storrs. This is a huge festival and workshop, of which the Academy is the highest level, meant for burgeoning young professionals and advanced students. Here harpsichord participants spend the day in their own master class, accompany other master classes, participate in chamber music coachings, listen to lectures, and play in the Amherst theater project. All this takes place during the first two weeks in August.
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Two separate week-long workshops drew harpsichordists to the School of Music, University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) last July. The first was concerned with the harpsichord music of John Bull and Peter Philips; the second, with the harpsichord sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti.
Taught by Edward Parmentier, Professor of Harpsichord and Director of the UM Early Music Ensemble, these workshops offered sessions in which participants played to receive detailed feedback about their own playing ("small groups"); analysis of the music and performance issues generally, but without discussion of a student's playing ("large groups"); and informal concerts, where the music was played without discussion.
Optional, free-for-all sessions ("open class") in which participants could play and discuss repertoire of their own choosing were offered in the evenings. Emphasis throughout was on the projection of one's own ideas about the music, harpsichord touch and technique, and analysis of various aspects of the compositions.
Topics for July 2003 have not been finalized, but may include aspects of basso continuo playing; music by Louis Couperin, Chambonnières, and D'Anglebert; and variations by J. S. Bach and others.
From July 29 through August 3, the fourteenth summer workshop offered at SMU-in-Taos drew nine participants from seven states and the District of Columbia to study music of "Byrd and the B's." Larry Palmer and Barbara Baird (herself a busy B) were joined by harpsichord maker Ted Robertson, graciously and efficiently filling in for Richard Kingston, whose wife Robin died early in July.
During the two-hour morning repertoire sessions Palmer and Baird coached students in works of Byrd and Bull; Toccatas, Inventions, and selected Preludes and Fugues from the Well-Tempered Clavier II (J. S. Bach); Polonaises (W. F. Bach) and Württemburg Sonata in E minor (C. P. E. Bach); plus several pieces by Balbastre and contemporary works of Bartók, Cathy Berberian, Boris Blacher, Busoni, and Neely Bruce.
Afternoons were filled with individual private lessons, practice, and harpsichord maintenance classes. "Talks at Tea Time," late-afternoon informal sessions, dealt with such subjects as performance anxiety, program building, and, in one afternoon at St. James Episcopal Church in Ranchos de Taos, the chorale preludes for organ of Johannes Brahms.
Monday evening's traditional opening faculty recital was played in the resonant Arts Auditorium on the campus at Fort Burgwin. Using a Willard Martin Saxon double harpsichord, Dr. Baird presented Sonatas by the Bach "boys" and J. S.'s F minor Prelude and Fugue (WTC II); Dr. Palmer programmed the Bach Toccata in E minor, Neely Bruce's Nine Variations on an Original Theme (1961), and works by Busoni and Balbastre. As an encore the two played the second movement of Benda's duet Sonata in E-flat Major.
The closing event of the workshop was the popular informal Saturday noon buffet luncheon at the home of Charles and Susan Mize (Tesuque, near Santa Fe). This annual send-off provides both food and fellowship for departing participants, as they head for the Albuquerque Airport.
Changing the venue to London (England), the 2003 workshop is set for the week of July 28-August 2, at Southlands College. Jane Clark will lead classes on selected Ordres by François Couperin, using her newly-published book about the composer, his times, and his titles. Larry Palmer's sessions will center on Herbert Howells' works for early keyboard, as well as works by J. S. Bach. Planned activities include visits to the Handel House Museum and a private instrument collection, tea with Virginia Pleasants, and a closing party at the nearby home of Jane Clark and Stephen Dodgson.
