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Harpsichord News

December 9, 2005
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Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

A Harpsichord Christmas

Deck your music rack with a Christmas carol or two from A
Baroque Christmas
—-Carols and
Counterpoint for Keyboard
(traditional carols arranged for piano,
organ, or harpsichord by Edwin McLean),
published by FJH Music Company, 2525 Davie Rd., Suite 360, Fort Lauderdale, FL
33317-7424; e-mail

<[email protected]>.

Harpsichord-savvy composer McLean has provided interesting
and texturally-pleasing settings for eleven Yuletide favorites, among them a
rousing Adeste Fideles, a gently-moving Silent
Night
(with pungent added-note final
chord), a theme and two variations on
Good King Wenceslas style='font-style:normal'>, a longer variation set for We Three Kings style='font-style:normal'>, fugue on God Rest Ye Merry style='font-style:normal'>, and a most attractive setting of Greensleeves
(What Child Is This?).

These settings are all playable on a single-manual
instrument, although McLean provides suggestions for more colorful
registrations for the organ, or when playing on a two-manual harpsichord. The
arrangements work well on piano, too.

FJH Music also publishes McLean’s two well-conceived and
attractive Sonatas for Harpsichord. Both
have been recorded by harpsichordist Elaine Funaro: the first is the opening
selection of Gasparo GSCD-331,
Into the Millennium style='font-style:normal'> (The Harpsichord in the 20th Century); the second style="mso-spacerun: yes"> appears on Overture to Orpheus style='font-style:normal'> (Music Written for the Women Who Gave Wing to the
Muse), Centaur CRC 2517. Either disc, or both, would make fine stocking
stuffers for discriminating musical friends.

Intended for Christmas Eve music making are various baroque
pieces titled “Pastoral,” a type of pictorial shepherd music (as in the Pastoral
Symphony
from Handel’s Messiah style='font-style:normal'>). One of these specifically intended for performance
by solo keyboardist is the Sonata (Pastorale) in C Major style='font-style:normal'>, K. 513 by Domenico Scarlatti. Here we
find the traditional siciliano rhythm
suggesting sheep (baroque ones usually move in 12/8); a drone bass (
molto
allegro
) evoking “shepherds’ pipe” music;
and a concluding 3/8
presto that
could be either a representation of their joyful return “wondering at what they
had seen and heard,” or, possibly, some dramatic exit music for those angels
returning to the heights. This charming work may be found in any of the several
complete editions of Scarlatti’s keyboard sonatas, or, specifically, in volume
two of Sixty Sonatas, edited by Ralph Kirkpatrick, published by G. Schirmer.

Music for the New Year

Christoph Graupner (1683–1760) composed a keyboard
suite for each month of the year (Monatliche Clavir style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Früchte, Darmstadt 1722). January, in the pristine key of C,
comprises a
Praeludium and twelve
additional short dance movements; February (in G major), ten individual pieces;
and March (G minor), eight. These are now available in a handsome volume edited
(with no unfamiliar clefs) by Jörg Jacobi for Edition Baroque
(www.edition-baroque.de). The other three-quarters are expected to follow.

Another volume of great interest from Edition Baroque is
titled Labyrinthe,
comprising harmonically adventurous works for keyboard: Benedetto Marcello’s
Laberinto
musicale sopra il Clavicembalo
, Gottfried
Heinrich Stölzel’s
Enharmonische Claviersonate style='font-style:normal'>, and Georg Andreas Sorge’s Toccata per
omnem Circulum 24 modorum fürs Clavier
.
Fasten your aural seatbelts and try the challenges hidden in these unusual
musical traversals.

Early Instruments: Some Random Citings

The New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2005: from Edmund White’s personal
history
My Women (Learning How to Love Them style='font-style:normal'>): “The art-academy students across the street, who
were usually graduate students, had beards and long hair or, if they were
women, sandals and no makeup and unshaved legs hidden under peasant skirts.
They listened to records of Wanda Landowska playing Bach on the harpsichord
(God’s seamstress, as we called her) . . . [page 126].

The New Yorker, October 10, 2005: Jeffrey Eugenides’ eight-page short
story
Early Music tells the sad
story of a clavichordist, replete with many composer references (only
noticeable error, a transposed “ei” in Scheidemann) and an evocative print by
Richard McGuire [pages 72–79].

Dieter Gutknecht presents a reasoned, musical example-filled
overview of conflicting styles in his major article “Performance practice of recitativo
secco
in the first half of the 18th
century,”
Early Music XXXIII/3 (August 2005), pp. 473–493.

Correspondent Robert Tifft reports: style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 

No lack of live harpsichord music in Budapest . . .

Since fall 2004 the Hungarian Radio has sponsored a cycle of
Bach’s solo harpsichord music with monthly recitals broadcast live from the
Radio’s Marble Hall. The recitals have occurred with even greater frequency
this fall, with performances by Zsolt Balog on September 26, Miklós Spányi on
October 10, Dalma Cseh on October 24 and Csilla Alfödy-Boruss on November 21.
Each concert features a different soloist, all of them Hungarian, all of them
one-time students at the Liszt Academy where János Sebestyén founded the
harpsichord class in 1970. Soloists last season were Anikó Horváth, Borbála
Dobozy, Ágnes Várallyay, Angelika Csizmadia, Ágnes Ratkó, Rita Papp, Péter
Ella, Szilvia Elek, Anikó Soltesz and Judit Péteri.

In celebration of her 25 years as a harpsichordist, Borbála
Dobozy performed a tour de force concert on October 13 as soloist in four
concertos. The program included Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 style='font-style:normal'> (BWV 1050), C.P.E. Bach’s Concerto in G
minor
(Wq. 6), Haydn’s Concerto
in F major
(Hob. XVIII: 3) and Martinu’s Concerto
for Harpsichord and Small Orchestra
. The
sold-out concert was broadcast live over the Hungarian Radio and Internet.
Together with Anikó Horváth, Dobozy established a Hungarian harpsichord
foundation, Clavicembalo Alapítvány, in 2004. The foundation’s goal is to
provide master classes and instruments of the highest quality for students of
the Liszt Academy and to promote appreciation of the harpsichord through
recitals and competitions. There is a website at
<www.clavicembalo.fw.hu&gt;.

Looking Ahead

Make plans to attend an early keyboard meeting: the Southeastern
Historical Keyboard Society
meets March
9–11, 2006 at Shorter College, Rome, Georgia, with the dual purpose of celebrating
Mozart and honoring the first 25 years of the Society’s history. (More
information is available on their website <www.sehks.org&gt;).

The Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society style='font-weight:normal'> will gather in Notre Dame, Indiana, June
15–18, 2006, presenting a program featuring the music of Diderik
Buxtehude. (Website: <www.mhks.org&gt;).

Send news items or comments about Harpsichord News to Dr.
Larry Palmer, Division of Music, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX
75275;

<[email protected]>.