Repertoire
[* indicates an available recording]
*Lagrimas [Tears] (1992), solo harpsichord
Noce Oscura [Dark Night] (1993), solo harpsichord
Enchanted Journey (1993), solo harpsichord
*Soliloquy VI of St. Teresa of Avila (1994), soprano, harpsichord
At Play with Giles Farnaby (1995), two harpsichords
*Sonata for Oboe and Harpsichord (1996)
*Songs of the Bride (1996), soprano, oboe, harpsichord
*Seven Innocent Dances (1996), solo harpsichord
*Chaconne: A Remembrance of Louis Couperin (1997), solo harpsichord
Four Dark Dances (1998), solo harpsichord
Millennium Preludes (1999), solo harpsichord
The Agony and Ecstasy of Writing for Harpsichord
"Rudy, WHERE are those seven harpsichord dances you promised?"
"Oh, they're all finished . . ."
"Well, why haven't I seen them?"
"They aren't written down yet--just completed in my head."
"Don't you suppose that if you want someone to play them, you should commit them to paper?"
This exchange between us took place on an October morning in 1996 as Rudy Davenport drove me to the airport. The night before I had played a recital for his Corpus Christi parish, St. Pius X Catholic Community, during which the first public hearing of his Songs of the Bride had moved the audience to tears.
The dances referred to had been promised several years previously for the graduate harpsichord recital of one of my students at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Although the work had not been delivered, the thought of them had, nonetheless, continued to intrigue me. A month later they arrived in the mail. My nagging had finally paid off.
Seven Innocent Dances, premiered the following April at House of Hope Presbyterian Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, remain among the composer's most perfectly conceived works for the harpsichord. Scarcely anything needed to be changed or adjusted for texture. Miniature etudes, concealing their didactic purpose extremely well, they never fail to charm listeners with their brevity, suitability to the instrument, and easy-to-enjoy melodies. Each short movement has a title that begins "With," prompting the reflection that this is authentic "With it" music!
* Number one, D Major, "With Casualness," begins as a study in holding arpeggiated chords, but quickly shows its lack of predictability by having the first note of each group released from the sixth measure on. The effect is that of a limp!
* Number two, E minor, "With Resolve," contrasts an accompanied melody with a chordal accompaniment.
* Number three, G Major, "With Playfulness," is a study in shifting meters. In the second half of the piece the dry, lute-like sounds of the buff stop are featured.
* Number four, A minor, "With Excitement," is a study in hand-crossings and the arpeggiation of chords at different speeds.
* Number five, B minor, "With Fire," is a single page in perpetual motion, reminiscent of a Chopin etude.
* Number six, F Major, "With Pomposity," is a tango as well as a study in quick repeated notes.
* Number seven, C Major, "With Steadiness," is another study in holding and releasing notes. Its effect is similar to that of Bach's C Major Prelude in the first book of his Well-Tempered Clavier.
These Dances are dedicated to Tom Goodwin, a Catholic priest whose Willard Martin harpsichord was Rudy's introduction to the instrument. Father Tom first suggested to Rudy that he write something for harpsichord, particularly since I was known to be interested in playing new music. In 1992 Fr. Goodwin had invited me to give a Lenten recital at his church in Port Aransas. Following that concert he introduced me to Rudy, who showed me his work for harpsichord, Lagrimas. A set of variations in the style of the English virginalists, the work has seven parts (a liturgical reference). Inspiration for the piece had come from the writings of St. Teresa of Avila, the Spanish mystic whose works first attracted the composer to the Catholic faith.
Although it was successful as music, the work was a disaster as a work for harpsichord. Like so many 20th-century pieces, it was a piano composition in disguise, requiring a damper pedal to allow harmonic coherence in its widely spaced arpeggiations. I made some small suggestions for improvement to the work and left south Texas with little memory either of the work or of its composer.
But Rudy did make substantive changes, and, since he had enrolled for my summer workshop near Taos, I promised him that if he would continue to accept suggestions about the piece and write out a fair copy, I would play it on my faculty recital that summer at Fort Burgwin--which I did. The piece was well-received by the audience, and Rudy's career as a composer for harpsichord was launched. Over years he continued to think about better harpsichord textures for Lagrimas, eventually settling on solutions more apt than his original version had been.
Rudy's second harpsichord work, Noce Oscura, was dedicated to harpsichord maker Richard Kingston, who was builder-in-residence for our New Mexico workshop. This short six-page piece reflected the composer's exposure to the unmeasured preludes of Louis Couperin, alternating specifically notated spread chords with more rhythmically incisive sections.
A growing sophistication in Davenport's harpsichord writing was evident in his next effort: Enchanted Journey, Suite for Harpsichord, an autobiographical work in seven movements (Prelude: Long Ago and Far Away; March: The Journey Begins; Scherzo: The Jester as Companion; Waltz: Mountains and Valleys; Recitative: Mist; Interlude: Reminiscence; Finale: Journey's End).
Each of Rudy's ensemble pieces was created for specific performers and a scheduled program. The first of these "commissions" was Painful Longing for God, a cantata based on the sixth soliloquy of St. Teresa. Soprano Patti Spain had been engaged to sing baroque works with harpsichord. We programmed a lot of Purcell and some Handel, but I wanted a new work to add another aural dimension to the program. Rudy responded with one movement: a recitative unified by a haunting recurrent motive for the harpsichord. I found this appropriate, but suggested immediately that the work needed to be extended. He agreed, and speedily wrote two additional movements. The ending of this work never seemed quite right, a problem not finally resolved until we were engaged in recording it! We had experimented over the years with at least three possible solutions, but finally settled on the simplest of them all: an unaccompanied vocal line. Interestingly enough, Davenport's Soliloquy has a remarkable affinity to Purcell's masterful dramatic cantata The Blessed Virgin's Expostulation, a composition Rudy heard for the first time at the same recital in which we first performed his own composition!
It took a lot of convincing to get Rudy to agree to compose a work for oboe and harpsichord. He had never heard a first-rate oboist and he was adamant that a clarinet would be a more suitable musical partner. It was not until we were standing in the checkout lane of an all-night grocery store in Corpus Christi discussing the pros and cons of the two instruments that a checker's comment "Write it for oboe. I used to play one!" helped convince him. A witty, classically proportioned Sonata for Oboe and Harpsichord resulted. First performed in the fall of 1996 on my house concert series, Limited Editions, it was an instant hit. In three movements, the work is reminiscent of Poulenc and Mozart in the first; poignantly nostalgic for the Appalachian surroundings of the composer's childhood home in Hayesville, North Carolina in the second; and playfully humorous in the third.
This first experience of writing for the oboe led directly to the composition of Songs of the Bride. Here soprano, oboe, and harpsichord unite to create hauntingly longing sounds for the exquisite images of King Solomon's sensuous love poetry. I was immediately attracted to this powerful work, but found its intensity almost overwhelming. An instrumental interlude seemed necessary to give a little respite. The composer agreed, providing a "pastoral interlude," with ostinati and clever use of quintuple meter. It was just what the song-cycle needed.
Chaconne: A Remembrance of Louis Couperin (1997) pays homage to one of the greatest of classic French composers for harpsichord. Using a recurring grand couplet with intervening material in the style of the 17th-century master, Davenport wrote a noble and appealing work, totally idiomatic to the instrument. In it he paid tribute to the first compact disc recording I had made on my Vaudry-copy instrument by Yves Beaupré, as well as to Rudy's own instrument, a gloriously resonant single manual harpsichord in the French style by Richard Kingston.
Four works from this bountiful catalog were heard in the first "retrospective" concert of Davenport's harpsichord compositions during the 1998 joint meeting of the Southeastern and Midwestern Historic Keyboard Societies. The uniquely communicative soprano Patti Spain and brilliant young oboist Stewart Williams joined me for a program comprising the Chaconne, Soliloquy, Innocent Dances, and Songs of the Bride. Audience response ranged from purely positive to ecstatic: here was music of our time that was also timeless, emotionally involving, and something people enjoyed hearing.
Dark Dances in Ancient Style mirrored a troubled period in the composer's personal life. Comprising an Allemande, Courante, Sarabande, and Gigue, Rudy thought of them as possible candidates for choreography, writing that he "could just see the costumes--shroud-like, subdued colors . . . two or four couples. Modern dance, not classical ballet, but incorporating the feeling and steps of the baroque dances, French in style." In two autumn performances I prefaced these pieces with an E minor Toccata by the 17th-century German Matthias Weckmann. There seemed to be no undue clashing of styles or centuries.
Approaching the end of the twentieth century, Rudy was filled with excitement over a large project: composing a Well-Tempered Clavier for the new age! I have seen ten of a projected twenty-four Millennium Preludes, and performed only three of them--the last of my Davenport premieres: a graceful C minor Toccatina; the madcap G Major Texas Wildflowers (As Seen on the Roadside from a Speeding Car); and a Chopinesque, E-flat minor Buddha Smiles in the Rain. Lovely pieces, all.
Recordings
The Davenport concert in Dallas led, eventually, to a recording, completed in 1999. The same artists who had been responsible for first performances of all these pieces spent three hot June days and evenings committing their interpretations to disc. The venue was Caruth Auditorium at Southern Methodist University. Difficulties were many: extraneous noises from outside the hall (for instance the raucous sounds of a jazz combo at a reception in the lobby, scheduled, unbeknownst to us, for one of the evenings of our sessions); several major changes of musical text requested on the spot by the composer (including an entirely new, lower key for the last movement of Songs of the Bride); and, subsequently, a bitter disagreement over production details (my insistence that the cover be an expressionistic, attention-demanding reproduction of the painting Lagrimas by Colorado-based artist friend Doug Pedersen marked the initial trouble, followed by Rudy's second thoughts about certain recorded balances). The result was that the composer withdrew copyright permission for the release of the just-delivered discs and instructed me, through his lawyer, not to perform any of his music in the future.
Now, after years of negotiations accomplished with the help of several mutual friends, all difficulties have been resolved, and the disc Music of Rudy Davenport (Limited Editions Recording 9904) comprising the Sonata for Oboe, Chaconne, Seven Innocent Dances, Soliloquy, Lagrimas, and Songs of the Bride, is available at last.
A second, more recent recording of Seven Innocent Dances is included on the Centaur compact disc (CRC 2651) Dances with Harpsichords, played by Elaine Funaro. (This disc features delightful terpsichorean-inspired works by Herbert Howells, Kent Holliday, Dimitri Cervo, Stephen Dodgson, Timothy Tikker, Timothy Brown, Francis Thomé, Sondra Cark, Sally Mosher and Stephen Yates, in addition to the Davenport Dances).
Scores
All requests for scores should be directed to the composer, who may be contacted through his website <www.RudyDavenport.com>, where his telephone phone number is listed as 512/416-1802.
Thanks to Jane Johnson for permission to reproduce her 1998 drawing of Rudy Davenport.
