Skip to main content

Harpsichord Notes

Larry Palmer
Default

The Art of the Harpsichord: Two Texas Treasures

In mid-June 2017 the Dallas Chapter of the American Guild of Organists hosted its most recent regional convention, an event that attracted a record number of registrants. In addition to programs featuring the plethora of recent organ installations in the metroplex, the area’s most unusual harpsichord also made a stellar impression. I had not been aware that the Magnum Opus instrument was now at home in Texas, but its current owner, Jason Alden, graciously loaned it for a recital by Elizabeth Farr, whose choice of works by Elisabeth-Claude Jacquet de la Guerre, J. S. Bach, and Claude-Bénigne Balbastre proved to be the right vehicles for her skillful demonstration of the varied registrational possibilities made possible by this unique instrument.

The harpsichord’s builder wrote the following description of the 12-foot long instrument for publication in the convention program book:

 

The harpsichord was built in 1983 by Keith Hill and Philip Tyre. It is the largest harpsichord in existence having three keyboards, each of which has its own sweet-sounding 8-foot set of strings, plus a vocal 4-foot played on the middle manual and a robust-sounding 16-foot set of strings played only on the lowest manual. Called ‘Magnum Opus,’ this harpsichord was recently rebuilt by Keith Hill for the purpose of upgrading the acoustics, which involved replacing both soundboards. This harpsichord also has three buff stops (called ‘lute’ stops) in which pads of soft leather are brought into contact with the strings to dampen the bright harmonics of the plucked strings. Additionally, there are three pedals: one activates the 4-foot register for suddenly increasing the brilliance of the sound, another engages the 16-foot register for suddenly increasing the depth, breadth, and power of the sound, and a third pedal makes possible the coupling of all the three registers to be playable from the lowest manual for creating the loudest, strongest, richest sound of which any harpsichord is capable.

Owner Jason Alden is himself quite an addition to the metroplex’s musical scene: a Renaissance man who keeps busy with his Alden Organ Service Company and is also a top-notch organist whom I heard for the first time in concert as he played a superb recital at the most recent East Texas Pipe Organ Festival, thrilling us with a demanding program that culminated in the entire Vierne Symphonie IV. I subsequently invited Jason to relate the history of his involvement with the Magnum Opus harpsichord. He responded:

 

My association with the instrument was really a result of familiarity with Edward Parmentier’s studio instrument at the University of Michigan. I really still love that instrument because it sounds so colorful, warm, and transparent all at once. Also, it seemed well suited to a very wide variety of literature. You can imagine I heard just about everything played on it during Parmentier’s studio classes.

Once I was ‘out in the world’ I really longed for that kind of sound in my own instrument (a Hubbard double that had been built from a kit by my first harpsichord teacher, Bill Eifrig at Valparaiso University). The Hubbard ended up with a number of problems related to case stress and the collapsing of the gap spacers (which I had already replaced on my own some years before). So I decided to sell it even though I didn’t have another specific instrument in mind.

After looking at Keith’s website and having a couple of phone conversations with him, I quite resigned myself to the idea that I’d never be able to afford one of his instruments. I planned a trip to his shop anyway, hoping he’d take pity on my poor soul! So, I had a nice evening with him in Nashville, and played a couple of instruments he had recently finished. We got to talking about many things that night, and he mentioned that the Magnum Opus was ‘available.’ I was curious, but doubtful that it would work for my budget. After some lengthy discussions, I decided that it would, in fact, work as a home instrument.

Magnum Opus had been neglected for years, and Keith reported to me that when the instrument entered his shop the original soundboard had 17 cracks in it! It was irreparable! So, he began by replacing both soundboards. We decided that there should be decoration [on the soundboard] since the original was decorated. From there it required re-stringing and re-quilling. The result is as good as I could ever hope for as regards my preference for harpsichord sound. I find it not just thrilling to play (it is rather a harpsichord version of the Cavaillé-Coll organ at Rouen Cathedral), but the harpsichord remains intimate and inspires me each time I sit down to play it.

 

An Exception to
“Everything is Bigger in Texas”

A favorite trick question for visitors to our spacious music room is “How many harpsichords do you see here?” The most obvious answer is “four.” The usual complement of instruments on display comprises a William Dowd single, plus two-keyboard instruments by Yves Beaupré, Richard Kingston, and Willard Martin. A few inquisitive guests may have noticed an additional canvass-covered wing-shaped instrument stored behind the pipe organ: an Italian single by Tom and Barbara Wolf. But only a few very observant viewers give the exact correct total, which would be “six.” The omission of the usually overlooked harpsichord is not surprising, for it is only eight inches long and three inches wide: a handcrafted mini-harpsichord made for a dollhouse by Arthur Bell of Arlington, Texas.

Art Bell was a meticulous observer and connoisseur of miniature models, and his very rare specialty was the creation of exact scale replicas of historical keyboard instruments. My University of Texas at Arlington colleague Linton Powell was the proud owner of one of Bell’s model instruments. I first met the modeler himself at one of Linton’s annual faculty recitals, told Bell how much I admired his painstaking work in producing these scale miniatures, and asked him if I might commission one. A few letters back and forth ensued, his with pictures of several completed instruments that were available, and I opted for a French double with a decorated soundboard. Then came the biggest surprise of all: it was a gift! What a generous and thoughtful person!

Several years later when I learned that my first harpsichord mentor Isolde Ahlgrimm, now in an assisted-living apartment, had donated her David Rubio harpsichord to the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna, I turned again to Art Bell and requested another miniature instrument that could be sent to help her overcome the terrible sense of loss that not having her instrument any longer had engendered. For the second time Bell refused payment. However, we were both deeply touched and amply rewarded by Frau Ahlgrimm’s heartfelt response in the last typewritten letter I received from her, dated July 22, 1992. I have kept her idiomatic spelling and syntax in the following excerpts:

 

. . . you should have seen me, the packing was put aside, I started to cry! Having my harpsichord back means so much to me. It was the worst moment of my moving . . . . As it is now, [the model] has a place of honour in my bookshelf and I feel as if it would have come back, telling me that I should not be unhappy, it always will keep me in memory . . . . I do still hope to get a place on the side of my harpsichord, somewhere on a nice cloude, the little one holding in my hand as a little baby. Mr. Bell did a wonderful work . . .

 

He did indeed! I only wish that these minute instruments were playable; an 8-by-3-inch model would be a dream instrument to transport, but its key span assuredly would be too narrow for human fingers. Might there be a viable solution?

Related Content

Harpsichord News

Larry Palmer
Default

ARTEK goes German

Two days before Johann Sebastian Bach’s 330th birthday, while exercising my daily morning custom of reading The New York Times I was happily surprised to see a picture of a very ornate harpsichord being played by Gwendolyn Toth. What a pleasant way to begin a March morning, I thought. Accompanying the photo was a Critic’s Notebook piece, “Plucking Away, 300 Years Later,” by James R. Oestreich. A quick scan of his essay convinced me that I wanted to know more details about this festival of German music played on four Germanic harpsichords, so I contacted Dr. Toth, who responded to my request with an electronic copy of the 16-page program booklet as well as the illustrations that brighten this column.

Gwen Toth founded ARTEK (The Art of the Early Keyboard) in 1986. Various programs under her direction have been lauded in the New York media, and several of us in Texas have benefitted from the generosity of Toth and her husband Dongsok Shin, who have shared difficult-to-find replacement parts for at least two of our Willard Martin harpsichords (one of them a Saxon-style instrument). So it was with particular empathy that I read the programs and extensive notes from this festival and forthwith decided that there was much of interest to share with the readers of this column.

To celebrate Toth’s new two-manual harpsichord, a close copy by John Phillips of the celebrated 1739 instrument made by Johann Heinrich Gräbner the Younger of Dresden, Toth devised two concert programs plus several associated events to occur on Friday and Saturday, March 13 and 14. One might be quite certain that Johann Sebastian Bach would have approved of these particular dates, especially the second!* The venue was New York’s Immanuel Lutheran Church, where Toth is the music director (in addition to her positions as orchestra director at Manhattan College and harpsichord teacher at Montclair State University). 

The first program comprised the complete second part of Bach’s Clavierübung, but with a most interesting twist: because the Gräbner instrument has an expanded bass range (the lowest note is DD rather than the usual FF), Toth decided to play the French Ouverture in the key of G minor rather than its published key of B minor, a downward transposition of a major third. As she wrote in notes to the program, “ . . . Ultimately one faces the question of, having the extra lower notes, how does one make use of them?” Since the composer himself had made a downward transposition from its original C minor to B minor for the published version of his monumental work, it seemed to be an apt way to revel in the magnificent possibilities provided by the added bass strings. Following intermission came the Italian Concerto, but in this case an attempt at a similar downward change of key did not prove satisfactory, so Toth decided to play it in its usual key of F, thereby “displaying the beautiful sound of the high range of the instrument” as well.

Master harpsichord builder John Phillips continued the festive evening with a question and answer session. In his eloquent written notes to the program, Phillips provided two possible explanations for the unusual range of this harpsichord’s prototype: 

 

If it were intended for ecclesiastical use the low DD would, at Kammerton, sound the same pitch as the CC (16-foot C) of the organ at Chorton—a whole step higher. If it were to be played in consort with the organ, including its 16-foot range, there would be no need to go below DD. Since it was tuned to Kammerton, it could still play with other instruments without transposing. If the intended use were for the theater orchestra, the low DD would be the same as the lowest note of a violone in the most usual tuning. In either case, this instrument would have excelled as a ‘big band’ continuo harpsichord. 

Additionally Phillips mentioned his surprise that he had produced a total of 13 Gräbner-inspired harpsichords since the first commission for one in 1998: 

 

Even though the first copy of the 1739 instrument was musically revelatory to many, I assumed that no one else would be interested in such a big . . . and heavy harpsichord. I was wrong. Musicians took to them. The one before you is my third 1739 . . . and there are ten more Gräbners of other somewhat smaller varieties as well.

Events on day two began in the afternoon with several free workshops: the first was concerned with “Concepts of Early Keyboard Technique,” led by Dr. Toth, who utilized both a harpsichord and a clavichord, a favorite pedagogical instrument in the 18th century, for her presentation. The second workshop, “Lessons in Harpsichord Quilling and Maintenance,” was guided by Dongsok Shin, who serves as harpsichord technician for both the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Metropolitan Opera.

At eight that evening a concert of music for multiple harpsichords engaged four distinguished New York harpsichordists: Bradley Brookshire (assistant conductor and harpsichordist at the Metropolitan Opera), Stephen Rapp (assistant organist at St. Patrick’s Cathedral), Gwendolyn Toth, and Dongsok Shin. The music, most of it rarely heard in concert, included Concerto in D for two harpsichords by Joseph Schuster (Toth and Shin), Duetto in C Minor for two harpsichords by Müthel (Shin and Rapp), Sonata in G Minor [Allegro] by Mattheson (Brookshire and Shin), Sonata in F for two harpsichords by W. F. Bach (Rapp and Brookshire), Concerto in B-flat Major for two harpsichords by Graun (Toth and Rapp), and, for the grand finale, Concerto in A Minor, BWV 1065, by J. S. Bach, with the entire ensemble, including ARTEK strings.

Four diverse Germanic instruments by three builders provided appropriate keyboards for this stylish presentation. In addition to John Phillips’s magnum opus, Owen Daly of Salem, Oregon, contributed his newly finished harpsichord based on one built in Hamburg in 1728 by Christian Zell. Daly’s harpsichord, with a compass of FF–d′′′, has a classic disposition of three stops: 8, 8, and 4 registers, with manual coupler and buff stop. Of special interest is its stringing in Stephen Birkett’s historically produced iron and brass wire. 

Philip Tyre was the builder of Bradley Brookshire’s 1990 harpsichord. Originally a single-manual instrument (GG–e′′′) with two 8 stops and a 4 register, strung in brass throughout, its prototype was a harpsichord built in 1738 by the organ-maker Christian Vater of Hannover. In 2005 Willard Martin added a buff stop and enlarged the case to accommodate a second keyboard. 

The fourth harpsichord, owned by New Jersey resident Edward Brewer (an Oberlin classmate of mine, who often transported me as a passenger on his motorcycle during our junior year in Salzburg), was built by Thomas and Barbara Wolf of The Plains, Virginia, and is also a two-manual instrument based on Vater’s single-manual harpsichord, “but with rather different sound results,” according to Dongsok Shin’s note in the program.

Director Toth ended the program note to her solo recital with these wise words, “Playing Bach on a German harpsichord has been truly a revelation. Both the orchestral quality of the full sound and the clarity of the individual notes serve his music in a way no French harpsichord (for many years the instrument of choice for Bach) can ever match. A perfect marriage of instrument and repertoire.” 

I would concur, having experienced one of John Phillips’s instruments slightly more than a decade ago during the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society’s conclave at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. There, on our quest to hear Bach as Bach might have heard Bach, we tried to absorb into our minds and ears not only the fullness of sounds produced by the magnificent nine-foot harpsichord, but also those created through the quiet beauty of Willard Martin’s Lautenwerk, a gut-strung keyboard instrument; and those dynamically controllable sounds made possible through David Sutherland’s fascinating recreation of a Dresden fortepiano: all three instruments based on prototypes that Bach almost certainly knew. Many years earlier, Isolde Ahlgrimm had noted wryly that “Bach probably would have been quite surprised to hear his music played ‘authentically’ on the ubiquitous French-style instruments of the mid-20th-century harpsichord revival, lovely as they are.”

I daresay that ARTEK’s German odyssey is yet one more hopeful journey in the ever-ongoing attempt to bring more historical accuracy into our performances of music from the past.

 

* Should you have difficulty making sense of this sentence, please e-mail me at [email protected] or write to Dr. Larry Palmer, 10125 Cromwell Drive, Dallas, Texas 75229. I will be happy to send an explanation. As always, news items and comments are welcome.

 

Harpsichord Notes

Larry Palmer
Wolfgang Rubsam

Recent recordings of Bach’s Goldberg Variations

Now universally known as the Goldberg Variations, Johann Sebastian Bach’s self-financed 1741 publication of his most extensive set of diverse variants on a simple theme bears this title on its cover: Keyboard Exercise Comprising an Aria and Differing Variations for a Two-Manual Harpsichord, composed for Amateurs by Johann Sebastian Bach, Composer at the Courts of Poland and of the Elector of Saxony, Chapel Master and Choir Master in Leipzig. Published in Nuremberg by Balthasar Schmid (translated from the original German).

Following the 1933 first recording of the complete masterwork by pioneering harpsichordist Wanda Landowska (a weighty 78 rpm recording project that has been reissued in every successive record format) the “Goldbergs” have been consigned to disc by a widely varied list of keyboardists, a tradition that continues, seemingly without any ritardandi. Indeed, while writing this report on recent compact disc releases, I have noted at least two more new recordings advertised for sale.

Just as I look at my extensive collection of books and think about the immense amounts of time and energy that are required for each publication (having been a writer all my adult life), I feel a similar empathy for the effort and dedication required when we consign our musical performances to disc (having done a fair number of these, as well). Thus, I try not to be overly critical in my reviews but rather hope that I may serve primarily as a reporter: one who gives enough information about the new offerings so that a reader may decide to seek more information, or even, perhaps, wish to acquire the item being discussed.

In alphabetical order, I present for your consideration three recent recordings of Bach’s magnum opus as performed by Diego Ares (born 1983) [Harmonia Mundi HMM 902283.84]; Wolfgang Rübsam (born 1946) [Naxos 8.573921]; and, as an archival reissue, a legacy from the renowned German organist and teacher, Helmut Walcha (1907–1991) [the last disc in a boxed set of thirteen compact discs comprising all of the major Bach solo harpsichord works, Warner Classics 0190295849618]. To make matters even more interesting, it so happens that I have had personal connections with each of these three keyboard artists.

 

Diego Ares

I met this brilliant harpsichordist in November 2009 and was blown away by his virtuoso performance of the Manuel de Falla Concerto for Harpsichord and Five Instruments at the opening event of the Wanda Landowska Exhibition organized by Martin Elste of the Musical Instrument Museum in Berlin, Germany. On my way to offer congratulations to the young artist, he met me halfway, as he wished to speak with me. At that time Diego was a student in Basel, and we both expressed our regrets that he had to return immediately to Switzerland for his semester end examinations, especially since we each had a special interest in contemporary harpsichord music.

We have, however, kept in touch since that brief encounter, and Diego has been generous in sending me his compact discs as they are produced. The immediate predecessor to his Goldberg Variations offering, his 2015 premiere recording of previously unknown Soler harpsichord sonatas (discovered in a manuscript now owned by the Morgan Library in New York City) won international acclaim, garnering both a Diapason d’Or and the German Record Critics’ first prize. I suspect that this latest two-disc set may well do the same.

In eloquent notes to the recording, Ares writes of his daily ritual that begins with a complete play through of the entire set of variations, but also he expresses his feeling for the need of a prelude to precede Bach’s opening statement of the Aria. For this recorded performance, Ares made a clever choice: Bach’s own transcription of an Adagio (BWV 968) based on the composer’s Violin Sonata (BWV 1005). It is indeed a lovely piece, but, since Bach left us only this one movement which cadences in the dominant key, it is a difficult work to program. As the desired prelude it makes a perfectly logical opener, connecting smoothly to the Aria in G Major.

Ares’s performance, with the added prelude, spans 1 hour, 29 minutes. He performs on his two-manual harpsichord by Joel Katzman (2002) based on a Taskin instrument from 1769.

 

Wolfgang Rübsam

Appointed to succeed the far-too-early-deceased James Tallis as harpsichord and organ professor at Southern Methodist University, I moved to Dallas, Texas, in late August 1970, to join the music faculty of the Meadows School of the Arts. Wolfgang Rübsam was, at that time, a stellar student in Robert T. Anderson’s organ class, and he went on to prove his stature by winning the first prize for interpretation at the 1973 Chartres organ competition. He also played a superb organ recital during the dedication year of SMU’s Fisk Opus 101 installation, and we continue to meet at various organ events throughout the United States.

Following a successful set of Bach recordings on the modern piano, Rübsam has turned his considerable musical insights to performing the Goldberg Variations on an instrument known to have been of interest to J. S. Bach: the lautenwerk or “lute harpsichord” of which a postmortem inventory of Bach’s belongings included two examples. Unfortunately, neither instrument is known to have survived the passage of time.

The proud owner of the fifth such instrument to be built by the highly respected American harpsichord maker Keith Hill, Rübsam provides a totally different sound picture for Bach’s variations. The constant arpeggiation certainly gives a different aura to the work, while the gentler plucked tones produced from this single-manual instrument soothe the ear. To record the entire work on one disc with a total timing of 78 minutes and 24 seconds, the artist confided that he made his own choices as to which of the variations would be played with the indicated repeats and which ones would not. I find his selections well made and actually agree totally that not all of the arbitrary double dots at the conclusion of each section need to be observed in any performance. I especially dislike the carbon-copy reruns of the B sections once one has made that trip from dominant cadencing back to the tonic. Most of the time one traversal is quite enough for my ears.

Amazing as it may seem to those of us who require two manuals as specified by the composer, Glenn Gould, Rübsam, and some other players seem quite able to negotiate the crossing of hands and notes, as well as the general awkwardness of compressing such acrobatics to one keyboard only. Bravo to all involved. 

 

Helmut Walcha

I first experienced a concert by the legendary professor of organ at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst of Frankfurt, Germany, during the unforgettable summer trip that followed my year at the Salzburg Mozarteum as an Oberlin Conservatory junior (1958–1959). In Letters from Salzburg
(Skyline Publications, Eau Claire, Wisconsin, 2006) I mentioned Walcha’s organ recital at the Frankfurt cathedral, with its eight-second reverberation, and noted that the organist was “an inspired player.” While visiting the Hochschule I met its harpsichord teacher, Frau Maria Jäger, and did not realize that Walcha was also a harpsichordist. 

During many summer trips to Europe in the earlier years of an academic career, my German friend and “European manager” Alfred Rosenberger and I often would attend Saturday Vespers at the Dreikönigskirche where Walcha was organist. There we could marvel at his expressive hymn playing and masterful improvisations, while also enjoying both the intimate beauty of the rather sparsely attended afternoon services as well as the post service opportunities to speak with the genial organ master.

Still there was no mention of the harpsichord; so, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the present thirteen-disc set comprising all the major solo harpsichord repertoire of J. S. Bach had been recorded starting in the spring of 1958 in Hamburg, continuing for the next several years, and culminated during March of 1961 with the 75 minutes and 38 seconds of Walcha’s interpretation of Goldberg Variations. And, for one further surprise, the recording engineer for all these sessions was none other than Hugo Distler’s brother-in-law, Erich Thienhaus! 

The two-manual harpsichord used for Walcha’s recording sessions was built at the Ammer Brothers factory located in Eisenberg in the eastern German province of Thuringia. What nostalgia that inspired! My first harpsichord teacher, Isolde Ahlgrimm, made her famous Bach recordings playing an Ammer instrument. My first harpsichord was a small double built at the Passau factory of Kurt Sperrhake, who also provided a larger two-manual model instrument during our Mozarteum year. (Ahlgrimm’s comment: “I’ve slept in smaller rooms than this instrument!”) While I would not want to return to these well-built, but heavy, leather-quilled factory instruments, there is a certain nostalgia for that youthful time of discoveries and the blooming of my first love for the harpsichord.

Would I recommend the Walcha recordings? Perhaps. It is remarkable that he could play absolutely perfectly since he had been struck blind at age nineteen, most likely from a reaction to his vaccination for smallpox. I do not hear any mistakes or smudged notes at all, but I also do not hear much in the way of personality or nuance either. It has somewhat the same effect as reading a dictionary—but as a source for checking the notes as they appear in the original Bach-Gesellschaft Editions there would likely be no deviations from that urtext.

And what a tribute to the human spirit! Every note required for thirteen compact discs full of music was retained in that brilliant memory! One of Walcha’s prize students, my SMU colleague Robert Anderson, told many tales of being summoned to visit his mentor for the purpose of following a score while his teacher played through the complete Art of the Fugue or some other complex set of organ pieces. And, said Bob, “There was hardly ever even one wrong note!”

Harpsichord Notes

Larry Palmer
Default

Seeking Haydn

A recent compact disc of compositions by Joseph Haydn performed on the harpsichord has provided novelty for the ears as well as provoking a lot of thought as to which keyboard instrument best serves this great composer’s creations. This conundrum occurs rather frequently for music of the later eighteenth century, especially since the extensive recording of classical sonatas by Haydn has been achieved most frequently by pianists, and similar endeavors seem to have been somewhat lacking from those of us who play instruments that pre-date the nearly-ubiquitous eighty-eight-keyed instrument.

Recorded early in 2017 by Finnish harpsichordist Pierre Gallon (born 1975), the compact disc Joseph Haydn per il Cembalo Solo is a recent release by l’Encelade (ECL1701: information available at www.encelade.net). Playing a 2004 harpsichord built by Jonte Knif (based on mid-eighteenth-century German instruments), Gallon has selected a varied repertoire of rarely heard Haydn works, including these five multi-movement compositions­:

Partita, HobXVI:6 (Divertimento per il Cembalo Solo): Allegro, Minuet, Adagio, Allegro molto [before 1766];

Sonata per Clavicembalo, HobXVI: 27: Allegro con brio, Menuetto, Presto [1776];

Divertimento, HobXVI:12: Andante, Menuet, Allegro molto [before 1766];

Sonata per Cembalo “a Principe Niccolo Esterhazy,” opus 13, HobXVI:24 [ca.1773];

Capriccio, HobXVII:1: Theme and Variations “Acht Sauschneider müssen seyn” [1765], a humorous popular folksong about the eight persons required for castrating a wild boar[!], a charming example of Haydn’s legendary sense of humor.

Interspersed with these large-scale compositions are three short pieces from the second set of 12 Lieder für das Clavier (1781/84): Geistliches Lied [#17], Minna [#23], and, as the compact disc’s final track, a gentle benediction: Auf meines Vaters Grab (At my Father’s Grave) [#24]­—each serving as a sonic “sorbet” to clear the listener’s aural senses.

Pierre Gallon displays a secure and brilliant technique, sometimes too much so, perhaps. Allegro (“happy”) and Presto (“fast”) frequently seem to be identical tempi, thus presenting a jet-fueled interpretation of music originally conceived in a horse and oxcart age. Occasionally I wished for more vocally inspired phrasing that would allow slightly more time before forging ahead to the next musical idea. There is, however, much sensitive and beautiful playing in the slower and gentler movements, and overall the disc is recommended as a welcome introduction to these rarely heard Haydn works. 

 

Some relevant Haydn research

So: which should it be? Harpsichord or piano? If I may quote myself, “The best answer is ‘Yes,’” as I stated in the notes to an edition of Samuel Wesley, Jr.’s Sonata in F Minor (published in 2007 by Skyline Publications, Eau Claire, Wisconsin). Wesley’s 1781 autograph manuscript was acquired by the Bridwell Library at Southern Methodist University. To honor the 300th anniversary of the birth of the senior Charles Wesley, the library mounted an extensive exhibition celebrating the musical Wesleys. I was asked to play the modern premiere of the sonata, for which Clyde Putman prepared a more legible “Finale” performing score that subsequently served as the basis for the modern publication. It is a beautiful edition that also includes full-sized facsimiles of the entire previously unknown manuscript as well as the essay from which I continue to quote:

 

The manuscript indicates that Wesley’s Sonata is “per il Cembalo,” the Italian word for harpsichord, an instrument not much associated with carefully calibrated dynamic changes, even in our own time. It is true that Cembalo (as a broader generic term for a keyboard instrument) was retained on title pages of keyboard publications well into the 19th century (notably by Beethoven, and continuing as late as several early piano works of Liszt!). However, dynamic indications alone do not negate harpsichord performance, especially since some late 18th-century British harpsichords could offer quite a range of volume and color. Larger instruments by Shudi, Kirkman, or Broadwood might include machine stops operated by foot pedals, thus allowing a player to change from the softest to full registrations, and back again, in an instant. A few harpsichords even had organ-like louvers, placed above the strings and soundboard, and also operated by a pedal. . . . With minor adjustments the Sonata works well as a harpsichord piece; but, given the rapidly changing aesthetic of the time, and the performance indications in the manuscript, there should be no deterrent to a performance on the piano, or, for that matter, the clavichord!

 

Returning to research specifically about Joseph Haydn, a fortuitous find in my personal library was a single copy of the magazine Harpsichord & Fortepiano for June 1998 (Volume 7, number 1: ISSN 1463-0036) in which Richard Maunder’s article “Keyboard Instruments in Haydn’s Vienna” details a fascinating overview of some choices that must have been available to our composer of the month. Originally delivered as a lecture for the British Clavichord Society, Dr. Maunder’s six-page, amply illustrated article offers information designed to refute three common myths: (1) that harpsichords were out-of-date by about 1770; (2) that the piano was well established by 1770, and that all of these pianos were made by Viennese builders; (3) that the clavichord was most prevalent in north Germany, but was rarely used in south Germany and Austria. Citing existing instruments, eighteenth-century newspaper advertisements, and documentary evidence from some Mozart family letters and the Eszterháza archives, the author successfully rebutted all of these assumptions. Known as a brilliant mathematician as well as a prominent musicologist, Maunder subsequently published a 288-page volume amplifying his premises (Keyboard Instruments in Eighteenth-Century Vienna, Oxford University Press, 1998; ISBN 0-19-816637-0). This information is the result of an online search using the author’s name. I have not seen the full text, but noted that used copies of the book are available, starting at $136.

The front cover of the June 1998 magazine cited above is graced with a lovely portrait of my first harpsichord mentor, Isolde Ahlgrimm, which, I believe, must be the reason I received the single issue, most likely from Ahlgrimm’s biographer Peter Watchorn, whose fact-filled Ahlgrimm discography, list of chamber music colleagues, publications, and instruments, plus three additional period photographs of the superb artist make this a periodical to cherish. It also reminded me of two important comments from our dear teacher—the first, describing an invitation she had received to perform music on Haydn’s own harpsichord in a Viennese museum: “It was, of course, a great honor, but I would have preferred less honor and a better instrument that did not sound like clacking false teeth!”

The second vignette is my grateful memory of “Ille’s” counsel as I prepared for my first performance as continuo harpsichordist for the recitatives of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation in Salzburg during spring 1959. “Check the ‘Applausus,’” she told me. I had never heard that word before, so she explained that it referred to a letter that Haydn sent to the performers of his cantata of the same name when he was unable to attend its premiere. Comprising ten specific items to observe in the performance, the most important for me at this time was number three, which stated “In the recitatives the instrumentalists should come in immediately after the vocalist has finished, but on no account is the vocalist to be interrupted, even if such a procedure were prescribed in the score.” (For a complete translation, see Karl Geiringer, Haydn—A Creative Life in Music. I note that a third edition, 1982, is one of the options available; my own paperback copy is the second edition [1963].)

Incidentally, I became a lifelong fan of Haydn after the soul-searing conclusion of the first chorus in his Creation oratorio: the quiet recitation, “And God said ‘Let there be light,’” segued into “and there was light”—surely one of the simplest, but most arresting choral/orchestral explosions in all of the oratorio literature! 

Two further volumes of great interest are both by A. Peter Brown. The larger volume is Joseph Haydn’s Keyboard Music: Sources and Style, published in 1986 by Indiana University Press. At slightly more than 450 pages, it is the most comprehensive collection of information about its subject. Brown’s second publication, also from Indiana, 1986, is Performing Haydn’s The Creation (Reconstructing the Earliest Renditions), 125 pages.

Also recommended is “Haydn’s Solo Keyboard Music” by Elaine Sisman, published as the eighth chapter of Eighteenth-Century Keyboard Music, edited by Robert L. Marshall as a volume in the Routledge Studies in Musical Genres series, second edition, 2008.

As I draw this column to its conclusion, I share with you a slight possibility that I have recently observed in Haydn’s Sonata No. 60 (Hob. XVI/50 in Volume Three of Christa Landon’s Complete Wiener Urtext Edition, UT 500029). In the first movement of this Sonata in C Major, dating from c. 1794–1795, I note that the indication “open pedal” is printed several times. Landon suggests this might mean “with raised dampers,” and would thus assign the piece to the piano. I wonder if it might refer instead to the harpsichord louvers I mentioned many paragraphs ago? Haydn had experienced several long visits to London by this time . . . . Hmmm. The possibilities continue to expand and excite. Seeking Haydn is a continual exploration, as are the mysteries of his genius and the joys to be found in his many contributions to our keyboard literature. The search for enlightenment never ends; therein lies its beauty.

Harpsichord Notes

Larry Palmer
Default

Death and taxis in Vienna

A particular obituary that escaped my timely notice reported the death of the recently retired harpsichord professor Gordon Murray, Isolde Ahlgrimm’s successor as harpsichord teacher at the Vienna Academy of Music and the Performing Arts. Early on the morning of March 12, 2017, as he and Alice Rutherford, his 89-year old British visitor were exiting their taxi at the Intercontinental Hotel, a second taxi crashed into them, causing the deaths of both Murray and his guest.

Gordon Murray, born on Prince Edward Island in 1948, became the organist for his minister father’s church (Kensington United) at ten years of age. His Canadian education culminated at McGill University in Montreal, and a subsequent Canadian Council grant funded Murray’s European musical studies in Paris (Marie-Claire Alain) and Vienna (Nikolaus Harnoncourt). His professional academic career began with a teaching appointment in Graz, Austria, in 1982 and continued in Vienna from 1985 until his retirement in September 2016.

 

J. S. Bach: (Six) Sonatas for Violin and Harpsichord (BWV 1014–1019)

Rachel Barton Pine, violin, and Jory Vinikour, harpsichord

There is much to enjoy on the two compact discs of this recent release from Cedille Records (CDR 90000 177). Two fine musicians play equally fine instruments: an unaltered 1770 violin by Nicola Gagliano and a 2012 harpsichord by Tony Chinnery, based on one built by Pascal Taskin in 1769. Ravishing cantabile and adagio movements, perfect ensemble, and, for the most part, a fine sense for these wonderful Bach creations cited by his son C. P. E. as “among the finest my father composed,” quoted as an introduction to Vinikour’s erudite, well-written notes on the music.

My one reservation deals with some extremely fast tempi for Allegro movements—a trend I have noticed more and more in recent performances. The word Allegro in its Italian meaning indicates cheerfulness, joy, or merriment. Musicians know it as an indication for a lively, quick tempo. I have developed increasing doubts as the liveliness has increased steadily in recent times (or so it seems). 

In the A-Major Sonata (number 2) the opening Dolce is followed by an Allegro movement, a moderate Andante, and the concluding Presto. Surprisingly the Allegro was as fleet as the Presto­—causing one to think of the most recent Triple Crown horse race winner, that speedy animal named Justify—thus giving one an opportunity to dub these two very fast movements “Justify-ed Bach.” Seriously, I think that too many present-day musicians fail to remember that Baroque folk travelled in oxcarts and horse-drawn carriages, not bullet trains or supersonic airplanes. And I do note that I prefer a less-hectic pace as I have grown older (in the latter years of my full-time teaching it became routine for my comment to be “I think I’d take that a little more slowly”).

For an aural comparison I turned to another complete recording of the Six Sonatas played by Emlyn Ngai, violin, and Peter Watchorn, harpsichord (Musica Omnia, 3 CDs, mo0112). These two splendid musicians played the A-Major Sonata in 1412 minutes compared to less than 13 minutes for Vinikour and Pine. In only one of the sonatas did the most recent duo take more time than previous artists: their transcendent F-Minor Sonata lasts about one minute longer—as befits that haunting key. And, to be fair, the accuracy of both artists is impeccable, whatever the velocity!

For one additional sonata, the E Major (number 3), the timings of three recent recordings were all slight variants of 15 minutes plus 1 to 46 seconds. Fortuitously, I found Landowska’s 1944 recording of this same sonata (with violinist Yehudi Menuhin) in my CD collection. Truly magisterial, the great lady stretched her timing to 20 minutes (RCA Victor, reissued on Biddulph LHW 031).    

 

Communications from Readers

From Edward Clark (Hartford, Connecticut), Re: June 2018 Harpsichord Notes:

. . . I, too, did not know the Dandrieu harpsichord pieces but have enjoyed playing many of the composer’s organ works. You mentioned not being able to find any other recent editions of the harpsichord works. I went online, and at imslp.org discovered not only excellent facsimiles of all three volumes, but also very fine modern typeset editions of all three volumes which were edited and set by Steve Wiberg (Due West Editions, 2007–2009) based on facsimiles of the first printings. These fine editions are available for free download as PDF files or as Sibelius 4 files: http://imslp.org/wiki/Category:Dandrieu962C_Jean-Fran96C396A7ois).

(P.S: The misprint you mentioned in La Champêtre is notated correctly in this edition.)

From David Kelzenberg (Iowa City, Iowa): the newly elected President of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA):

 . . . Did you forget that the first sounds of the harpsichord on Sylvia Marlowe’s iconic children’s recording Said the Piano to the Harpsichord is Dandrieu’s La Gémissante?

LP: Yes, I did forget that. So, I had played at least one harpsichord work by Dandrieu years before writing the June column, since I programmed a live version of Said the Piano . . . for our Limited Editions house concert series—a brilliant performance narrated by Richard Kingston, with Arlington, Texas, colleague Linton Powell at the (electronic) piano, and ye olde harpsichord editor at his beloved Kingston Franco-Flemish harpsichord.

Thanks for reviving that very happy memory, President David. In your honor I have resurrected this one-page Dandrieu gem (the title translates as “Groaners or Moaners” which aptly applies to presidential duties, as I can substantiate from a four-year term in that exalted office for the Southeastern HKS). I have added it to the playlist for a July 1 private concert, my annual event for a local Dallas doctor. Celebrating the tenth year of these July programs, I decided to include some pieces appropriate for a medical professional: Kuhnau’s Fourth Biblical Sonata (Hezekiah’s Illness and Recovery), François Couperin’s La Convalescente (Ordre 26), and Armand-Louis Couperin’s La Chéron (a musician friend, certain to be neurotic) and L’Affligée (certainly may be “afflicted” but the piece is A-L C’s finest solo harpsichord composition).

 

From Frances Y. Austin (Columbia, South Carolina):

. . .I just read the February Harpsichord Notes and noticed the miniature harpsichord. Wouldn’t a “mini” recording be possible? In my dollhouse I have a replica of the old “pump organ.” Its wind-up sound is like a tiny music box playing Für Elise. Certainly not authentic . . . . My husband is an engineer who is aware of the process by which companies provide recordings in toys (quarter size) and also the ability to record a message in a greeting card. What we’d like to know is where one could get the parts? 
. . . Might someone know how to make an authentic recording that would go inside the replica (or alongside)? . . . .

LP: Of course, in my column I was referring (tongue in cheek) to the wished-for possibility of playing such a tiny instrument in concerts, especially given the advantage of its feather-weight movability. Should any readers have suggestions for Mrs. Austin, please send them to me, and I will forward them to her.

Remembering Yuko Hayashi (1929–2018)

Leonardo Ciampa

Leonardo Ciampa is Maestro di Cappella Onorario of the Basilica di Sant’Ubaldo in Gubbio, Italy, and organist of St. John the Evangelist Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Default

When you see a bud growing out of the ground, you’re not sure what it is yet, so you water it and feed it, and you wait to see what it grows into. But you don’t want to step on it. And if the bud is very small, all the more important not to step on it.

—Yuko Hayashi

 

Yuko Hayashi is gone.

I feel unworthy of eulogizing her. I do not presume to rank among her greatest students—a very long list that includes James David Christie, Carolyn Shuster Fournier, Mamiko Iwasaki, Peter Sykes, Christa Rakich, Gregory Crowell, Mark Dwyer, Kevin Birch, Kyler Brown, Barbara Bruns, Ray Cornils, Nancy Granert, Hatsumi Miura, Tomoko Akatsu Miyamoto, Dana Robinson, Naomi Shiga, Paul Tegels, and others too numerous to name. 

I cannot describe, or comprehend, the fortune of being her student between the ages of 15 and 18—at the time, her only high school student. She was in her late 50s—still at the height of her powers, still performing internationally and recording. She brought a constant parade of heavy-hitters to Old West Church in Boston for recitals and masterclasses. During those three years alone (1986–1989), there were José Manuel Azkue, Guy Bovet, Fenner Douglass, Susan Ferré, Roberta Gary, Mireille Lagacé, Joan Lippincott, Karel Paukert, Umberto Pineschi, Peter Planyavsky, Michael Radulescu, Montserrat Torrent, Harald Vogel, and the list goes on. Yuko was something of an impresario. In the 70s, when Harald Vogel was completely unknown in America, she brought him to Old West to play his very first concert here—for $100, which she paid out of her own pocket! Guy Boet, same story—his first concert in America, for $100. In 1972, at the International Christian University (ICU) in Tokyo, Yuko organized the very first organ academy ever held in Japan, bringing both Anton Heiller and Marie-Claire Alain. In 1985, Yuko, Umberto Pineschi, and Masakata Kanazawa started the Academy of Italian Organ Music in Shirakawa. A list of her accomplishments would be long, indeed.

At the time, I knew virtually nothing about Yuko’s life or career. Meeting her was truly random. It was September of 1985 (Bach’s 300th birthday year). I was skimming the concert listings in The Boston Globe, and I happened to see that there was going to be an all-Bach organ and harpsichord concert at Old West Church, given by Peter Williams. I had never heard a “real pipe organ,” and I had never set foot in a Protestant church before. I had no idea who Peter Williams was, and I had no particular interest in the organ or harpsichord. I was a 14-year-old piano student in the New England Conservatory prep school. The craziest part of all? I had not the faintest idea that the New England Conservatory organ department held their lessons, classes, and concerts at Old West, or that the church’s organist happened to be department chair. Attending the concert was nothing more than a whim.

I was immediately grabbed, both by the sound of the Fisk’s ravishing plenum, and by Williams’s exquisite selections, all from Bach’s youth. I still remember every piece on the program, which opened with Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 739. After the concert, a short but elegant Japanese woman introduced herself to me and shook my hand. I had no idea she had any affiliation with NEC. I’m not sure I even understood that she was the church’s organist.

Who could have predicted that, one year later, September 1986, I would quit the piano and become an organ student of Yuko, taking lessons on that same instrument? But even that was random. In the NEC prep school catalogue, under “Organ,” Yuko’s was the name listed. That’s the one and only reason I contacted her.

 

Early years in Japan

(1929–1953)

Yuko Hayashi was born in 1929 in Hiratsuka, a coastal town 24 miles from Yokohama. She was born on November 2. (She used to joke about having been born on All Souls’ Day, having missed All Saints’ Day by only one day!) Many of Yuko’s students would come to notice her unusual perceptiveness. A couple of us thought it bordered on ESP. She had the ability to reach for things even when she couldn’t see them. Case in point: why did a woman who was born in 1929, in a country that was only one percent Christian, decide that she wanted to become an organist, when she didn’t even know what an organ was?

Yuko’s father was a Japanese Anglican priest. He was the pastor of St. Andrew’s Church in Yokohama. At age five, Yuko started playing the reed organ at St. Andrew’s. (Soon enough, she became sufficiently proficient to play an entire Anglican service.) In sixth grade, her music teacher suggested she learn the piano. “Hanon: hated it. Czerny: a little better. Burgmüller: not as bad. But then, Bach Inventions! I became hooked on this music. I practiced all hours; I didn’t want to quit.”1 She reasoned, “If Bach wrote pieces for the organ, then the organ must be a wonderful instrument.”2 She knew that she wanted to play the organ, even before she had ever seen one! The only instruments she knew were the reed organ at church and a Hammond. In 2007 I asked her, “When you were young, how did you know you wanted to play the organ if you didn’t even know what an organ was?” She replied, “I knew when I met J. S. Bach.”3 In a 2009 email she wrote, “If I was not exposed to the two-part Inventions by Bach just by chance in my youth, I am positively sure that I [would] not [have been] drawn into music for so many decades since. Certainly, I would not have chosen organ as my main instrument.”4

Finally at age 15 she saw a pipe organ for the first time, in Tokyo. It was important to practice on a pipe organ, for she was preparing to audition for the Tokyo Ueno Conservatory (now named Tokyo University of the Arts). Imagine this 15-year-old girl, in 1944, with bombs falling around her, traveling two and a half hours to Tokyo to practice for two hours on this organ, then making the two and a half hour return trip home. (I recall that, in the 1980s, she told me that this organ was an Estey.5 However, other students remember her saying it was a Casavant.6)

She passed the audition and enrolled in the conservatory. Eight students had to share “a Yamaha and an electric-action pipe organ with a hideous sound. We each practiced for 50 minutes and then let the motor rest for ten minutes in between because it was old and cranky.”

 

Study in America (1953–1960)

In the early 1950s, Yuko’s father urged her to visit America. She accepted a scholarship to attend Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. The port of entry was faraway Seattle. The sea voyage from Yokohama to Seattle took 12 days. She arrived in Seattle on July 23, 1953. Tuition, room, and board were covered, but she had only thirty dollars in her pocket (which was all she was allowed). She stretched the thirty dollars as far as she could, though at least she had an Amtrak pass that enabled her to travel by train anywhere in the country.  

 

My father arranged a train trip for me around half of the country, visiting some of his friends. When I arrived in Seattle on July 23 [1953], his friend’s daughter, who was the secretary of St. Mark’s Cathedral, came to pick me up. Within two hours of setting foot on American soil, I played the organ at St. Mark’s. I think it was a Kilgen.8 I met Peter Hallock, and he gave me some of his compositions. From Seattle I went to San Francisco and stayed with my father’s friend there. I heard Richard Purvis play a recital in a museum, and I remember I kept looking around for the pipes, which were not visible. That was my second American organ experience. Next I stayed in Los Angeles for a few days. I didn’t see any organs there, but what I remember most was my first American picnic, a culturally foreign experience for me. Then I went to Salt Lake City, found the Mormon Tabernacle organ and went to two concerts in one day. Alexander Schreiner was there. Can you imagine? Next I visited my father’s friends in Minneapolis, and then the remainder of the summer stayed in a guesthouse at the University of Chicago. Finally, I arrived at Cottey College, and do you know what I found there? A Baldwin organ!9

 

After a year she was no longer able to stay at the school; however, she received a scholarship to go to any other school of her choice in America. Where would she go? She knew nothing about Oberlin or Eastman. Ultimately, her decision was influenced by having grown up by the sea.

 

At that school in Missouri, every Friday you know what we had to eat? Fish. That fish must have been dead for ten days by the time we had it. The fish was so fresh in Japan. So I knew I wanted to live near the sea. New York was too big. Washington, D.C., was too political. But Boston . . . .10

And so in 1954 she entered the New England Conservatory and studied organ with the legendary George Faxon.  

 

I spoke almost no English, and he didn’t say very much. So our lessons were filled with music but had long silences! One week he asked me to bring in the Vivaldi[/Bach] A-minor concerto. And I memorized it. I’d never memorized anything before. He didn’t say much. But you know what he did? He wrote on a piece of paper “Sowerby Pageant” and told me to go to Carl Fischer [Music Company] to pick up the music. When I got to the store and showed the man the piece of paper, he said, “Oh, you’re playing this?” I said, “Yes.” I had no idea what it was. Then when I opened the music! Incredibly difficult. At my next lesson Faxon wrote in the pedalings, very quickly, from beginning to end. What a technique he had. And you knew where he got it? Fernando Germani. Once Faxon took me to Brown University to see his teacher, Germani, play the Sowerby. I got to sit very close to him, so I could see Germani playing. And there he was, five-foot-three, his feet flying all over the pedalboard.11

 

On February 6, 1956, Yuko played her bachelor’s recital in Jordan Hall, her first recital ever. In only three weeks Yuko memorized the daunting program, which included Vivaldi/Bach A-minor concerto (first movement), D’Aquin Noël X, Schumann Canon (probably B minor, op. 56, no. 5), Bach Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue, Liszt “Ad Nos” (second half), Sowerby Pageant, Titcomb Regina Caeli, Dupré Second Symphony (Intermezzo), and Messiaen L’Ascension (third movement).

In 1956, Faxon told Yuko, “This is still a secret, so you can’t tell anybody. But I’m leaving NEC and going to teach at B.U. [Boston University]” Yuko was disappointed at the news. “I wanted to follow him to B.U. I didn’t know anybody else. But he said, ‘No, don’t follow me. You studied with me two years—that’s enough. Stay at NEC.’ And then he said, ‘You must make Boston your home.’”12

Yuko was disheartened and considered returning to Japan. But Chester (“Chet”) Williams, beloved dean of NEC, would have none of it. Faxon’s imminent departure was still a secret. But Chet had another secret for Yuko: “There is another man coming, someone with great ideas.” That man was Donald Willing. On Chet’s advice, Yuko stayed at NEC.

Willing had been to Europe and was galvanized by the new tracker instruments being built. He immediately arranged for NEC to purchase new practice organs by Metzler and Rieger. The 1957 Metzler was voiced by Oscar Metzler himself.

 

As soon as I touched the instrument, I had an immediate reaction: “This is it! This is a living organism!” My teacher did not persuade me to have this reaction—I had it on my own, from touching the instrument myself. That was 1957. The next year, 1958, I got my M. M. from the conservatory. And that same year, the Flentrop was put in at Busch-Reisinger [now Adolphus Busch Hall]. That was Biggs’s instrument. He let all the students play it. We had to practice at night, when the museum was closed. And we were poor; we couldn’t afford to pay a security guard. So Peggy [Mrs. Biggs] would act as the guard. The Biggs’s were so generous to organ students.13

 

Not all the organ students were taken by these new instruments. “They would say, ‘Are you going backwards?’”14 Yuko was undeterred. She played her Artist Diploma recital on the Flentrop in 1960.

 

Leonhardt and Heiller (1960–1966)

In 1960, Yuko joined the faculty of the organ department of New England Conservatory. At this point she had not yet heard of Gustav Leonhardt.  

 

I first heard of Leonhardt from John
Fesperman. Before John went to the Smithsonian, he taught at the Conservatory. The organ faculty was Donald Willing, John
Fesperman, and I, who had just been hired. I don’t know why, but John had been to Holland already, and he said, “Leonhardt is coming; you should go study with him.” So I did. I used to go to Waltham [Massachusetts] to practice cembalo at the Harvard Shop, and once a week I went to New York to study with Leonhardt. He was young, late 20s. A whole summer [1960] I studied with him.15

 

Yuko so enjoyed her study with Leonhardt that she considered switching to harpsichord. Indirectly it was Leonhardt who dissuaded her.

 

Finally [Leonhardt] said, “You really should study organ with Anton Heiller.” And I thought, “Who is that?” So I bought records of Heiller. You know, the old LP records. [. . .] [I]t was grand playing. Already I noticed something.16

 

1962 marked Heiller’s first visit to America and his first ever trip on an airplane! He gave two all-Bach performances on the Flentrop at Harvard University. Yuko attended the first performance and was so impressed that she attended the second one as well.  

 

And you know the most wonderful thing he played? O Mensch . . . with the melody on the Principal . . . . The whole program swept me away. And I immediately said, “This is the man I want to study with.” But I was shy, so I didn’t go to him right away. [. . .] He used to come to America every three years. He had come in ’62, so in ’65 he came back, and he returned again in ’68, ’71, etc. So in ’65 he was teaching at Washington University in St. Louis. I went down there, and for the first time, I met him. [The course was] six-and-a-half weeks. Every morning, he gave four hours of classes. Bach, David, Reger, and Hindemith—on a Möller! Then, in the afternoon, private lessons on a 10-stop Walcker organ in a private studio.17

 

Heiller urged Yuko to enroll in the summer academy in Haarlem the following year (1961). This marked her very first visit to Europe. She went on to study with Heiller sporadically, following him wherever he happened to be playing. (She was the only Heiller student who didn’t study with him in Vienna.)

 

Maybe [Heiller] taught differently with other people, but with me, most of what I learned was from his playing, not from his words. [H]e played a lot [during lessons]. But I would move and he would sit on the bench. He didn’t just play over my shoulder. With him, nothing was halfway. [. . .] Funny thing: when he was just standing there, without doing anything, I played better. He felt the music inside him, and it came out. It was a weird thing. [. . .] I performed his organ concerto. Of course he wanted to hear it at a lesson. But I wasn’t ready. He only told me about it three weeks before. But again, he was standing right there. And it’s funny, I was able to play it. You see, he was so perfect, he made me feel I could play. [. . .] You know, I was so little—I’m still little. (laughter) And he was much bigger than me. But he said to me, “Don’t be afraid of the piece.”18

 

In 1969, Yuko became chair of the organ department of NEC. She remained until 2001, a total of 41 years on the faculty, 30 of which as chair.

First European tours (1968)

Yuko’s first concert in Europe was at the 1968 International Organ Festival in Haarlem. From there she went on to play many concerts on historic instruments in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. “The wife of Hiroshi Tsuji, the Japanese organbuilder, arranged my first concert tour in Europe. [. . .] I soon discovered that I loved going to places where I didn’t know the people or the organs. I like to explore things I don’t know.”19 Here again we see Yuko’s fearlessness in reaching for things she could not see. As Nancy Granert reminisced, 

 

One time, Yuko and I were talking about traveling alone through Europe. I was saying that I always had a map in my purse, and that I really didn’t like being lost. She replied that she loved being lost and to find new places. She, after all, always knew where she was, right?20

Old West Church (1974)

Charles Fisk built one of his most beautiful instruments, Opus 55, for Old West Church in Boston.21 It went on to become the main teaching instrument for the New England Conservatory organ department for decades. The organ was dedicated on Easter Sunday 1971 by Max Miller and Marian Ruhl Metson.

In 1973, Old West was conducting a search for a new organist. The organ committee consisted of the Rev. Dr. Richard Eslinger (pastor of Old West), Charles Fisk, Max Miller, and Jeanne Crowgey.22 Sneakily, but fortuitously, Eslinger and Fisk invited Yuko to attend a committee meeting in December 1973. After this meeting, they took Yuko across the street for a beer or two at a Chinese restaurant and lounge. Yuko enjoyed telling this story.

Charlie said, “Yuko, have you ever thought of becoming the organist for Old West Church?” These were absolutely unexpected words, and my answer was simply, “No.” Charlie kept a smile on his face and went on to tell me how convinced he was for me to be the organist of his organ at Old West, and that it was the right thing for me to do.

I was overwhelmed by his totally positive thoughts, and by the end of the conversation that evening I was convinced that Charlie was right and said “Yes” to him without knowing what the future would hold. [. . .] In February of 1974 I began to play for worship services (as a non-salaried organist), organized organ recitals for the season as well as the weekly lunchtime concerts that, after a decade, evolved into the Summer Evening Concerts.

As I look back [. . .] I say to myself, “How on the earth did Charlie know that I would be the appropriate one?” [. . . .] Charlie then knew that if I were caught by [the] beautiful sonorities that I could not leave them, would enjoy them, would maintain the instrument, and would let it be heard and played by all. [. . .] 

As I listened to organ students of the New England Conservatory day by day, year after year, and, of course, through my own practice, I became convinced that the 1971 Charles Fisk organ at Old West is a living organism and not just an organ with extraordinary beauty. This organ responds to the high demands of an artist as if a lively dialogue between two humans is being exchanged. I even dare say that the spirit of Charlie, an artist/organbuilder, is present when the organ is played by any organist who wishes to engage in conversation.23

 

Yuko remained organist of Old West for 36 years. I was so fortunate to hear so many of her recitals there during the 1980s. I remember matchless performances of Bach’s Passacaglia, Franck’s Grand Pièce, and the Italian Baroque repertoire for which she had an incredible knack. (In fact, I never in my life heard a non-Italian play this music as well as she.24) As late as 2008 (her last recital was in 2010), she gave a performance of Bach’s Pièce d’Orgue that to me remains the benchmark for all others. Few organists can play the middle gravement section without it sounding too long and too heavy. In Yuko’s hands, I was astonished by the articulation of each entrance of each of the five voices. I say without exaggeration that it sounded like a quintet of breathing musicians. I was so gripped by it that, when she got to the final section, I couldn’t believe how short the gravement had seemed.

 

As a teacher

Yuko made good use of her ESP. As a teacher, not only did she adapt to each individual student, but she adapted to each individual lesson with each student. Each lesson with her was a brand new experience—based solely on what she was sensing in the room at that moment. Besides her perceptiveness, she had something else: a regard for the value of each student. I can never forget something she told me many years later: “When you see a bud growing out of the ground, you’re not sure what it is yet, so you water it and feed it, and you wait to see what it grows into. But you don’t want to step on it.”25 Her next sentence was even more unforgettable: “And if the bud is very small, all the more important not to step on it.” It would be hard to find a famous teacher with that level of regard for even the least talented among of her students.

Yuko’s ear was astonishing. She could have used that ear to be a critic or an adjudicator towards her students. Instead, she worked tirelessly to get them to use their own ear, to make their own decisions and judgments. In her gentle, quiet way (her voice never rose above a mezzo piano), she was relentless in making her students listen to the sound coming from the organ, in particular to be aware of the air going through the pipes. Most of all, she wanted her students to learn directly from the composer.

I will never forget playing Bach’s Allein Gott, BWV 664. The moment I stopped listening to one of the three voices, within milliseconds she started singing it. Then I would get back on track. Then, the millisecond that I stopped listening to another part, she would sing that one. That was how perceptive she was—which was both comforting and frightening! Another astonishing moment in our lessons that is worth mentioning is the one and only time I played Frescobaldi for her. In modern parlance, you could say that I was “schooled.” I was playing the Kyrie della Domenica from Fiori Musicali, which is in four voices. I played it and could tell from her facial expression that she was not pleased. She said one sentence: “You know, this music was originally written on four staves.” I played it again. This time, her face was even more displeased, and she said nothing at all. She sat down on the bench next to me and said, “OK, you play the alto and the bass, and I’ll play the soprano and the tenor.” I was floored. Her two voices breathed. They sang. She got up from the bench, without saying a word. Her point was made, and powerfully.

 

Later years

Yuko and I exchanged many emails in 2009. Many of them concerned administrative details of the Old West Organ Society (of which I was then a board member). However, more often the emails were simply about music.  

 

I remember when I first heard Mozart, in a castle outside Vienna, in [the] early 1970s. It was a big shock to me. While they were performing Mozart’s chamber music, I started to have the image about the leaves of the tree which show the front of the leaf and the back of the leaf, back and forth. Their colors are very different from each other, yet [the] only differences are front or back of the same leaf. It influenced the dynamic control as well in their performance at the castle.26

 

During this era she always wrote to me as a friend and colleague, never as a “student.” Only once did she give something resembling “advice:”

 

I believe, there are only two emotions that stand out, “Love” and “Fear.” You have plenty of both, which in [an] actual sense make [a] great artist. Your potentiality is enormous! Don’t waste it, please! After all, it is the gift from God.27

 

She was pleased, then, when not long after that email I became artistic director of organ concerts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (home of two historic Holtkamps from 1955). In October, Yuko called me to congratulate me. She reminisced about Walter Holtkamp, Sr., whom she met in Cleveland.

 

He was a strong character, and rather difficult to get along with. Yet, we liked each other. Walter took me for dinner, and to his organ in the Episcopal Church in Cleveland, and I played the organ for him. He liked my playing because I played exactly as I believed.

That led to reminiscing about Melville Smith, who dedicated the larger Holtkamp in Kresge Auditorium. She even knew about Saarinen, the architect who designed both Kresge and the MIT Chapel. One thing led to another. She ended up telling me practically her whole life story. We spoke for four (!)
hours. She did almost all of the talking. There wasn’t a single dull moment. Every sentence was imbued with energy. She talked about growing up in Japan during the war, doing forced labor even as a teenager. She talked about her earliest musical experiences and about more recent organbuilding trends in Japan. She spoke at length about Marc Garnier, who built the monumental organ at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Center. She told story after story about Guy Bovet, Harald Vogel, Peter Williams, and Karel Paukert (in whose presence she set foot in Old West Church for the very first time). She told me about the time she was in France with Michel Chapuis, and she was playing a three-voice work, and Chapuis reached over and improvised a fourth voice over what she was playing. She spoke of Heiller (which she did in most every conversation I ever had with her). She even spoke of events and feelings in her personal life. It is safe to say that it was one of the most extraordinary phone conversations that I have ever had, with anyone. The next time I saw her, in 2010, she showed signs of memory loss. Clearly this was Yuko’s instinct at work, once again: she knew that in that phone conversation in 2009, she needed to tell me her life’s story.

At the 2014 AGO national convention in Boston, there was a workshop entitled “The Organ as Teacher: The Legacy of Performance Pedagogy at Old West Church,” moderated by Margaret Angelini, with Barbara Bruns, Susan Ferré, and Anne Labounsky. Indirectly it was an event honoring Yuko. (Had it been entitled “An Event in Honor of Yuko Hayashi,” she would have strongly objected.) It was hard for Yuko’s friends to see her in this state of diminished powers—at times aware of what was going on, at other times not so much. But then came a moment, after the workshop, when Yuko was standing, chatting with Ferré and Labounsky. All of a sudden she looked at them, pointed to me, and told them, “He’s a wonderful musician.” For me, that was the equivalent of a New York Times review. I have sought no other musical validation since that moment.

Last summer Yuko’s health declined. In September I learned that her condition was so grave that her family in Japan were contacted. Her 88th birthday was to be on November 2, followed eight days later by a celebratory concert at Old West, featuring some of her greatest former students. None of us thought she was going to live until the concert—we expected it to be a memorial service. Each day I checked my iPhone compulsively, not wanting to miss the terrible news. But the news didn’t come. Now it was November 10, the night of the gala concert. Apparently she was still with us—I had not heard otherwise. I arrived at Old West on that bitter cold night. I walked out of the cold into the warm church, and I heard people saying that Yuko was there! At Old West! I didn’t fully believe it. I looked around, and then I saw it: the back of a wheelchair. I raced over, and there she was. Her eyes were as alert as I had ever seen them. This isn’t possible! How did they even get her there, on that bitter cold evening? But Barbara Bruns made it happen. Yuko took my hand in hers and kept rubbing it, looking me straight in the eye the whole time. Not a word was said.  

The entire evening Yuko had that same alertness in her eyes, start to finish. Being at Old West, among her students and friends, hearing Charles Fisk’s beloved Opus 55—the energy from all of it must have thrilled her.

A few months passed. For Epiphany weekend, January 6 and 7, 2018, as a prelude at all of my Masses, I played Bach’s Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, BWV 739—the very first piece at Peter Williams’s life-changing recital at Old West so many years ago, the night I met Yuko Hayashi. Eerily, but not surprisingly, only three and a half hours after my last Mass, Yuko Hayashi left this world.

 

Notes

1. Phone conversation with the author,  July 25, 2007.

2. Ibid.

3. Ibid. 

4. Email to the author, October 19, 2009.

5. 1918 Estey (Opus 1598) at Rikkyo (St. Paul’s) University, Tokyo. Replaced by Beckerath in 1984.

6. 1927 Casavant (Opus 1208) at Holy Trinity Church, Tokyo. Church and organ were destroyed by a firebomb in 1945.

7. Diane Luchese, “A conversation with Yuko Hayashi,” The American Organist, September 2010, p. 57. 

8. It was a ca. 1902 Kimball (not Kilgen), with tubular-pneumatic action.

9. Luchese, op. cit., p. 57f.

10. Phone conversation with the author, July 25, 2007.

11. Ibid. 

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. From an unpublished interview between Yuko and the author, which took place in Boston on February 17, 2004. 

16. Ibid.

17. Ibid.

18. Ibid.

19. Luchese, op. cit., p. 60. 

20. Conversation with Nancy Granert, January 11, 2018.

21. Seven years previous, and 500 meters down the road, Fisk had installed his Opus 44 at King’s Chapel, the first modern American three-manual tracker organ built in the second half of the twentieth century. The organ was a gift of Amelia Peabody. Thanks to the friendship between the pastors of Old West (Dr. Wilbur C. Ziegler) and King’s Chapel (Dr. Joseph Barth), Amelia Peabody gave a grant to Old West for their new organ. The choice of Fisk was endorsed by the organists of both King’s Chapel (Daniel Pinkham) and Old West (James Busby), as well as E. Power Biggs.

22. Jeanne Crowgey was a member of Old West from 1972 to 1980. She was also an organist, who served unofficially as an interim before the selection of Yuko Hayashi. Crowgey went on to be Yuko’s invaluable assistant during the first six years of the Old West Organ Society. Crowgey did a large amount of the administrative work for the international series, the summer series, and the weekly noontime concert series. She was one of the last friends to visit Yuko before her passing.

23. From a reminiscence written by Yuko in 2004 and posted on the C. B. Fisk website (edited by L. C.).

24. Once in the 1960s she played a recital at the Piaristenkirche in Vienna, which included a piece by Frescobaldi. Heiller was in attendance and raved about how she played the Frescobaldi, a composer she had never studied with him (phone conversation with the author, year unknown).

25. Phone conversation with the author, year unknown.

26. Email to the author, June 10, 2009.

27. Email to the author, September 2, 2009.

Transcribing for organ: A historical overview

Yves Rechsteiner

Yves Rechsteiner studied organ and harpsichord in Geneva and specialized in fortepiano and basso continuo at the Schola Cantorum of Basel. A prizewinner in several international competitions, including Geneva, Prague, and Bruges, he was appointed basso continuo teacher and head of the early music department at the Conservatoire Supérieur of Lyon in 1995. He has recorded various projects involving a transcription process: Bach on pedal harpsichord in 2002, Rameau in 2010 (awarded “Diapason d’or”) and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique on the Puget organ of la Dalbade in Toulouse in 2013. Rechsteiner has founded a duo with percussionist H. C. Caget and developed further arrangement of Frank Zappa’s music to rock progressive music including an organ version of Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. He is the artistic director of the Festival Toulouse les Orgues, France.

Default

Since the Renaissance, keyboard repertoire has included pieces originally written for other instruments. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the transcription became a genre of its own. Arrangements for organ have been popular since the nineteenth century, and they belonged to the virtuoso’s repertoire. From Edwin Lemare to Cameron Carpenter, arrangements range from spectacular showpieces to well-known tunes, treated so as to make use of the most up-to-date instruments.

Adapting pieces originally for other instruments to the organ (or another instrument) was not limited to the nineteenth century. Bach played his sonatas and partitas for violin on the clavichord. Earlier, Jean-Henri D’Anglebert made beautiful harpsichord pieces out of Jean Baptiste Lully’s best-known tunes. In the other direction, Jean-Philippe Rameau converted some of his harpsichord pieces into dances, airs, and choruses in his operas; these same pieces were played later by his pupil Claude Balbastre on the concert organ for Le Concert Spirituel in Paris. Haydn’s music was already arranged for organ in his lifetime, and from Liszt onwards, organ transcription became a strong tradition.

My interest in this transformative art form—whether called transcription, arrangement, or adaptation—has led me to focus on J. S. Bach’s sonatas and partitas for violin, Jean-Philippe Rameau and the French Classic organists, Franz Liszt, and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. This essay will describes some features of these period transcriptions, especially the surprising liberties that were sometimes taken with the original musical text, and will give a few examples of my own attempts at transcription.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach’s arrangements for organ or harpsichord are well known. In his youth he arranged several of Vivaldi’s concerti grossi for organ, and others for harpsichord. Much later he edited what are known as the Schübler Chorales, which are in fact movements from his church cantatas. But the most fascinating examples are the keyboard versions of part of his Three Sonatas and Three Partitas for Violin, BWV 1001–1006, because of the richness of the new parts added in the transcription. Examples 1–3 show various techniques. Reducing an orchestral texture for an organ implies other techniques than expanding a violin texture on the keyboard. Transferring a trio for voice, oboe, and continuo on the organ requires nearly no effort, since each part can simply be played by one hand or foot. 

Let us examine Bach’s way of playing Vivaldi on a baroque German organ. One approach Bach used was “interpreting” the original writing with little changes. Example 1 shows Vivaldi beginning his concerto (RV 565) with a duo of two solo violins. In Example 2, Bach takes the repeated bottom D notes and makes a continuous new “cello” part with it. He does not really change the notes, but reorganizes them slightly.

Another technique involved changing notes, adding ornaments or embellishments. Example 3 shows a short passage from a Vivaldi continuo part, with Bach’s version shown in Example 4. Examples 5 and 6 show again how Bach ornaments Vivaldi’s line and how he does not hesitate to add new material, if the musical logic suggests it. Analyzing Bach’s version, we find that he:

­• frequently plays a motive one or two octaves higher or lower than written

changes notes in order to fit into a compass limit

does not respect all of Vivaldi’s tutti/solo indications. 

The same liberties can be found in Bach’s keyboard version of his sonatas for violin. Bach’s transcriptions can reveal a “hidden polyphony.” This can be seen in Examples 7 and 8. An original violin part is shown in Example 7; its keyboard version is shown in Example 8

Changing of notes and adding ornamentation can be seen in comparing Examples 9 and 10. In the latter, Bach does not only embellish a cadence, a common practice in the Italian Corellian style, but he also adds entirely new figuration in place of plain notes. Bach would also add new parts, voices, or accompaniments. The original violin opening of the Sonata in C Major for violin, BWV 1005 (Example 11), becomes under Bach’s hand the passage shown in Example 12. Clearly “Bach the transcriber” makes no attempt to respect the characteristics of an original piece. On the contrary, in each transcription one is astonished by the creative hand of “Bach the composer” and “Bach the organist.”

Johann Friedrich Agricola gives this wonderful testimony: “Bach would often play them (the violin sonatas) on the clavichord, adding as many harmonies as he found necessary. Thus he recognized the need for a harmony of sound which he could not fully attain in that composition.”1 

 

Rameau, Daquin, and Balbastre

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) began his career as an organist in central France. He was employed in several cities, including Avignon, Dijon, Lyon, Clermont, and Paris.

He published harpsichord pieces with some success and later gained respect for his complex and rich theoretical writings. His impressive Traité de l’harmonie [Treatise on Harmony] was published in Paris in 1722. But it was only at the age of fifty that he begun his career as an opera composer!

Rameau left no music for organ, but his pupil Claude Balbastre (1724–1799) was already playing airs from the composer’s operas in 1757 on the organ in the Tuileries Palace, used for the Concert Spirituel, one of the first public concert series. This institution, which had been created in Paris by Anne Danican Philidor in 1725, housed the first French concert organ. Audiences appreciated the organ in its secular role, moreover, to the point that some listeners, though used to the virtuosic feats of other instruments, were literally “lifted out of their seats” by what they heard. 

Thanks to detailed programs, we know precisely what Balbastre played for his public. Apart from his own organ concertos, his favorite pieces were by Rameau—the overtures to Pygmalion and Les Sauvages. A couple of other overtures are mentioned among other pieces by Rameau, Jean-Joseph de Mondonville, and Pancrace Royer. Since no music is preserved, one can only guess how Balbastre treated Rameau’s melodies. In order to get some ideas, one must understand how the classical French organist used to play. The great names from that time include Louis-Claude Daquin (1694–1772) and Balbastre, both mainly known today for their Noëls, tunes that were traditionally played around Christmas by organists. Publications of Noëls appear regularly through the entire eighteenth century.

Interestingly, Daquin’s Noëls for organ look very similar to Rameau’s variations on “Les Niais de Sologne,” an air found later in the opera Dardanus. Both composers develop variations, called “double,” every time in a shorter note value. Examples 13 through 15 by Daquin show the theme, the first double, and the second double. Daquin also utilizes the various divisions and registrations of the organ to achieve dynamic effects, including interesting use of the French Grand Jeu, Petit Jeu, Cornet, and Echo. Compare them with the similar technique used by Rameau in Examples 16 through 18.

Regarding the lively dances like gigues, gavottes, or the pastoral musettes, one remembers Charles Burney’s testimony about Balbastre’s playing all these dances during Mass at Notre-Dame.2 Luckily Dom Bedos de Celle helps us in giving detailed registrations for these typical pieces, recording again a regular playing of dance movement on the organ.3

Balbastre’s own descriptive pieces of battle, with clusters, rapid scales, and quickly repeated chords, anticipates the fashion of orage one or two generations later. It is therefore not too difficult to play a similar effect with some of the orchestral orages (storms) already present in Rameau’s operas. Examples 19 through 21 show the author’s version for organ of the “Air for the African slaves” from Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, realized in the same spirit: simple two-voice writing at the beginning, then a double, and finally a new harmonization.

Finally, if one looks into Rameau’s own way of transcribing his harpsichord pieces into orchestral movements, one is struck by the importance of melody. The Air is the only musical element that remains unchanged. Rameau seems to like composing new basses, changing arbitrarily the harmonies, and adding new counterparts when he needs it—using a simple melody successively as a solo aria, then in duo form, before becoming a quartet and a chorus! Again, “Rameau the transcriber” cannot be detached from “Rameau the composer.”

 

Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt

It seems rather provocative to play Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique on the organ. This music was very innovative in its refined and rich orchestration, but Berlioz is known to have had no interest for the organ. The impossibility to swell the sound was considered by Berlioz to be barbaric, and he considered the mixtures to be a series of parallel fifths and octaves. . . .4 

It must be remembered that most of the French organs at the time of Berlioz’s composition of the Symphonie Fantastique (1830) had no swell boxes, and that the (de)crescendo possibilities were very limited. Departing from that evidence, it seemed necessary to imagine Berlioz on a later instrument equipped at least with a swell box and some appel d’anches. (See Examples 24–26.)

Let us examine some period transcriptions for organ, in order to again have some models. In France, Edouard Baptiste played a lot of arranged pieces (especially Beethoven) on the monumental organ at Saint-Eustache in Paris, but despite precise and inventive registrations, his organ transcriptions remain surprisingly similar to piano reductions. Obviously Liszt, a close friend to Berlioz, is a better model. Not only was he the first transcriber of the Symphony Fantastique on the piano, but he left an organ version of his own Orpheus, showing directly how he would proceed. Example 22 shows a passage from the orchestral version of Orpheus, while Example 23 shows Liszt’s organ transcription.

Like Bach, Liszt takes numerous liberties, which would not be prescribed today:

no attempt to respect the orchestration through similar colors on the organ

playing the melody an octave lower as soon as the limits of the keyboard are reached, without making further effort of registration to keep it entirely at its proper place

modifying entire accompanying patterns. Some complex arpeggios on the violin and the harp are replaced by one slower arpeggio taken in the left hand. This new compositional element can even be used longer than in the orchestral version, in a measure where the orchestra pauses under the soloist

abandoning secondary musical elements

adding new measures in order to get a better crescendo

composing entirely new passages when the orchestral version seems to be too difficult to reduce.

 

Conclusion

In all historical examples, we see a rather creative approach in the transcription process. During the Baroque period, few details had to be abandoned from the orchestral score; but sometimes, to enliven this keyboard version, various ornaments, embellishments, or new parts needed to be added. Obviously these additions were made in the style and according to the character of the piece.

In any case, when the complexity of the orchestral writing did not allow exact transposing on the keyboard, one chose carefully the parts to be kept, according to their musical importance. A subtle hierarchy existed between the main melody, important counterparts, the bass, and some accompanying material. These secondary parts, like broken chords and florid fast notes, were likely to be radically transformed in order to sound better on the keyboard instrument. It was also a way to make a passage more comfortable to play and avoid any useless difficulty due to its origin on a foreign instrument.

In this process, the transcription is no longer a reduced version of an original piece, but it becomes literally a new organ or harpsichord work, using the same idioms, techniques, and musical possibilities as the best pieces written explicitly for the organ. Bach’s versions of Vivaldi’s concerti grossi show that, on one hand, Bach loses some of the sound qualities of the concerto grosso for strings, without mentioning the stiff sound of the organ compared to the violins. But on the other hand, Bach introduces sufficiently new elements that enrich his keyboard version and make a proper organ piece of it.

This approach seems to be still alive at Liszt’s time, but the increasing development of transcription in the nineteenth century also created a rejection of it. The defense of the proper organ repertoire became until recently the rule; the transcription was despised because it would only be some virtuoso’s amusement and not suited to the character of the organ.

The above examples show that, on the contrary, a good transcription fits the nature of the instrument by using the right means, playing techniques, and registrations according to the style of music.

Notes

1. Johann Friedrich Agricola, Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, Berlin, 1755.

2. Charles Burney, Music, Men and Manners in France and Italy, Paris, 1770, quoted in Preface to Claude-Bénigne Balbastre, Pièces de Clavecin d’Orgue et de Forte Piano, ed. A. Curtis, Huegel, 1973, p. viii.

3. Dom Bedos de Celle, L’art du facteur d’orgue, Paris, 1766, pp. 523–536.

4. Hector Berlioz, Traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration, Paris, 1844, see chapters “Organ” and “Harmonium.”

 

Current Issue