Program Note by David Wright

Lost and Found: Six Centuries of the

With its keyboard and wing shape, the harpsichord looks like a , but people who know about such things actually classify it as a type of zither, because its strings are plucked instead of struck or bowed. When you press a key on a harpsichord, it activates a plectrum— essentially a guitar pick on a stick—that jumps up and twangs the corresponding string inside the instrument. Of course, the flying fingers of an expert can twang more strings in less time than even the fastest guitar picker. That’s been true since at least 1397, the date of the earliest document that mentions a harpsichord. The oldest known image of this instrument is carved into a north German altarpiece dating from 1425. By contrast, the very earliest instruments that might be called date from the 1730s, late in the lifetime of J.S. Bach (who tried them and didn’t think much of them). For its ability to play entire compositions by themselves, and to accompany singers and instruments, the harpsichord (along with the organ) ruled the musical scene for centuries. The vast majority of made by was improvised in the moment, vibrated briefly in the air, and was never heard again. But a few times and places produced outstanding composers for the instrument whose compositions were printed and distributed, mostly to home players. Pieces by (c. 1565-1640), (1572- 1656), and the other “virginalists” of Elizabethan England—so called not because of the Virgin Queen but in reference to the virginal, a smaller cousin of the harpsichord typically played in homes by eligible young ladies—are the tuneful, lively products of a general flourishing of the arts that gave us the works of Shakespeare and much else. The harpsichord’s high noon as a solo instrument was surely the early and middle years of the 18th century, when French clavécinistes such as Couperin and Rameau were perfecting the dance suite and the character piece. During his decades of service in the Spanish royal court, the Italian composer (1685-1757) mixed his native and adopted national idioms with unprecedented virtuosity in no fewer than 550 dazzling for the harpsichord. And Scarlatti’s exact contemporary, J.S. Bach (1685-1750) was, well, J.S. Bach. His matchless genius lit up everything he put his hand to, including a wealth of , preludes, fugues, suites, and toccatas for harpsichord. The word toccata is from the Italian word for “touch,” and a toccata by Bach is meant to display the sensitivity and skill with which the player touches the keys. This elusive thing called “touch,” as in the expression “He’s got the touch,” mattered a lot to harpsichord players, because on its own the instrument wouldn’t produce louder or softer tones when one pressed the keys hard or gently—unlike a piano, whose full name (pianoforte) literally means “soft-loud” in Italian. A twang was a twang was a twang—and yet somehow, skillful composers and players could create the illusion of a crescendo through tempo, articulation, and massing of notes, if they had the touch. By the Baroque era of Scarlatti and Bach, harpsichords had sprouted more than one keyboard, controlling more than set of strings or type of plectrum (made of quill, leather, etc., each producing its special brand of twang). Some actual loud-and-soft sounds, and variety of tone color, were the result. But touch was still paramount for true excellence in playing. The harpsichord’s central role went unchallenged for most of the 18th century. As late as the 1780s and ‘90s, Joseph Haydn followed traditional practice and led his symphonies and operas from his seat at the harpsichord. (Meanwhile, however, his younger contemporary Wolfgang Mozart was wowing audiences by composing and performing concertos for that newfangled instrument, the piano.) In fact, the harpsichord’s only period of total eclipse was the seventy years or so we consider the heart of the Romantic era, when Beethoven, Chopin, Liszt, Brahms, and others were composing the music that—judging by frequency of performance even today—is considered the core of the piano repertoire. As the Romantic consensus started to fray late in the 19th century, its challengers included early-music enthusiasts such as Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940), the English musician and instrument maker who led the movement to play old music on period-style instruments. At his urging, piano manufacturers such as Pleyel in Paris and Chickering in Boston began making harpsichords, often using iron frames and other piano technology undreamed-of by Scarlatti or Bach. The Polish keyboard player Wanda Landowska (1879-1959) used those instruments to become the first celebrity harpsichord virtuoso of the 20th century, playing to houses as packed as those of Heifetz or Horowitz with her fiery virtuosity and the hall-filling sound of her modern instrument. But if the celebrity recital tended to cast the harpsichord as “piano lite,” avant-garde composers and performers heard the instrument’s clean, pointillistic sound as a refreshing alternative to the piano’s well-stuffed Romantic associations. The American Henry Cowell (1897-1965), the Czech Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006), and the Finn Kaija Saariaho (b. 1952), for example, composed for harpsichord not because they were going Baroque or there wasn’t a piano handy, but because the instrument suited what they wanted to say. For better or worse, the Landowska-style super-harpsichords are rarely seen in public any more. The extraordinary flourishing of the early-music movement has brought much knowledge of the design and materials of instruments three hundred years ago—and an insistence that the new ones be made that way. But it’s just possible that the harpsichord can still rival the piano in one of its specialties: transcription. Can music for another instrument really transfer successfully to the harpsichord? Well, to begin with, all of Bach’s harpsichord concertos originated as violin concertos. And listeners at this recital can judge for themselves how the ground-breaking minimalist piece Piano Phase by Steve Reich (b. 1936) sounds on the piano’s ancient ancestor. It just goes to show that, six centuries or so after it was invented, the harpsichord is still an experimental instrument.