University Harpsichord To Be Heard On Saturday

Press, Volume C, Issue 29459, 10 March 1961, Page 21

University Harpsichord To Be Heard On Saturday

Canterbury University’s new harpsichord will be heard publicly for the first time at a free concert tomorrow evening. The one demonstrated last year was smaller and on loan. The new one is full-size and made by William de Blais. Lionel Salter, head of music for BBC. Television and himself a harpsichordist of repute, uses the de Blais instrument and has caused it to be installed in British television studios. The instrument in *he university hall has two manuals or keyboards and five pedals. These pedals enable different types of tone to be heard from the instrument, and the two manuals provide the means of contrasting nne tvne of tone with another. The manuals may be coupled together. thus making possible the use of the complete re-

sources of the instrument on the lower keyboard. In a harpsichord the strings are not struck by felt-cov-ered hammers <as in a piano) but are plucked by little tongues of leather. Externally the instrument is somewhat similar in appearance to a grand piano: but the tonal effect is strikingly different. To hear much of the keyboard music of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as its composers intended it to be heard, it is necessary that the harpsichord and not the piano should be used. Those centuries formed the harpsichord’s great period not only as a solo instrument hut also in combination with the orchestra in purely orchestral performances and in the accompaniment of opera. The instrument was played in

middle-class homes, at royal courts, in the cloisters and in churches, in concert halls and in the theatre. Much of the music of the period played on the piano today (works by Handel, Bach, Scarlatti for instance) was composed for the harpsichord. The earliest “pianoforte” sonatas of Haydn and Mozart, and even the very earliest of the works of Beethoven, were written for this instrument. Two of Beethoven’s sonatas, Opus 26 and Opus 27 No. 2, were announced on their original title pages in 1802 as for “harpsichord or pianoforte.” Modern composers have written concertos for the instrument, among them Falla, Orff. Poulenc and Martinu.

Salter and other authorities emphasise the fine

solidity of tone of the de Blais harpsichord. In a large auditorium, such as that of the Royal Festival Hall in London, the tone of the instrument requires no amplification to be heard excellently even when the harpsichord is playing with an orchestra.- Another quality commented on is the ability of the de Blaise to stay in tune over long periods. At Saturday’s concert the harpsichord will be heard as a solo instrument, as an instrument accompanying the solo voice and various solo instruments and, with solo voice and other instruments, in the accompaniment of a cantata.

The performers on Saturday evening will be Michael Toovey (harpsichord), David Stone (violin), Thomas Rogers (’cello), Edmund

Bohan (tenor). Alec Loretto (treble recorder), Ross McKeitch (oboe).