Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organist's Guide (review)

Despite a long and prominent history, the pedal clavichord is little known today. Its existence was first documented in the fifteenth century and its development can be traced through the ensuing centuries. Like the harpsichord, it began to fall out of favor during the nineteenth century despite significant changes to its mechanism that reflected musical tastes of the period. By the beginning of the twentieth century it had all but disappeared. Common belief holds that the instrument served mainly as an economical practice device for organists, and this reputation has contributed to the dismissive attitude of scholars regarding its place in music history.

The organ music of the North German baroque composers forms the bedrock of repertoire for the instrument. It stands to reason, therefore, that this music has been dissected by performers and musicologists in search of a Rosetta Stone for baroque performance practices. A great deal of study has centered around the organs that survive from this time as well as clues contained in manuscripts and other period sources. Many organists have attempted authentic performances by employing fingerings and pedalings documented in the sources on instruments modeled on those of the period. While we will never know exactly how this music was performed in the eighteenth century, there may be a potentially rich source of insight into the physiological aspects of performing the music in an enlightened fashion today. Joel Speerstra's work presents a fascinating paradigm for the study of J. S. Bach's organ music that leads performance practice research in a new direction.

In Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organist's Guide, Speerstra links the technique of playing the historical pedal clavichord to that of the organ. He creatively details the intellectual and physical components of a performance practice by providing insight into the repertoire of one keyboard instrument in light of its conception and rendition on another. His work is one of a number of case studies undertaken at the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt) at Göteborg University, Sweden. The purpose of GOArt is to study the art of the North and Central European organ from 1600 to 1970. The project is an interdisciplinary living workshop and involves scientists, instruments builders, musicologists, performers, documentation experts, and students.

The pedal clavichord used for the present study is a reproduction of a 1766 Johann David Gerstenberg instrument now at Leipzig University. This particular instrument was chosen as a model because it represents one of the few intact, though unplayable, examples of the pedal clavichord from Bach's lifetime. Instruments built later were designed differently and they are much less musically subtle and expressive. Speerstra's intense desire to understand the instrument led him to the English builder John Barnes, curator emeritus of historical keyboard instruments at the University of Edinburgh. Under the tutelage of Barnes, Speerstra built the reproduction of the Gerstenberg instrument while gaining an intense knowledge of the nuances of its structure and the implications of this for performance.

The study is divided into two parts. Part 1, "Source Studies," is a review of performance theory and organology in historical documents and scholarly writings. The history of the pedal clavichord is taken up in chapter 1. Structurally, the pedal clavichord is a combination of at least three separate instruments: two (or, perhaps, three) manual keyboard instruments, and a pedal instrument. An overview of surviving early instruments is given followed by a review of the clavichord from early sources. Beginning with Paulus Paulirinus's Encyclopedia Scientarum (1459-63) through the accounts of Bach's student, Heinrich Nikolaus Gerber (1702-1775), Speerstra documents links between the pedal clavichord and the organ.

Speerstra's discussion of Bach's six trio sonatas in the second chapter brings to light the possibilities of the pedal clavichord's place in Bach's organ music. The trio sonatas present...