Clavichord for Beginners

9. Exploring the Present and Future

103 chaPter nine Exploring the Present and Future Although this century appears to revel in loud, amplified sound and endless stress, there is a growing need for quietness as a balance. A clavichord can fill this need. Already a century ago, Arnold Dolmetsch stimulated a clavichord revival among a few elite in England and America. He wrote on his Chickering clavichord lids the French proverb “Plus fait douceur que violence” (Sweetness achieves more than violence). People have been playing the clavichord since the 1400s. In some countries it was fashionable until the late eighteenth century. Then, after a gap in the nineteenth century, when it was abandoned for the piano, it became an instrument for playing music of the past. It is my wish not only that we enjoy this marvelous music on the clavichord but that we widen our horizons to encourage music of our own age as well. Improvisation A good clavichord lends itself to improvisation. The tones of this instrument are so subtle and changeable that they can never be repeated exactly the same way. Thus I would encourage all clavichord players to experiment and express themselves with improvisations that are primarily spontaneous and free. Improvising was an active part of the musical lives of pre-twentieth-century keyboardists . By the sixteenth century, Tomás de Santa María had written a treatise on this art.1 Later, Mozart, Wilhelm Friedemann Bach, and C. P. E. Bach were famous for their improvisational expertise. The latter wrote a long section on improvisation in part 2 of his Essay (1762).2 He maintained that “it is principally in improvisations or fantasias that the keyboardist can master the feelings of his audience.”3 In Yogyakarta of the 1980s I visited a venerated old master musician of Java. As I left, I encountered a Greek student who came up to me nearly in tears. It saddened him to realize that students like himself were weakening the oral tradition of Javanese music and stifling it with the printed page. He was aware that this music would lose its improvisational qualities, its alive immediacy, and its un-self-conscious meaning. 104 Clavichord for Beginners My own favorite hour of improvising on the clavichord was at the Zen Mountain Monastery near Woodstock, New York. In the meditation hall, nuns, monks, and laypeople sat on cushions in complete silence. I seemed to breathe in their inner quietness and reflect it back spontaneously in the improvisations that I played. ensemble The pianoforte and clavichord provide the best accompaniments in performances that require the most elegant taste . . . because of the many ways in which their volume can be gradually changed. C. P. E. Bach, Essay (1762) One tends to think of the soft clavichord as a solo instrument. Yet as early as the fifteenth century an Italian fresco shows one angel strumming the psaltery while two monks play the clavichord and bells. Artworks created in subsequent eras show the lute, recorder, or transverse flute in ensemble with the clavichord. More recently, New York composer David Loeb composed some delicately beautiful music, dedicated to me, for clavichord and shinobue, a high-pitched Japanese transverse flute. In the twenty-first century, the possible combinations that might include the clavichord are endless, particularly in electronic music and other idioms so available to postmodern musicians. For a Findhorn International Music Festival concert in Scotland, I improvised with vibraphonist Karl Berger of Woodstock fame. Standing before the piano, I used my clavichord technique to create strange tonal textures and rhythmic impulses built on Bach’s famous C Major Prelude. Berger spun such a vine of sounds around me that we seemed to dance from the ceiling. recordings Today, via recordings, we have access to an amazing amount of music. We can “hear” clavichordists from all over the world without leaving our homes. Yet interpretations are frozen, and the interaction between performer and listener is lost. Likewise , canned music easily becomes a background for driving on the freeway, doing the dishes, or jogging with the dog. The soft clavichord, in contrast, requires intent listening, and its minute inflections are not easily captured in recording. Yet this medium can offer an enticing introduction to the magic of the clavichord. Many recordings of clavichord music from the past are available today. Over the last half century the clavichord has been used in a few recordings of popular music. My favorite by far features songs from Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess turned into delicate improvisations by...