DSM: The dynamics that Geneviève Soly achieves on the harpsichord are tremendous. The instrument that she performed on in Utrecht last week is maybe more heavily strung than most—and the resonance in its bass register is exceptional. But what impressed me especially was the dynamic range that she lent to each of the pieces she played. Her playing acoustically resembled a pianistic treatment—although her fingering and aspects of her posture were clearly those of a harpsichordist.
CMT: At the Yale University library Soly found an old collection of eight partitas for harpsichord by Christoph Graupner (1683-1760). Graupner was a retiring character—so modest that he never allowed a portrait to be made. And he turned down the job that Bach eventually got in Leipzig because his then-employer, the Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt asked him to do so. He spent the rest of his life in that job.
DSM: He also instructed his heirs to destroy his manuscripts upon his death. But the City of Darmstadt, where he had been court composer for over fifty years, challenged this in the courts and, after a legal battle that lasted decades, they won the rights to the manuscripts which have been preserved there.
CMT: A small publication of Graupner works was made in the early 1900s, but it didn’t attract much attention. Graupner was virtually lost. Soly’s efforts are a remarkable project to revive and conserve his work.
DSM: Soly’s five-octave harpsichord—a 2002 Hubbard copy of a 1730 double manual harpsichord by Haas—has a deep, richly-colored tone.
CMT: The instrument is well-suited to Soly—and to the music of Graupner, for that matter. You know, Maffei distinguished two kinds of dynamics—on one hand, a binary contrast of loud and soft in linked phrases, and, on the other hand, a more finely graded dynamics, where ‘by artful degrees diminishing, the voice little by little becomes soft and then suddenly returns to full power.’ That’s what Geneviève Soly was illustrating in her Utrecht performance of the Graupner.
DSM: It’s just this capacity that the piano has for graduating dynamics that excited Maffei. He in fact wrote that such gradations are impossible on harpsichord.
CMT: He in fact wrote that some professional musicians complained that the tone of Cristofori’s innovative harpsichord was too soft and indistinct (troppo molle, e ottusa) and its voice less powerful than that of ordinary harpsichords. There is a negative tendency in human nature: complaints are remembered more vividly than praise, bad news gets more airplay than good. In keeping with this principle, Maffei’s negative statements have been misrepresented as the gist of his report. But if you actually read him, Maffei doesn’t endorse these objections: on the contrary, they are voiced, he says, by persons who have not taken the trouble to learn to play the new instrument (Maffei. Giornale de’ letterati d’Italia. Venice, 1711, pp. 144-59; in Pollens on pp. 238-43, 57-62).
DSM: And so Soly refutes the myth, and so too did Maffei. Keep in mind that harpsichord keys are generally slimmer than modern piano keys, so that an octave on the piano is about a 9th on a harpsichord. This is enough of a difference to give you some useful options on certain passages—options that wouldn’t be feasible on a piano…
CMT: But the skinny keys can give more chances for errors, too—especially with interpretations so exuberant as Soly gives. The distance from the end of the white key to the end of the black key is shorter than on piano. In effect, you have a smaller target for white keys. The risks are huge!
DSM: And each note must be articulated individually. You cannot ‘throw your fingers at’ the harpsichord’s keyboard, as you can sometimes do (and get away with) on the piano. On the harpsichord, you will create only a smear. Each finger and each note must be played individually. The harpsichord is an instrument of subtlety. It’s in general less forgiving than piano.
CMT: What about playing with high knuckles? My impression is that you must curve your fingers much more when you play a harpsichord than when you play the piano. This is well-illustrated by Soly’s dramatic playing. It is less obvious in the technique of Mortensen or Belder, say.
DSM: Soly puts to rest the notion that there are no dynamics possible on the harpsichord. To make the instrument louder, you must add another ‘rank’ of strings.
CMT: Alternative ways to get a bigger sound (especially if you have only one rank of strings on your instrument!) are to arpeggiate chords, double roots and fifths of chords (even in both hands), add ornaments that emphasize the notes you wish to be louder (the multiple, repeated plucking of a string put more energy per unit time into the note and mitigate the string’s decay), extend ornaments (trill the entire measure, for example).
DSM: And to reduce the volume if you cannot shut off a rank of strings, you eliminate notes in a chord, do not play octaves in the bass, and trim your ornaments. We saw Soly implementing each of these techniques in her beautiful performance in Utrecht last week. Superb.
- Oude Muziek Festival, Utrecht
- Geneviève Soly website, Idées heureuses
- Graupner links
- Soly G. Graupner: Partitas for Harpsichord, Vol. 5. (Analekta, 2007.)
- Soly G. Graupner: Partitas for Harpsichord, Vol. 4. (Analekta, 2007.)
- Soly G. Graupner: Partitas for Harpsichord, Vol. 3. (Analekta, 2007.)
- Soly G. Graupner: Partitas for Harpsichord, Vol. 2. (Analekta, 2007.)
- Soly G. Graupner: Partitas for Harpsichord, Vol. 1. (Analekta, 2007.)
- Kottick E, Lucktenberg G. Early Keyboard Instruments in European Museums. Indiana Univ, 1997.
- Pollens S. The Early Pianoforte. Cambridge Univ, 1995.
- Ripin E, O'Brien G, Caldwell J. Early Keyboard Instruments. Norton, 1989.
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