S peed creates ‘pure’ [sonic] objects. Speed is itself a pure object, since it cancels out the ground and territorial reference points, since it runs ahead of time to annul time itself, since it moves more quickly than its own cause and obliterates that cause by outstripping it. Speed [such as that of which virtuosic harpsichord is emblematic—] is a triumph of ‘effect’ over ‘cause’, a triumph of ‘instantaneity’ over ‘Time as depth’—the triumph of the ‘surface’ and pure ‘objectality’ over the profoundness of desire. Speed creates a space of initiation which may be lethal; its only rule is to leave no trace behind... Triumph of forgetting over memory, an uncultivated amnesic intoxication!”T he Boston Early Music Festival and the Utrecht Oudemuziek Festival and other festivals are important for presenting a variety of Baroque harpsichord music. But they are also important as convocations of harpsichord artists and fine instruments, enabling a lot of new music for harpsichord to be performed and heard. The recent BEMF festival, for example, had several ‘fringe’ events that were devoted to harpsichord new music.
— Paul Dolden, program notes for ‘Physics of Seduction, Invocation #2’, performed by Vivienne Spiteri [comme si l’hydrogène… the desert speaks (1992)].
A nd that led me to immerse myself in harpsichord, listening to all the recordings I could get my hands on—anything composed in the last 30 years. My intent in this CMT blog post is not to ‘review’ anything but, rather, just to confess my amateur excitement about the whole of it.
T here are a variety of recent compositions where the harpsichord is part of an electroacoustic ensemble, the harpsichord’s piercing timbre and steep attack contributing to and ‘holding its own’ with the overall ‘spikiness’ of the rest of the instrumental textures. Some works adopt Baroque compositional practices and earnestly reveal that we still today have Baroque thoughts that are best (or maybe ‘only’) expressible with harpsichord and Baroque idioms. There are other compositions where the harpsichord’s association with Baroque ideas and gestures is calculatedly used to impart an anachronism or disorienting effect to the piece. The hesitancy of the plastic plectra against the strings, the increasing strain/deformation of each plectrum before it finally yields and plucks its string, can convey a mechanical rhetoric of foreboding—hyper-rationality to the verge of obsession/compulsion and beyond.
T here are yet other works where the harpsichord’s motoric tendencies—the fact that the plucked strings’ sound dies out relatively quickly, inviting them to be struck again soon, sixteenth notes begetting sixteenth notes—are used to impart a psychology of sheer organic activity.
A ll of this is incredibly fun to hear, to play—and, presumably, to write.
E lisabeth Chojnacka, Jane Chapman, Jukka Tiensuu, and other performers clearly delight in the imaginative use of the harpsichord’s vast variety of timbres, its rhythmic drive, its motoristic movements of all shades of neo-Classicism. The joy of my past 4 weeks of listening is finding how many of these ultimately achieve cognitively and emotionally accessible expressions. (Ad hoc lists below are not imagined to be anywhere close to ‘complete’. Only meant to suggest how many there are, how much there is... Tip of proverbial ‘iceberg’.)
- Baroque styles
- Hendrik Bouman
- Grant Colburn
- Miguel Robaina
- Fernando de Luca
- Gianluca Bersanetti
- Claude Arrieu [pseudonym for Louise Marie Simon]
- John Fodi ‘Sonata’, ‘Toccata’, and ‘Divisions II’
- Jean Papineau-Couture ‘Nocturnes’ and ‘Dyarchie’
- Bernard Naylor
- Bengt Hambraeus ‘Capriccio I’
- Rudolf Komorous ‘At Your Memory the Transparent Tears Fall Like Molten Lead’ (viola da gamba and harpsichord)
- Modern [sic] styles
- György Ligeti
- Henri Dutilleux ‘Les Citations’
- Elliott Carter ‘Double Concerto’ [harpsichord, piano, and 2 chamber orchestras]
- John Cage ‘HPSCHD’ and ‘Untitled’
- Louis Andriessen
- Iannis Xenakis
- Frank Oteri ‘Machunas’, 3 solo works, ‘Six of One, Half a Dozen of Another’, ‘e.e.cummings song cycle’
- Douglas Boyce ‘Concerto grosso’ (strings, clarinet, harpsichord)
- Marti Epstein (alto sax, harpsichord)
- Kyoko Abe ‘Metamorphose’, ‘Solo’
- Maria d’Agnesi-Pinottini’s 3 concertos [harpsichord, 2 vn, db or string qt], ‘Allegro ou presto’ and 3 sonatas [harpsichord solo]
- Liana Alexandra
- Isabel Aretz
- Zygmunt Krauze
- Maurice Ohana
- Henryk Górecki
- Toshi Ichiyanagi
- Franco Donatoni
- Cristobal Hallfter
- François-Bernard Mâche
- Graciane Finzi
- Stephen Montague
- Yves Prin
- Tomàs Marco
- Cristobal Halffter
- Mauricio Sotelo
- Grant McLachlan
- Ástor Piazzolla
- Marius Constant
- Luc Ferrari
- André Boucourechliev
- Aldo Clementi
- Roberto Carnevale
- Betsy Jolas
- Joseph Horovitz
- Roberto Sierra
- Krzystof Knittel
- Gustavo Beytelmann
- Jean Wiener
- Krzysztof Meyer
- Dimitri Yanov-Yanovski
- Kaija Saariaho
- Jukka Tiensuu
- Lou Harrison
- Ellen Taaffe Zwilich
- Gardner Read
- Walter Piston
- Robert Starer
- Lester Trimble
- Timothy Brady
- Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux
- Ton de Leeuw
- Bengt Hambraeus
- Hope Lee
- Rodney Sharman ‘Kore’
- Denis Gougeon ‘Rondeaujour d’hui’
- Ka Nin Chan ‘Phantasmagoria’
- Hope Lee ‘Melboac’
- Jan Jarvlepp
- David Eagle ‘Toccare’
- Alice Ho ‘Arc’
- Jean Lesage ‘La Tentation d’Arlequin’, ‘Thanatopsis’
- André Villeneuve ‘Vers la Quatrième Terre’
- Wendy Prezament
- Pierre Desrochers ‘Cinema-mode d’emploi’
- Linda C. Smith ‘Gravity’
- Brian Cherney ‘Déploration’, ‘Hommage à Morton Feldman’
- François Rose ‘A perte d’espace’
- Bruce Mather ‘Saumur’
- Tim Brady
- Serge Provost ‘Crètes’
- Denis Lorrain ‘La Nuova Ricordanza’ (two harpsichords)
- Bruce Pennycook ‘The Desert Speaks’
- David Keane ‘Turbo Toccata’
- Stéphane Volet ‘Retors’
- Micheline Coulombe Saint-Marcoux ‘Miroirs’
- Electroacoustic styles
- Paul Dibley
- James Dillon
- Paul Dolden ‘Physics of Seduction’ (harpsichord and tape)
- Sam Hayden
- Paul Newland
- Roger Redgate
- Sohrab Uduman
- Mike Faughan
- Paul Whitty
T he originality of the recent writing for harpsichord is phenomenal. Very few composers writing for the instrument leverage archaisms of color, orchestration, technique. Instead, everybody’s been tremendously busy exploiting the natural textures and sonorities of harpsichord sound in the myriad contemporary idioms that they call ‘home’.
- Just a few of the performers who have championed new music for harpsichord
- Elisabeth Chojnacka
- Vivienne Spiteri
- Christopher Lewis
- Annelie de Man
- Jane Chapman
- Laura Tivendale
- Carole Cerasi
- Pamela Nash
[50-sec clip, Elisabeth Chojnacka, Gyorgy Ligeti, ‘Passacaglia’, 1.6MB MP3]
[50-sec clip, Elisabeth Chojnacka, Gyorgy Ligeti, ‘Continuum’, 1.6MB MP3]
[50-sec clip, Arditti Quartet, Jukka Tiensuu, ‘Arsenic & Old Lace for String Quartet and Microtonal Harpsichord’, 1.6MB MP3]
[50-sec clip, Jane Chapman, Paul Dibley, ‘INV I’, 1.6MB MP3]
[50-sec clip, Jane Chapman, Paul Dibley, ‘INV III’, 1.6MB MP3]
- Jane Chapman page at Royal College of Music, London
- Spiteri V. New Music for Harpsichord from Canada and The Netherlands. (SNE/ElectroCD, 1988.)
- DRAM: American Music for Harpsichord
- Christopher Lewis website
- Vivienne Spiteri page at NewAdventuresInSoundArt, Toronto NAISA.ca [Sewing-machine music, or, is there life after ‘Continuum’?]
- British Harpsichord Society
- Paul Dibley page at Oxford Brookes Univ
- Paul Dibley website
- Chapman J. Paul Dibley: Wired. (NMC, 2009.)
- Chojnacka E, et al. Ligeti: Mechanical Music. (Sony, 1997.)
- Heinrich A. Organ and Harpsichord Music by Women Composers. Greenwood, 1991.
- Johnson C. Soliloquies: New Japanese and Chinese Music for Harpsichord and Organ. (Albany, 2008.) [hyper-motoric]
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