The discussion on the French lute music playable on the harpsichord made me think about where to expand the repertoire. Of course Bach or Scarlatti are never enough, but we already know them fairly well and sometimes I feel the need for something “new”.
So, where to go hunting? XVI or XVII centuries, maybe? Can a forgotten great composer still come to light?
A good way to discover forgotten composers is Fernando De Luca’s website “La sala del cembalo”, Sala del Cembalo - The Harpsichord Archive, where he recorded more than 500 hours of harpsichord music (yes, it’s correct: five hundreds hours). A good thing is he writes what harpsichord and what temperaments he used in the various recordings.
Back to topic.
Graupner? (some music published by Prima la Musica publ., http://www.primalamusica.com/)
Mattheson? (still unpublished, I believe)
Abel?
Other obscure composers still obscure?
Lute and theorbo suites of Robert de Visee. Many transcriptions for harp are on imslp.
It is as if the essentials of Baroque suite movements given in a compressed, but very elegant manner. Then do with it what you dare.
I think that an awful lot of the early renaissance repertoire is unjustly neglected. Composers such as Ercole Pasquini, Andrea Antico, Marco Antonio Cavazzoni, Claudio Merulo, Giovanni Salvatore, Giovanni de Macque and Andrea Gabrieli spring to mind. Then others such as Pieter Cornet, Heinrich Scheidemann or Samuel Scheidt. Even the lesser well-known French composers whose music features in the Bauyn manuscript surely deserve more attention (Jacques Hardel, Jean-Nicolas Geoffroy, Etienne Richard, etc).
Best,
Matthew
Rather than hunt for obscure and most likely second-rate composers for
our instrument, I think our best is to arrange first-rate music written
for other instruments, in particular the lute, but not only. Besides the
French 17th-century repertoire, and Dowland, of course, I think many of
Weiss’s pieces are well-suited to the harpsichord.
Many of Marin Marais’ pieces also sound good on the harpsichord. For
instance La Soligni, played by Skip Sempé:
Thomas Dent, who has recently joined, has made quite a few arrangements.
And I’m sure others here have done the same. It would be good if we
could find some easy way to share them among us (if such is their wish).
“Thomas Dent, who has recently joined, has made quite a few arrangements.
And I’m sure others here have done the same. It would be good if we
could find some easy way to share them among us (if such is their wish).”
Yes, it should be great. Maybe Andrew can arrange something as a space? Don’t know if Discourse allows it.
Your list can be divided into several separate geographic areas, each of which ideally requires a different insrument. I can play Italian and early English music on my short and broken octave Italian, and at a pinch Sweelinck and Froberger. Bach and the rest is played on my G-d3 Franco-Flemish, though this is not 100% adequate for the French short octave repertoire, and it has a more appropriate timbre for Sweelinck and Froberger.
Those who wrote for chromatic instruments are in a further category.
I suspect that other members here run into the same problems.
Those who wrote for chromatic instruments are in a further category.
I suspect that other members here run into the same problems.
Which leads us to another evergreen problem: is using a “wrong” harpsichord as unacceptable as, say, playing Couperin or Gaetano Greco on the piano?
Most harpsichordists just own one harpsichord, I believe? (I am not sure), they must have studied Frescobaldi on their French double. Not ideal, of course, but how much far from the correct way of playing such music?
I highly recommend works by great women composers whose compositions had been sidelined during the late 19th century when “women couldn’t possibly be good composers”, or their works were attributed to their husbands.
While it can be very rewarding to find ‘new’ composers, I think it is also the case that we hear the same pieces again and again from the best known composers. Few people have heard more than three or four L Couperin or Froberger suites, or F Couperin ordres, and perhaps a dozen Scarlatti sonatas. The complete works of these composers are available on CD, and probably on streaming services as well, but few people go through these ‘integrale’ sets in their entirety. Fitzwilliam VB is another example.
Then there are composers such as Scheidemann, Georg Muffat, Böhm, Croft and Lebegue who most of us have heard of, and many of us have played one or two pieces - and yet there is so much more which is either already on our bookshelf somewhere, or can be downloaded from IMSLP.
I am always grateful that there is very good music to be learned, just from my own music library.
In a vein similar to what @DouglasA has said, there is a huge amount of music by historical composers for harpsichord that is generally totally ignored. Much as I dislike facebook, I feel I must mention there is a person called David Bolton who presents literally hundreds (!) of works by relatively or completely unknown composers on a regular basis. You can find his posts under the Harpsichord Addicts group. I don’t care for the MIDI performances one bit, but there is enough repertoire there to keep you busy for years. This stuff is so obscure maybe he just makes it all up! I’m not sure!
On one hand, I deplore that so many players concentrate on minor composers: it is certainly MUCH easier to play in public Jacquet de la Guerre than playing Rameau, or playing Pachelbel rather than JSBach! Two-three decades ago a well-known musicologist (was him Zaslaw?) said that “very often we hear music that history was right in forgetting about!.”
On the other hand, here and there second-rate composers did produce a few remarkable masterpieces. There are countless examples, Vanhal, Gottlieb Muffat, Pasquini, Martini and many more. Therefore, unfrequented music is good to explore in search of those “lost gems”.
If, however, we are inflicted the customary unending sequence of second-rate music, then I’m afraid I will not be that happy.
(Even F. Couperin produced a few second-rate Ordres, and it is a pity that some players find it fit to play them in public complete, for the sake of “faithful rendition”, just because there is a single really good piece in them.)
Public and university libraries are a great resource. I was lucky that my school was close to the Westminster Central Music Library, where I discovered the keyboard music of Sweelinck and other composers languishing on open shelves. When I lived in Michigan, I drove over to Ann Arbor once a month and spent the day browsing the stacks for interesting composers to play, and xeroxed a lot from out of copyright editions. I was also able to print from microfilms of important manuscripts and later transcribed them with Sibelius. Many of these editions can now be downloaded from IMSLP, and they are amazingly similar to the expensive modern editions.
An excellent source is WIlli Apel’s The History of Keyboard Music to 1700. Though he does dismiss some worthy composers, at least he mentions pretty much all of them. Another is the series of anthologies by country compiled by Howard Ferguson (OUP). He gives tips for playing the pieces he chooses, and many of these composers are worth investigating further.
Finally, I have many of the facsimile editions published by SPES (Florence, Italy) and Performer’s Fascimiles (NY).
Sure. But it seems only fair for me to say that an even greater number of works are presented on Sala del Cembalo - The Harpsichord Archive by the Italian harpsichordist Fernando De Luca. While David Bolton’s music is MIDI, De Luca is a real harpsichordist and plays a true harpsichord. The amount of music recorded by him is just incredible. This is the true reference for expanding the repertoire: just listen to some recordings and decide what do you want to learn.
I am not able to even hear all the music he can play.
Of course De Luca’s playing may or may not please everybody. Still, that collection is a reference everybody should know.
I don’t think you meant to, but you may have implied that Elizabeth Jacquet was a second rate composer? complexity is not necessarily a desirable goal. Compositions are all part of a story of culture of time, place and yes audience. Of course, there are more simplistic compositions out there less interesting to cognoscenti but sometimes it simply means the performer hasn’t yet discovered the heart and meaning inside the notes.
Yes Anne and others. I do beleieve Elizabeth Jacquat was a second rate composer, and I have her complete works and never found a single piece worth playing in a recital. The amount and quality of her output, even her best pieces, cannot compare with the greatness of first-rate composers such as of Louis Couperin, d’Anglebert, Buxtehude, François Couperin, Rameau, JSBach, Duphly, Forqueray and others.
Now, if you wish to name “first rate composers” even those who wrote a just a few “nice” suites, you are free.
As I am free or my opinion.
All the best!
