This thread is morphing into something else if we now discuss harpsichord making.
When I began building instruments in 1979, there were twelve or thirteen full-time professional makers in Australia. I named most of them in an interview Ed Kottick did with me for the April 1994 issue of Continuo. The Middle Register — An Interview with Carey Beebe
Output by Australian makers has only been small by world standards. @Pickett mentions two names who have recently died: Mars McMillan might have built about forty instruments; Bill Bright eighteen by my count. Hugh Craig was the exception, with I estimate at least three hundred revival-style instruments built in Victoria from the mid-1960s through to early 1980s when he returned to UK.
As for my own production, so much of my time is spent outside the workshop with concert hiring, tuning and maintenance everywhere, I might make only one instrument each year. (I’m presently nearing the end of a tour with Kristian Bezuidenhuit playing Beethoven’s Emperor on a 2009 McNulty Graf with Australian Chamber Orchestra on gut strings and period winds.) Instruments I’ve built can be found in Hong Kong, Singapore, Muscat, Dubai and elsewhere.
As for Asia, there is good interest in Japan with several active professional makers. In mainland China, the piano technician at Beijing’s Central Conservatory has begun building harpsichords. Yes, Willard Martin moved to South Korea, and while he may be maintaining instruments, I’m unsure if he is actively making. Paul Downie is working in Auckland (New Zealand), and that’s really all in this part of the world.
There’s never been any restriction on language for the forum. People can post in any language they like, should they care to. It’s not even something we ever thought about. So it’s fine. Maybe we could add a note to the forum policy (not that embody reads it!)
Let me show a related piece of statistics. It is from the Fb “Early Music Performance Practice” (EMPP), which undergoes daily filtering off for new members and new posts, and I can guarantee that all them are legitimate. There is no way to deduce accurate source data from Fb group postings, but my daily memory over the years provides the following rough statistics about members and posts to EMPP:
Europe 75%
North America 15%
South America 4%
South East Asia 5%
Rest of the World 1%
This tallies with the statistics about harpsichord teaching discussed above.
They represent posts on the group topic, mostly (as I clarified in a previous posts) announcements of Early-Music related recordings, editions, books, masterclasses and other types of courses. With a few posts every day, in the last few years we are talking about 2,000 announcements: quite a lot!
Therefore, they gauge very well the “places of interest” of Early Music Performance matters, and should tally with the interest on harpsichord teaching and learning.
I think that may be an extrapolation too far! One has to define the kind of people who inhabit Facebook and compare them with people who make, play, attend concerts, etc…
David, many of the people who “inhabit” Facebook also “inhabit” Jackrail!
About 99% of ads about courses, editions, recitals are posted in Facebook, non in Jackrail or other separate places: this is a verifiable fact.
I find the correlation statistically VERY significant: it shows that there is no contradiction between ads for Early Music events and publications and harpsichord chairs as discussed here.
There is no way you can disprove my assertion: I am a user of both Facebook and Jackrail. You said you refuse go to Facebook, so you will need somebody else to refuse my assertion: that will be hard to do, as it is based on a personal statistics over a group of which i am the sole Admin, and general statistics in Fb are difficult to produce, as everybody knows to well.
I find some interesting comments here that are worth mulling over, some suggesting that the “Early Music Revival” is past its sell-by date – which, if true, would support the phenomena discussed above.
A discouraging sign is the appearance of so many recordings on modern piano, not only of Bach, but also of other 18th and 17th C music. There seems to be a concerted effort to force the harpsichord back into oblivion. OTOH, we have so many excellent young players who have come along recently and who are making superb recordings. I urge everyone to support them and to do everything possible to preserve the hard-fought gains that we older folks struggled for back in the '50s-'70s.
I share Jay’s sentiments. It does appear that this mode of piano performance is again becoming accepted as “the way it really should be” as opposed to “the way it should not be.” Of the many things that annoy me about many (not all) modern piano performances of Bach is the incessant staccato that reminds me of chickens pecking the ground in a barnyard, with little sense of phrase. Also the treatment of French ornaments as some kind of “event” that has to be singled out and even nuanced (ugh) rather than being part of an organic phrase. The allegros lack poetry and grace, and the adagios have too much schmalz (even Liszt had more respect). I could go on…
I suppose we partly have ourselves to blame. We have become lax in continuing to educate our listeners as to why our baroque phrasing and instrument-aware performance is musically better. There is somewhat an attitude of “Here it is. It is right. If you don’t like it, tough, you’re ignorant and not relevant to me.” In contrast, and I’m sure there are others, Richard Egarr, in his harpsichord recitals, was always willing to go back to basics and explain to his audience the nuance of harpsichord performance or what to listen for in a particular piece. IMO, we need more of that, please.
This thread covers a lot of different topics and as I am in the process of moving house, I don’t have time to digest it all.
However, going back to the news item of the lost harpsichord teaching position at UNT, I looked at the NASM website where you can check which schools they accredit.
NASM does NOT credit conservatories - ie Oberlin, Juilliard, New England Conservatory, Curtis etc etc. (I think they do accredit Eastman as part of the University of Rochester.)
So the NASM’s statistics are a red herring - they do not indicate how many students are studying harpsichord as their first instrument in the US, as they are not counting conservatory harpsichord majors (or conservatory MMs or DMAs).
In addition, as someone pointed out on FB, there have been quite a few prominent harpsichordists in the US whose main instrument (in terms of a degree) was something else (such as piano).
I agree with Jay that it is very sad that the teaching position held by Dr. Lenora McCroskey for so many years is disappearing.
Yes, the news from UNT is grim in spite of multiple letters, petitions, etc. from students , the UNT music faculty and harpsichordists around the country. I was surprised to know that NASM doesn’t credit conservatories. Adding numbers from those institutions should change the statistics significantly. I hope someone can get that information. I will try this week.
Thanks, Douglas, for acknowledging my work here. Since Brad was my student, I am doubly heartbroken. Also, might add that one of my many “best” students was Elliot Figg, whose major was composition for both his BM and MM from here, but is now quite successful in the NYC area and beyond as a much in demand continuo player as well as coach and soloist.
Keep us in your thoughts down here and it’s never too late to send a note to the dean: John Richmond.