Was Bach a clavichordist?

Clavichord
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| andro Andrew Bernard
September 28 |

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@alvisezuani I’m not convinced that Bach even had a lautenwerk. This could probably be spun off into a different topic. What are people’s current views on this?

Before we consider this question, could you please clarify whether you are not convinced that the specificatio of JS Bach’s estate, made after his death at Leipzig in I750, does not, as a whole, record his ownership of if instruments, or whether the ‘Lauten Werk’ and ‘ditto’ item (each valued at 30 reichstaler) in particular are somehow exceptional in that regard?

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My informal survey of 19th century pianos in small New England museums shows that about half of them have mother-of-pearl keytops.

Didn’t Adlung say something about how you could buy a clavichord for 16 groschen but its best use is as firewood to cook fish? Those instruments weren’t saved in museums, but they were played on. I’m sure I have seen an inventory of a music store in c. 1720’s Germany that offered about 30 clavichords and 5 harpsichords, or some such numbers. It’s in the archives of one of the old lists.

Meanwhile, and this is pure speculation, fretted clavichords are small and portable, and if somebody was coming to take an inventory to determine estate taxes and there were lots of family members, I’m guessing people would walk off with the good ones before the assessor showed up.

Judy

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Well, he had a cousin who made them. I like to imagine that they were
pity purchases, but he was more likely acting as an agent.

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Good thing the statute of limitations has expired!

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Hi Stuart, replying to your long post of 3 hours ago.
Search criteria: you say “it’s not so easy to search …” . Actually in the new Boalch-Mould online it is: you can enter “Germany” safely, because all the makers from what were German-speaking lands have, before their town/city, the word “Germany”. And you do not need a date filter because, clicking on the 1st line title “Date”, the search is sorted by date. In this respect there is no doubt.
I stand by my search: Germany, >1685 and <1740: 25 harpsichords and 22 clavichords.
(Just in case I have transcribed the list by hand for future checks).
Please perform the query yourself in Boalch-Mould online and tell me your numbers.

“ON THE ONE HAND”:

1740 as I said was Ledbetter’s cutoff. The number of clavichords, now mostly unfretted, skyrockets after that date, as I already said above, therefore it makes sense that you saw many more clavichords, but they hardly belong to the old Bach practice as you acknowledge.

" ON THE OTHER HAND":

Fully agree that different factors would lead to an under-representation of clavichords in Bach. And “those unsigned … would not appear in Boalch.” Fully agree as well.
With these considerations in mind, perhaps there were an equal number, perhaps more (and, ehem, I already clarified this in a previous post as well). The point is … how many more? Twice as many, three times … maybe, but certanly NOT the 99 times your Jurgenson quote suggests, otherwise surely we would see them around: nobody can have been around culling old clavichords and respecting harpsichords.

“Boalch … not definitive”.

Indeed I always clarified that they were an approximate measure. Boalch is not the problem, limiting ourselves to extant instruments is the problem.

Clavichords were described cursorily not only because they were as common or possibly more common (but again, certainly not 99 times more common), but also because of the simplicity of their construction compared with the complexity of harpsichords with their registers, jacks, tongues, plectra, dampers …

“ubiquity”.

I have fully acknowledged this also in previous posts.

I do not see any significant discrepancy between your ideas and my ideas, or between your numbers and my numbers (except of course the “99” matter).

Cheers!

Claudio

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In reply to Judith Conrad.

I read about the shop offering in Bach’s time 30 clavichords and 5 harpsichords.
Maybe so indeed. Maybe that particular shop favoured clavichords.
But even if the sample was representative, as you acknowledge (and as shown in Boalch searches as well!), most of them would be fretted with bass short octave from C/E and therefore (as confirmed by researchers such as Loucks and Brauchli+Hogwood) unsuitable for a very significant proportion of Bach’s works for “clavier” (as opposed to those specially earmarked for the harpsichord).

If we discard clavichords from C/E, then again the numbers tally with that of harpsichords, or approximately. As I wrote in my “conclusions”, both instrument were similarly numerous and ubiquitous , possibly the cheaper smaller softer clavichord in homes and the more expensive larger louder harpsichord in churches, coffee shops and other meeting places.

And Bach would write “clavier” meaning any stringed keyboard, as I wrote above and acknowledged by most present-day scholars.

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Edit: when I wrote above “not mostly unfretted” I meant “now mostly unfretted”. Have edited as suitable.

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Of lute-harpsichords:

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Hello. I haven’t posted before, but I am compelled to, because I feel this whole topic is fraught with problems. First and foremost, I think basing any part of an “answer” on what is listed in Boalch makes absolutely no sense. I don’t think anyone can make a convincing argument that the ratio of different types of instruments’ survival rates can at all reflect the ratio of what existed back in the 18th century (or earlier, or even later).

I give an example: Johann Andreas Stein made a variety of keyboard instruments, in a more recent period than you are writing about by about 40-50 years. There are 3 surviving clavichords, 2 vis-a-vis instruments (combined harpsichord/fortepiano), and about 15 fortepianos, as well as a few other types. We know the 2 vis-a-vis instruments were unique, and probably that uniqueness contributed to their survival. But no one could possibly argue that, based on the 20 instruments we are talking about, 10% of Stein’s output of instruments were vis-a-vis, 15% were clavichords, and 75% were fortepianos. And unless some previously unknown log of Stein’s complete output comes to light, we will probably never know.

There are SO MANY surviving instruments of all types that are NOT listed in Boalch. There are probably many instruments that have yet to be identified as being “German”, and others that are called “German” and are not. So sorry, but I don’t think any definitive, or even slightly definitive conclusions can be drawn from this discussion. Perhaps looking at every clue–surviving instruments, written documentation, iconography and other visual art—can give us an inkling of an idea. But it can only be speculation based on very little in the way of real facts.

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Dear Dongsok,

Please re-read my posts. You will find that:

  • I agree (guess every known scholar agrees as well) that Boalch extant-instrument statistics are to be used with care. My statements do not pretend to be accurate, just to show that the 99% number is most likely to be a gross exaggeration.
  • I have mentioned at least one renowned Bach-scholar that has based conclusions precisely on extant instrument statistics from Boalch. So I may not be right, but I am in very good company.
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Oh, by the way, please Dongsok, you wrote:

There are probably many instruments that have yet to be identified as being “German”, and others that are that are called “German” and are not.

So, out of the German-Bach-era 25 harpsichords and 22 clavichords that I mentioned (and you can see them searching Boalch-Mould the same way I did), please name which ones are identified as being from “Germany” (the term used in Boalch-Mould) but are not.

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I did read the whole discussion. So if you have a huge caveat about using Boalch, as you mentioned, then what is the point? And just because some other researcher used Boalch doesn’t make the argument any better. Also, if I’m not mistaken, Boalch only lists named makers. Anonymous instruments not included, and so many surviving instruments, especially clavichords, are unsigned.

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I was not specifically talking about Boalch in that sentence. Sorry if it seemed that way. What I meant was that there are many anonymous instruments extant in museums and collections all over the world where guesses, some educated, others not, are made about where they were made or were from. And many of those guesses get changed or disproven as time goes on and we learn more.

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At this point, Dongsok, I have only two very sad observations

  • It is obvious that your point is to attack my (very balanced in my opinion) conclusions, which agree with scholarship, without offering your supposedly better alternative.

  • You have objected to a concrete information in a list of 25+22=47 instruments in Boalch-Mould, but you are not answering where is the wrong information. I am waiting .

Edit: Again, you wrote “in Boalch … others that are called German and are not”.
Please supply a single example in the list of those 47 instruments.

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Dear Claudio,

I am certainly not trying to attack you personally. And I do not have to offer a “supposedly better alternative”. I have merely pointed out that it is impossible to draw conclusions from limited information. Of course, people constantly draw conclusions from limited information, but that does not make those conclusions either correct or definitive. Scholarship isn’t infallible!

If we only knew J.S. Bach’s church cantatas from those that survive (about 200), without any other information, we might not conclude that probably the majority of two additional annual cycles (probably another 100) are lost.

I made very clear, including a followup message to clarify a legitimate point you made, that Boalch cannot allow us to conclude much about ratios of instruments that survive to the present, since it does not include unsigned instruments, and because survival into our day is, itself, so chancy.

It is also telling that, in the “Edit” you made in your last message, you actually still criticize a point I clarified and corrected in a followup message. The issue I raised of “German” was separate from your statement about Boalch. Of course, the 47 German instruments listed in Boalch may very well be correct.

Dongsok

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If an amateur might venture, I wonder if the simplest assumption is that music written for and copied by his students was mostly likely performed on clavichord, and music written for publication or public performance was most likely performed on harpsichord.

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I think no such assumption can be made. We only have scattered hard evidence of the types of specific instruments people owned. Estate listings like the inventory of Bach’s after he died tells us something. But I wonder how many inventories like this exist to be examined now? Surely an illuminating doctoral thesis could start figuring some of this out! But so often such inventories are also not detailed enough to tell us enough, and the descriptions often are garbled enough that it is clear they were not written by people who understood instruments.

1 Like
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I think it is widely accepted that Bach used a clavichord for home practice - and that he taught his children on one.

Quentin Faulkner did extensive research on this - I have not read or heard it all, but I do know he said Bach had a fretted clavichord for practice and it influenced his technique.

Margo

Dr. Margo Dillard
Organist/Handbell Director, First United Methodist Church, Lewisville, Texas
margo@firstlewisville.org
doctormargo.blogspot.com

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Actually, Margo, I have shown above that it is certainly NOT widely accepted.

According to all the Bach-scholars I am aware of, there is absolutely no evidence that Bach ever played a clavichord or taught on one, fretted or otherwise. The clavichord-maker and -enthusiast Joris Potvlieghe in his recent and very detailed paper showed that the instrument was very common in Bach’s milieu, as much as a harpsichord or more, and his “conclusion” is that it is most likely that Bach played and even liked it. But this conclusion is flawed: no new evidence has surfaced AFAIK.

You mention Q. Faulkner, I have read his works (not on this subject) and found glaring errors.

Edit: again, the well-known and favourably-reviewed published works by researchers such as Loucks and Brauchli show that many of Bach’s works for “klavier”, typically many pieces in the WTC, require a clavichord either unfretted or chromatic from C. This excludes a significant proportion of the instruments in Bach’s milieu before the 1740’s.

You should have read what I wrote before, Margo: I quote great names in support of what I just wrote (sorry, I mean, repeated for the umpteenth time) above. These include great clavichordists such as Leonhardt and Kirkpatrick.

[Why should I go on repeating the same things over and over?] :thinking:

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[Faulkner: J.S. Bach’s Keyboard Technique: although quoting the same sources as Lindley and Boxall decades earlier, Faulkner gives full priority of late (and held dubious by most Bach-scholars) information by CPE Bach and mainly Forkel, over the evidence from Bach and his milieu. He reaches conclusions that are contrary to what can be deduced by solid evidence. But I digress, this is a matter for another thread … ]