Michael's Blog

23 March 2024

If you're reading this page you have probably admired some historic square pianos. Perhaps you own such an instrument. But, what music will you play?

If you have a square piano by 'Longman & Broderip' (for example) and it is in good order, you may be tempted to select one of Joseph Haydn's sonatas. Many people do. And of course, it will sound very well. But I found nothing of this sort in Miss Bassett's collection. Her music was offered as Lot 758 at Chorley's Auction Room last week.

It is no hardship for me to visit their saleroom, just a few miles from Cheltenham, in the monks' former workshops at Prinknash Abbey. Thirty years ago the brothers used to make and sell a distinctive type of pottery, silver-grey in colour, avidly bought by visitors. But now, their numbers are reduced, and their beautiful grounds, given to them by a well-wisher, are not so well maintained. Visitors are welcome to wander in the Old Monastery Garden, where a crystal stream trickles rather musically down the hillside. Or, if you are feeling energetic, there's an inviting walk uphill through the trees to the monastery chapel. On a sunny day it is very beautiful. I often find others there who appreciate the peace, and tranquility, making their way to the chapel.

For some time now auctioneers Chorley's have been disposing of property that belonged to the Strickland family of Gloucester – portraits, furniture, and books. This month they had a bound collection of music that bears the signature of Julia Strickland (circa 1830 I'd guess). But the collection was begun much earlier, about 1770, and the young lady who began it was, like many young people, practicing her handwriting on a spare leaf near the beginning. Miss Bassett, Crofton Hall, Wakefield, she writes in her most polished hand. Also Dear Mama, in a much less elegant style.

Her music, at least within this volume, is composed entirely of songs, which I think we may imagine she sang herself. On the title page of each you may read the name of many famous singers of the day: Tenducci, Rauzinni and Signora Storace.

Crofton Hall is no more. But a little search on the Internet reveals what it looked like. There is a very informative list of the book's contents on the auction website including 'The Dying Negro', a popular purchase around 1790, printed by Longman & Broderip in aid of the funds for the Abolitionist Movement, the anti-slavery cause lead by William Wilberforce, MP.

And, on a lighter note, you mave have heard the lugubrious arrangement of Tom Bowling sung every year at the 'Last Night of the Proms'. Here in Miss Bassett's collection is the original, composed and published by Charles Dibden, along with several other pieces by him.

Haydn sonatas? They may sound excellent on a Longman & Broderip piano, but that's not what most people were playing, and hearing.

 

 

18 March 2024

A sight that cannot be repeated – four identical harpsichords (made and supplied by Tom Goff) lined up for a performance of Bach at the Royal Festival Hall in 1951. The players include George Malcom and Thurston Dart, and the music they're about to play is (you've guessed it) – BWV1065 – a pioneering rendition that many understood to be a great step forward in rendering Bach's music in its original form.

Splendid in appearance, thanks in great measure to the superb cabinet-making skills of J.C. Cobby, these four newly-made harpsichords are deliberately remeniscent of the historical design of Jacob Kirckman, and none the worse for that. But do you notice some departures from the Kirckman example? Reverse colour keyboards we need hardly mention. From the beginning of the harpsichord revival black naturals were expected – a visual reminder that we are not looking at any sort of piano, but a representative of 'ancient' music, a different concept.

Yet Goff was very much in favour of incorporating technological advances, learned by the piano trade. Do you see the extra-wide keyboard end blocks? I think they are not arbitrary, but they're there to make room for the cast metal frames that mimic the grand pianos of the modern era. This permits the bottom boards by which Kirckman closed the soundbox to be dispensed with. Substantial beams of timber (at an angle to the spine) replace the 18th-century framing. Needless to say, the keys owe much to later piano designs – so the players' sensation of the touch was comfortably like the keyboard they were accustomed to.

Regrettably, they were weak in tone. Despite Goff's selection of extra strong birds' feathers, the resulting tone was no match for the orchestral instruments you see here. His answer was to turn to modern technology once more – and amplify the sound using hidden microphones, with cables leading to speakers placed behind strategically positioned plant pots, distributed along the front of the stage.

Raymond Russell would have none of this. To his great credit he spoke at a conference organised by the Royal Musical Association (when many harpsichord makers were present, including Tom Goff) advocating a return to historical concepts of a resonant body, as he had experienced it when playing restored instruments, from his collection, finding their resonance so much more acceptable than electrical amplification. [Proceedings RMA, 1955-6, at Taylor & Francis website, see 'Harpsichord since 1800'.]

But there is in our days a further aberration – since most people's experience of the harpsichord comes chiefly through recorded sounds, ensembles that include a harpsichord are often manipulated by record producers, using clever technological advances available to recording engineers. Surely, there's only one way to appreciate the true sound of a harpsichord and that is in person, in an appropriate aural space – not the Royal Festival Hall. But full marks to Raymond Russell for calling this out.

 

4 March 2024

Extravagant inlays, and contrived symmetry when closed, this 'square piano' by [Augustus] Leukfeld exhibits all the strangeness of William Southwell's work. It is to be sold at auction near Cambridge this week. The auctioneer, (Rowleys of Ely) declines to hazard a reading of the maker's inscription, but if you have followed this Blog for a couple of years or more you will have seen a line engraving of Leukfeld's premises in Tottenham Street, with his porters loading just such a piano - ludicrously attired in tailcoats as they place the finished piano in a small horse-drawn dray.)

A flurry of activity in the university town sees a fresh-to-market square piano by Frederick Beck at Cheffins also with a very modest estimate. I guess it has not been played in years, but it appears that everything is there, internally, and though it's not dated it has the characteristic features of Beck's pianos circa 1780.

And with Fellows Auction rooms in Birmingham offering the beautiful Schoene & Vinsen piano showing below there is plenty on offer to tempt collectors and musicians.

22 February 2024

My admiration for the work of Schoene & Vinsen is second only to my endless delight in the decoration of this piano - which, as I explained before on this Blog, was most likely the work of Lizzie Dean and her husband, antiques dealer George Frederick Dean, in London about 1900-1910. It is a masterpiece of decorative enhancement.

But when I saw it last year at Fellows Auction Rooms in Birmingham I was not tempted to bid for it. The structural problems, and regrettable interventions it has suffered make its re-instatement as a musical instrument very difficult. It seems someone else has now recognised this, because it is to re-appear in the same rooms on 5 March. Let us hope that it will find a new home where its decorative appeal and musical merit will be restored. It deserves a place in any collection where European Classical arts are appreciated. The buyer (if one can be found) must be prepared to spend plenty of money if it is ever to function again musically. The vendor evidently hopes to recoup his losses. A year older, a little wiser.

If you wish to remind yourself of the instrument and my comments it can be found on an earlier section of this Blog under the date 1 March 2023. [Go to the bottom of this page and select the year.]

 

11 February 2024

If you are familiar with the music of J.C. Bach you can imagine what a delight it was to begin Saturday morning with one of his most charming chamber music compositions – the one we know as the Septet in C. This music was recorded many years ago [1987] by the English Concert, directed by Trevor Pinnock – a delightful recording in which he played on an early Broadwood square piano from Finchcocks Museum. In Chelteham we heard this music as a quartet, 2 violins and cello, with the keyboard part rendered by Catherine Thomas on triple harp.

As you may see, an excellent attendance was there to hear this rare event at St Philip & St James', in Cheltenham. A breathless hush came over them, with not a single fidget. Such a charming performance!

Charles Avison composed the trio that followed, he who rubbished Vivaldi, claiming that such poor music would be soon forgotten. But his music fell flat after J. C. Bach, for me at least, but the hour-long concert hit a new high with the audience when Handel's harp concerto was delightfully played as we've never heard it before, with the original Welsh-design triple harp, such as the composer would have known.

 

5 February 2024

The severe damage done to music and concert-giving by government restrictions of 2020 is receding into the past. People are going to concerts, thank heaven, mingling and chatting happily as they did before. So, at last month's Coffee Concert 170 people came to hear an hour's music and gave generously, to swell the funds for further events. Next Saturday in Cheltenham we will have the pleasure of a quartet of excellent players performing Handel and J. Chr. Bach. And I shall have a treat ... hearing for the first time (in ensemble) the sound of the triple harp, an instrument that is so rarely heard today outside Wales. The organiser is of course Warwick Cole, but with both of his daughters away at distant universities, the coffee and tea dispensary may not be up to former standards.

Later this month we have another unusual treat when Gordon Busbridge, who before retirement was head of music at Cheltenham College, has brought together friends and colleagues to give a charity concert that will include J.S.Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No.1, which I have never heard in live performance since the days, long gone, when I played the bassoon part in an amateur ensemble, of more enthusiasm than ability. Gordon's musicians will be using modern instruments, but it is good to know that live music is back.

 

23 January 2024

Insomnia afflicts many people in old age. But it has benefits. Last night, at 4 o'clock, I was reading again from the beautifully bound letters of Mendelssohn, translated by Lady Wallace in 1863. She did well.

During similar nocturnal readings I had read of his journey to Italy; of his wonderful time in balmy air at Ischia and Capri; his hugely enjoyable music making with Madame Erdmann (playing mostly Beethoven) and his friendly meeting with Mozart's son in Milan. But in these last nights' readings he is journeying north through Switzerland when the pleasure of the scenery is lost through relentless heavy rain [in August]. The rain continues, monstrous floods ensue, but he has sent his baggage onward to Interlachen so he is forced to wade through streams and clamber over fallen rocks to get there, only to find that they could not or would not give him a room. So he turns about, and treks back to Unterseen.

But there he is happy. The floods slowly subside, leaving broken bridges, and the remains of houses floating down the muddy streams. But in Unterseen he is given a room with a little old piano, dated 1794, and there, waiting for better days he composes songs that he hopes his sisters will like. The piano he does not despise. 'Though seven and thirty years old, it has plenty of good things in it.' He wanted some music paper to write on, and 'they referred me to their Pastor, and he to the Forest Ranger, whose daughter gave me two neat sheets.'

When the weather relented he left Unterseen to continue his travels, but not before giving to the Forest Ranger's daughter three little dances he had composed for her, on the little 1794 piano. I hope she treasured them. What would someone not give for these manuscripts today?

15 January 2024

In Paris in 1791 there were many empty houses – such was the fear among the wealthy that it was only wise to get out and take refuge elsewhere. Furniture, valuable books and musical instruments were left behind. Who knows what would happen if you were seen to be packing up and taking everything with you in the nightmare world of the Terrour.

I can't say that I ever discovered who it was that first suggested the idea of confiscating the abandoned musical instruments – the excuse being that these valuable instruments would form the basis of a collection for the proposed National Academy – which, of course, never happened. As Hubbard reported long ago, many fine harpsichords were burned for firewood some years later.

A professional violinist, Antonio Bruni, was deputed in 1791 to enter the empty houses of those who were condemned in the savage justice of the times, or who had fled, and his lists make a fascinating study. He was expert in assessing the violins he found, but rather out of his depth when putting a value on keyboard instruments. There were few houses that had neither a piano or a harpsichord; many had both.

Madame Marie Leopoldine-Monique, otherwise Princess Kinsky, left behind a piano-organ combination instrument of recent manufacture [1788], by Adam Beyer of London — painted white, if you please! Ownership of an organised square piano was, it appears, not unusual among wealthy Parisians. There was another example by Adam Beyer, dated 1775; a Zumpe & Buntebart of 1771; and two very recently made examples from Erard [1790 and 1791]. It is an imponderable question whether these instruments were prized as status symbols, or truly enjoyed for the musical pleasure of the two sonorities in combination. This is a rare experience in modern times. I have often heard a grand piano and a church organ played together to accompany a choir, in which what you gain from the piano is simply a rhythmic emphasis, rather like the part played by a chittarone or bass lute in many baroque ensembles these days. But I suspect that Zumpe, Beyer, Pohlman and others aimed instead at a very different result - having the 8 foot flute tone supporting the square piano.

If you would care to see and hear something of this kind, here is a link to a YouTube video showing the Joseph Merlin organized piano of 1784. It is the one we last saw at the Colt sale in Bethersden, recommissioned. Though there may be limitations to this offering in terms of recording quality, a more sophisticated recording is promised to follow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfHBA7uogjo

[The demonstration/performance begins with J. C. Bach, around 35 minutes in.]

My thanks to Chris Nobbs.

 

 

4 January 2024

Rain in England has been relentless during the autumn. Water butts overflow. Drains cannot cope. And rivers have burst their banks. Tewkesbury, for example, has been recently cut off by road in every direction. It's not a good time to be working on musical instruments, unless you can afford to keep dehumidifiers running 24 hours.

This reminds me of the sadly neglected harpsichord in Warwick, the only remaining instrument by Herman Tabel. To view it I had to make an appointment, months in advance, and when the waiting time was over, make my way to a council depot on the outskirts of the town. Here they keep all sorts of awkward or unwanted items, for example, bags of soil from archeological sites, and museum exhibits that are not currently displayed. The museums' town centre building has been refurbished, but they do not have sufficient display space. So, musical instruments that featured so prominently in the 1960s, when they had additional space in St. John's House, on the Leamingon side of town, were withdrawn from view when that supplementary space was wanted for something else. In former times I recall visiting to see the Tabel harpsichord and seeing incidentally the exquisitely inlaid lute from Hamburg – both items that were bought for Warwick Museum when a former curator (long gone) was enthused about early music. [See Michael's Blog for 2017, 17 May]

Raymond Russell (The Harpsichord & Clavichord) and Frank Hubbard (Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making), the two most important books on this subject, give very inadequate attention to Tabel. So it is sad that this unique instrument has not been on display for decades, and doubly disappointing to discover that it has been removed to this wretched depot, where there is no possible means of controlling the conditions, and worse still, to see a metal bucket nearby to catch the rainwater coming through the leaking roof.

Such inadequate stewardship is commonplace these days, I find, when museum curators are under pressure to provide exhibitions suited to children, and families, with hands-on gadgets, and interactive displays. Important and rare items have to be removed to off-site storage. A better outcome for Tabel's harpsichord would surely be to put it back through the auction rooms, where hopefully another museum could acquire it, preferably in Britain, or perhaps in Amsterdam, where the maker was in trade before he came to London.

 

 

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