Yonit Lea Kosovske surveys early music and writing about keyboard performance with the aim of facilitating the development of an expressive tone in the modern player. Reviewing the work of the pedagogues and performers of the late Renaissance through the late Baroque, she gives special emphasis to la douceur du toucher or a gentle touch. Other topics addressed include posture, early pedagogy, exercises, articulation, and fingering patterns. Illustrated with musical examples as well as photos of the author at the keyboard, Historical Harpsichord Technique can be used for individual or group lessons and for amateurs and professionals.
This concise volume offers both a practical manual for performers and an authoritative history of the instrument. Includes advice on mastering basic touch, fingering, articulation and phrasing, rhythm and tempo, ornaments, more.
This book gives a practical method for playing the harpsichord in a way that was lost when the instrument was marginalized by the piano in the 19th century. Since a thorough knowledge of historical performance practice is such an important aspect of playing this repertoire, excerpts from relevant primary sources are given at the end of many of the lessons.
"Divided into two parts, the book combines Touch at the harpsichord, in part one, with Rhetoric at the keyboard (or, performance practice) in part two. The book is spiral bound and designed for use at the keyboard, with or without a teacher. It features 30 teaching pieces from the Bach/Ricci "Methode ou Receuil de Connaissances elementaires pour le piano forte ou clavecin" of 1786. Also featured are pieces to play by Louis & Francois Couperin, J. S. Bach and Georg Bohm. An appendix of recommended starting pieces follows. If you take the trouble to work with this book at a harpsichord, (especially if you use the recordings) your touch and knowledge of Baroque performance will improve."--Publisher's description.
This practical guide treats the mechanics and evolution of the instrument, and offers a survey of its literature. The author provides valuable advice on touch and technique, including articulation and fingering, with a lucid exposition of the issues involved in historical performance practice and a clear explanation of ornamentation. The repertoire of each of the great national schools is presented and discussed, with four representative pieces singled out for detailed analysis. More advanced players will welcome the author's suggestions on continuo playing and the helpful discussion of tuning and temperaments. From advice on acquiring a harpsichord, to wise counsel on how to play it and what music to choose, to suggestions on maintenance and tuning, A Guide to the Harpsichord is an indispensable companion for both beginning and advanced harpsichordists.
Kottick presents technical information in an accessible, but entertaining, way: the forms and styles of harpsichords, advice on purchasing decisions, maintenance techniques (such as voicing, regulating, and changing strings, tongues, plectra, springs, and dampers), aids in troubleshooting common problems, and detailed instructions on tuning and temperament. As builder of some thirty keyboard instruments, Kottick is well qualified to speak on the subject.
The Harpsichord and Clavichord, An Encyclopedia includes articles on this family of instruments, including famous players, composers, instruments builders, the construction of the instruments, and related terminology. It is the first complete reference on this important family of keyboard instruments. The contributors include major scholars of music and musical instrument history from around the world. It completes the three-volume Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments.
Saint Lambert's Principles of the Harpsichord of 1702 was the first tutor for harpsichord to be published in France. It draws upon the dance-oriented harpsichord style developed during the reign of Louis XIV by such masters as Jacques Champion de Chambonnierès, Louis Couperin, and Jean Henry d'Anglebert. In subject matter it ranges from the fundamentals of music through questions of meter and tempo to particulars of harpsichord technique and ornamentation. Because of its broad scope it is an important source of information about both late seventeenth-century French performance practice and music theory. It provides a good complement to Francois Couperin's well-known book l'Art de toucher le clavecin of 1717 in that it deals with the musical style of the generation preceding Couperin and includes subjects not discussed by him. Although nothing is known about Saint Lambert himself, it is clear from this work that as a teacher he was thorough, sympathetic, and open-minded. His book is deserving of a place on the shelf of anyone, professional or amateur, who is interested in the music of the Grand Siècle. For this first English edition, Rebecca Harris-Warrick has added a substantial introduction and full annotation throughout the text [Publisher description]
The harpsichord was the standard keyboard instrument for three centuries before the invention of the piano. It enjoyed a revival in the second half of the twentieth century, but because of the interruption in its history as a more regularly used instrument, many details about its construction are lacking. In The Harpsichord Stringing Handbook, Thomas Donahue integrates available historical evidence and modern physical principles—from both musicological and scientific literature—to provide practical quantitative information about the stringing of this instrument. The Harpsichord Stringing Handbook covers the composition and properties of iron and brass wire, the interrelationship of frequency to string length, safety factors involved with stringing, the scaling of string lengths, the calculation of diameters, and the determination of the transition from iron to brass in mixed-strung instruments. Supplemental topics include the elasticity and plasticity of wire, inharmonicity, tension and stress, and the interpolation of string lengths. Additional material includes data on selected historical harpsichords, absolute diameters of historical gauge numbering systems, a generated list of tensile strength values for historical wire, and sizes and tensile strengths of currently available wire. This book offers specific guidance for instrument makers, restorers, curators, technicians, musicians, kit builders, wire manufacturers, and acousticians, filling in critical details that historical treatises and surviving instruments may not clearly address.
