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Keyboard music, §IV: Harpsichord music in the 20th century
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Keyboard music, §IV: Harpsichord music in the 20th century

IV. Harpsichord music in the 20th century

The revival of the harpsichord (since 1889, when the firms of Erard, Pleyel and Tomasini each displayed newly made
harpsichords at the Paris Exposition) led to a distinct, modern harpsichord style in which timbre as material to work with
became an important feature of the composition. The development of the modern concert harpsichord modelled after the
so-called Bach disposition of the alleged BACH HARPSICHORD (catalogue no.316 at the Musikinstrumenten-Museum, Berlin), with
two manuals and a variety of stops, usually disposed 1 x 4′, 2 x 8′ and 1 x 16′, therefore had an influence on the style of many
compositions, including Hugo Distler's Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings op.14 (1935–6). In this concerto, Distler made use
of the then fashionable neo-Baroque Terrassendynamik (‘terraced dynamics’) and introduced echo effects by alternating
between tutti registration and registration without the 16′ stop.

Roman Haubenstock-Ramati, in his Concerto for Harpsichord and Orchestra (1978; based on his Recitativo ed Aria, 1954–5),
also used the registration effects of an instrument with the ‘Bach disposition’ plus harp stop and theorbo stop (on the 8′ and
16′). Haubenstock-Ramati was possibly the first composer to exploit fully the harpsichord's percussive quality. He introduced
the harpsichord as a noise-making, pointilistic solo instrument in the spirit of musique concrète. His Concerto was the first of
several works, by various composers, to exploit the modern harpsichord’s potential as the only traditional acoustic instrument
(with the exception of the organ) upon which the availability of a pre-determined variety of stop combinations permits serial
employment of the parameter timbre in a consequently mechanistic manner.

The interplay between pedal stops on the two-manual keyboard forms the basis of another style of composition for the modern
concert harpsichord, most obviously in Continuum by György Ligeti (1968). The composition's first sound, the interval G–B ,
demonstrates the aspect of changing timbres that is used throughout this composition: it is repeated many times prestissimo
(resembling chains of trills), yet with alternating registration each time. Thus, the sound event receives a certain dynamic
spatial structure, although it remains (for a certain period) static and has no development in traditional terms of musical
construction. Ligeti referred in this context to the realization of ‘acoustic illusions’, influenced by the graphic art of Maurits
Escher. Ligeti's composition has had many followers, from the negative parody of the title in Discontinuum, composed in 1978
by François Vercken, to the eclectic use of the trill as the dominant material for composition in works such as Penderecki's
Partita (1971, rev.1991), Klaas de Vrie's Toccata Americana (1978), Hope Lee's Melboac (1983), Kaija Saariaho's Jardin secret
II (1984–6) and Ruth Zechlin's Diagonalen (1990).

Another possibility offered by the two-manual harpsichord is the introduction of different temperaments on each of the manuals.
In his Tombeau de Marin Maraisfor Baroque violin, two bass viols and harpsichord (1967), Pierre Bartholomeé suggested
dividing the octave into 21 equal steps. Hans Zender, too, extended the traditional tempered system for the harpsichord in his
Kantate nach Meister Eckhart (1980). Other compositions, in which each manual of the two-manual instrument has its own
temperament, are Minos (1978) by Anneli Arho, The female modes (1985) by Ted Ponjee, and – designated for any keyboard
instrument, but most effectively performed on the harpsichord – Fantango (1984) by Jukka Tiensuu.

Some compositions make use of the contrasting sound of two different keyboard instruments, such as piano and harpsichord.
Martinů's Concert pour clavecin et petit orchestre (1935) is presumably the first work with such a combination of instruments.
Here the orchestral forces include piano, flute, bassoon and strings. Elliott Carter's Double Concerto for harpsichord and piano
with two chamber orchestras (1961) is the best known composition that features the contrast between those two keyboard
instruments. In his cover notes to a recording of this work (Nonesuch H 71314, 1975), Carter wrote that ‘the harpsichord and
piano … are each given music idiomatic to their instruments, meant to appeal to the imaginations of their performers and cast
them into clearly identifiable, independent roles’. Written for a particular model of harpsichord made by the American
harpsichord builder John Challis (1907–74), with a great variety of timbres and a unique dynamic gradation of each stop owing

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to full-position and half-position hitches, the differentiation in sound that Carter employs in the harpsichord part matches the
richness of shading of which the piano is capable.

Bibliography

General reference
W. Niemann: Das Klavierbuch: Geschichte der Klaviermusik und ihre Meister (Leipzig, 1922)

E. Blom: The Romance of the Piano (London, 1928)

D.F. Tovey: Essays in Musical Analysis (London, 1935–9/R, abridged 2/1981)

A. Lockwood: Notes on the Literature of the Piano (Ann Arbor and London, 1940)

A. Loesser: Men, Women and Pianos: a Social History (London, 1940)

W. Georgii: Klaviermusik (Zürich and Freiburg, 1941, 4/1965)

D. Brook: Masters of the Keyboard (London, 1946)

E. Hutcheson: The Literature of the Piano (New York, 1948, 2/1964/R)

J. Friskin and I. Freundlich: Music for the Piano … from 1580 to 1952 (New York, 1954/R)

J. Gillespie: Five Centuries of Keyboard Music (Belmont, CA, 1965/R)

F.E. Kirby: A Short History of Keyboard Music (New York, 1966)

K. Wolters: Handbuch der Klavierliteratur, i (Zürich and Freiburg, 1967)

M. Hinson: Keyboard Bibliography (Cincinnati, 1968)

D. Matthews, ed.: Keyboard Music (London, 1972)

M. Hinson: Guide to the Pianist’s Repertoire, ed. I. Freundlich (Bloomington, IN, 1973) [comprehensive bibliography]

D. Gill, ed.: The Piano (London, 1981)

Specific studies
NewmanSCE

NewmanSSB

E.J. Dent: ‘The Pianoforte and its Influence on Modern Music’, MQ, ii (1916), 271–94

A. Cortot: La musique française de piano (Paris, 1930–48/R; i–ii, Eng. trans. of vol. i only, 1932/R)

C. Parrish: The Early Piano and its Influence on Keyboard Technique and Composition in the Eighteenth Century (diss., Harvard U.,
1939)

J.F. Russell: ‘Mozart and the Pianoforte’, MR, i (1940), 226–44

N. Broder: ‘Mozart and the “Clavier”’, MQ, xxvii (1941), 422–32

E. Reeser: De zonen van Bach (Amsterdam, 1941; Eng. trans., 1946)

C. Parrish: ‘Haydn and the Piano’, JAMS, i/3 (1948), 27–34

J. Kirkpatrick: ‘American Piano Music: 1900–1950’, Music Teachers’ National Association: Proceedings, xliv (1950), 35–41

F.H. Garvin: The Beginning of the Romantic Piano Concerto (New York, 1952)

D. Stone: The Italian Sonata for Harpsichord and Pianoforte in the Eighteenth Century (1730–90) (diss., Harvard U., 1952)

A.G. Hess: ‘The Transition from Harpsichord to Piano’, GSJ, vi (1953), 75–94

K. Dale: Nineteenth-Century Piano Music (London, 1954/R) [foreword by Myra Hess]

H.F. Wolf: The 20th Century Piano Sonata (diss., Boston U., 1957)

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E. Blom: ‘The Prophesies of Dussek’, Classics Major and Minor (London, 1958), 88–117

N. Demuth: French Piano Music (London, 1958)

T.L. Fritz: The Development of Russian Piano Music as Seen in the Literature of Mussorgsky, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and Prokofiev
(diss., U. of Southern California, 1959)

P.F. Ganz: The Development of the Etude for Pianoforte (diss., Northwestern U., 1960)

J. Lade: ‘Modern Composers and the Harpsichord’, The Consort, no.19 (1962), 122–8

E. Badura-Skoda: ‘Textural Problems in Masterpieces of the 18th and 19th Centuries’, MQ, li (1965), 301–17

T.A. Brown: The Aesthetics of Robert Schumann (New York, 1968/R)

L.D. Stein: The Performance of Twelve-Tone and Serial Music for the Piano (diss., U. of Southern California, 1965)

M.J.E. Brown: ‘Towards an Edition of the Pianoforte Sonatas’, Essays on Schubert (New York, 1966), 197–216

K. Heuschneider: The Piano Sonata in the 18th Century in Italy (Cape Town, 1966)

D.L. Arlton: American Piano Sonatas of the Twentieth Century: Selective Analysis and Annotated Index (diss., Columbia U., 1968)

M.K. Ellis: The French Piano Character Piece of the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (diss., Indiana U., 1969)

E. Glusman: The Early Nineteenth-Century Lyric Piano Piece (diss., Columbia U., 1969)

K. Michałowski: Bibliografia chopinowska 1849–1969 (Kraków, 1970)

W.S. Newman: ‘Beethoven’s Pianos versus his Piano Ideals’, JAMS, xxiii (1970), 484–504

H. Truscott: ‘The Piano Music – I’, The Beethoven Companion, ed. D. Arnold and N. Fortune (London, 1971)

K. Michałowski: ‘Bibliografia chopinowska 1970–1973’, Rocznik chopinowski, ix (1975), 121–75

E. Badura-Skoda: ‘Prolegomena to a History of the Viennese Fortepiano’, Israel Studies in Musicology, ii (1980), 77–99

H.M. Brown: ‘Style in contemporary Harpsichord Writing’, Composer, l xxvi–lxxvii (1982), 17–20

D. Burge: Twentieth Century Piano Music (New York, 1990)

R.L. Todd, ed.: Nineteenth-Century Piano Music (New York, 1990)

P.D. Roberts: Modernism in Russian Piano Music – Scriabin, Prokofiev, and their Russian Contemporaries (Bloomington, IN, 1993)

M. Elste: ‘Kompositionen für nostalgische Musikmaschinen: das Cembalo in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts’, JbSIM (1994), 199–246

D. Witten, ed.: Nineteenth-Century Piano Music: Essays in Performance and Analysis (New York, 1997)

Martin Elste

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