"Franco Del Principe" wrote in
message ...
| Dick Pierce wrote:
|
| snip
|
| Richard,
|
| I've been following this thread a bit and found it very
| interesting. I must admit that I learned quite a bit from
| your broad knowledge.
|

Thank you.
Dick Pierce, too, has been providing a different perspective, I
feel that it's as valid as mine, although we're coming from
completely different vantage points. I do, though, agree with his
assessments of the older factory instruments -- someone had to
come first in the 20th Century. After studying performance
practice at two conservatories, and especially having been both a
performer and an instrument maintainer (and an audio person,
too), my view is that there is no one right way to build
instruments and no single right way to reproduce an "authentic"
performance. For example, if given our modern plastics and
metalurgy, what kinds of harpsichords would the builders of the
past have made today?

I'm a woodwind player. I have four plastic recorders built by
three different builders. Two of them were molded of phenolic and
finished by hand; the other two are stright out of their
injection molds. They are all excellent; listening to me play,
you'd think that the instruments were made of wood. Their molds
were carefully made.

There are scholars who can point the way from limited historic
examples; we do enlightened groping, and hope that in the process
that we can share a profound musical experience with our
listeners. There are performers whose renditions make sublime
musical sense to me; others who make sound supported by
scholarship that's uninspired, repetitive, predictable, and
boring. These days, musicians (I hope) render
"historically-informed" performances, not "historically dictated"
versions.

Until Mr. Pierce replied to my post, I'd forgotten about how the
harpsichord world has denizens who are fiercely loyal to one or
another builder or school of construction. each convinced that he
knows the correct answers and that everyone else is wrong. I was
familiar with the excellent work of the Boston builders
(including the incredible woodwind artisan Friedrich von Heune).
However, being based in New York, I only saw the Hubbard and Dowd
harpsichords that Dick mentions occasionally. My experience
included a few brands other than the ones I mentioned. Most of
those were really unsuited to everyday use, since they were
constantly falling apart.

| Just out of curiosity:
|
| Do you happen to know what type of harpsichord Keith Jarret
| plays "Bach: The Goldberg Variations, ECM" on and how it is
| tempered?

I'm sorry; haven't heard the recording. One thing that I must
mention is that, like it or not, the equal-temperment system is
the modern standard. Musicians are used to it, and when playing
in an ensemble of diverse instruments, all players will attempt
to adhere to a common standard. In other words, chances are that
Jarret's instrument was tuned in modern fashion.

How do you like his play? It sure is completely
| different from Glenn Gould's on piano...
|

I haven't heard it, Franco.
Since I sometimes worked at the Columbia 30th Street studio, I
was able to get a few looks at the two pianos that Gould kept
there. They were custom Steinways that were modified to his
requirements. The patented Steinway piano action resists the
player; working against that resistance gives the performer the
ability to achieve more subtle gradations than with other (not
all) instruments. Gould went one step further; his actions were
raised closer to the strings. This reduced the maximum loudness
of the instrument, but permitted even further subtlety in the
piano-to-medium range. In order to play loud on his pianos, Gould
had to pound like hell. That's how Gould wanted it. He was able
to work with those actions to produce Bach fugues in which the
listener can pick out the different voices and follow them with
the mind, the voices having different colorations and emphasis.

By comparison, most other concert pianists can't even comprehend
the lower end of the piano's dynamic range; their playing is
almost all Forte through Fortissimo, with occasional quiet
moments to set off the bombast. It hurts my ears as well as my
sensibility.

Of course, the piano had just begun to exist in Bach's waning
years. So Gould's renditions on the piano are not authentic. I
ask myself, though, if Gould's performances were true to the
spirit of the compositions. I ask myself, "If J.S. Bach was
sitting in the control room at the 30th Street studio while Gould
was being taped, would he be picking the performance apart
angrily or would Bach been sitting there digging the music, head
bobbing, shouting 'Yeah, Yeah!,'" like the tuned-in listeners at
a bebop gig. And in my mind's eye, I suspect the second vision.

When Gould was good, he was very, very good. When he was bad, he
was horrid. He had good days and bad days; good years and bad
ones. I have a promotional interview with his producer in which
he said that he renounced the renditons of his early records (the
reasons have been repeated and are well-known). I do enjoy the
good ones very, very much. Gould had an innate understanding of
the need for keeping steady tempos, which convey the hypnotic
quality that's built into so much of Bach's work. His recordings
were played and edited to build the listener's experience from
beginning to end of each movement; we're carried upon a journey.
Most concert pianists and many modern "historically-accurate"
conductors are deaf to this -- they speed up and slow down
constantly, putting their own "emotions" into it and wrenching
the listener away from what the composer wrote. In doing a
rhythmic analysis of Bach's work while in college, I was
impressed with the with the subtle and patient way that Bach
introduces changes into his lines. The music takes its time (you
may notice that), builds and morphs, gradually. It takes a
special performer to bring this out; one dedicated to the spirit
of the music and not just his own ego.

One great thing about music is that there's so much to it that
there's always something else to learn. I will never know all the
answers, and that's just fine with me!

Richard

"Franco Del Principe" wrote in
message ...
| Dick Pierce wrote:
|
| snip
|
| Richard,
|
| I've been following this thread a bit and found it very
| interesting. I must admit that I learned quite a bit from
| your broad knowledge.
|

Thank you.
Dick Pierce, too, has been providing a different perspective, I
feel that it's as valid as mine, although we're coming from
completely different vantage points. I do, though, agree with his
assessments of the older factory instruments -- someone had to
come first in the 20th Century. After studying performance
practice at two conservatories, and especially having been both a
performer and an instrument maintainer (and an audio person,
too), my view is that there is no one right way to build
instruments and no single right way to reproduce an "authentic"
performance. For example, if given our modern plastics and
metalurgy, what kinds of harpsichords would the builders of the
past have made today?

I'm a woodwind player. I have four plastic recorders built by
three different builders. Two of them were molded of phenolic and
finished by hand; the other two are stright out of their
injection molds. They are all excellent; listening to me play,
you'd think that the instruments were made of wood. Their molds
were carefully made.

There are scholars who can point the way from limited historic
examples; we do enlightened groping, and hope that in the process
that we can share a profound musical experience with our
listeners. There are performers whose renditions make sublime
musical sense to me; others who make sound supported by
scholarship that's uninspired, repetitive, predictable, and
boring. These days, musicians (I hope) render
"historically-informed" performances, not "historically dictated"
versions.

Until Mr. Pierce replied to my post, I'd forgotten about how the
harpsichord world has denizens who are fiercely loyal to one or
another builder or school of construction. each convinced that he
knows the correct answers and that everyone else is wrong. I was
familiar with the excellent work of the Boston builders
(including the incredible woodwind artisan Friedrich von Heune).
However, being based in New York, I only saw the Hubbard and Dowd
harpsichords that Dick mentions occasionally. My experience
included a few brands other than the ones I mentioned. Most of
those were really unsuited to everyday use, since they were
constantly falling apart.

| Just out of curiosity:
|
| Do you happen to know what type of harpsichord Keith Jarret
| plays "Bach: The Goldberg Variations, ECM" on and how it is
| tempered?

I'm sorry; haven't heard the recording. One thing that I must
mention is that, like it or not, the equal-temperment system is
the modern standard. Musicians are used to it, and when playing
in an ensemble of diverse instruments, all players will attempt
to adhere to a common standard. In other words, chances are that
Jarret's instrument was tuned in modern fashion.

How do you like his play? It sure is completely
| different from Glenn Gould's on piano...
|

I haven't heard it, Franco.
Since I sometimes worked at the Columbia 30th Street studio, I
was able to get a few looks at the two pianos that Gould kept
there. They were custom Steinways that were modified to his
requirements. The patented Steinway piano action resists the
player; working against that resistance gives the performer the
ability to achieve more subtle gradations than with other (not
all) instruments. Gould went one step further; his actions were
raised closer to the strings. This reduced the maximum loudness
of the instrument, but permitted even further subtlety in the
piano-to-medium range. In order to play loud on his pianos, Gould
had to pound like hell. That's how Gould wanted it. He was able
to work with those actions to produce Bach fugues in which the
listener can pick out the different voices and follow them with
the mind, the voices having different colorations and emphasis.

By comparison, most other concert pianists can't even comprehend
the lower end of the piano's dynamic range; their playing is
almost all Forte through Fortissimo, with occasional quiet
moments to set off the bombast. It hurts my ears as well as my
sensibility.

Of course, the piano had just begun to exist in Bach's waning
years. So Gould's renditions on the piano are not authentic. I
ask myself, though, if Gould's performances were true to the
spirit of the compositions. I ask myself, "If J.S. Bach was
sitting in the control room at the 30th Street studio while Gould
was being taped, would he be picking the performance apart
angrily or would Bach been sitting there digging the music, head
bobbing, shouting 'Yeah, Yeah!,'" like the tuned-in listeners at
a bebop gig. And in my mind's eye, I suspect the second vision.

When Gould was good, he was very, very good. When he was bad, he
was horrid. He had good days and bad days; good years and bad
ones. I have a promotional interview with his producer in which
he said that he renounced the renditons of his early records (the
reasons have been repeated and are well-known). I do enjoy the
good ones very, very much. Gould had an innate understanding of
the need for keeping steady tempos, which convey the hypnotic
quality that's built into so much of Bach's work. His recordings
were played and edited to build the listener's experience from
beginning to end of each movement; we're carried upon a journey.
Most concert pianists and many modern "historically-accurate"
conductors are deaf to this -- they speed up and slow down
constantly, putting their own "emotions" into it and wrenching
the listener away from what the composer wrote. In doing a
rhythmic analysis of Bach's work while in college, I was
impressed with the with the subtle and patient way that Bach
introduces changes into his lines. The music takes its time (you
may notice that), builds and morphs, gradually. It takes a
special performer to bring this out; one dedicated to the spirit
of the music and not just his own ego.

One great thing about music is that there's so much to it that
there's always something else to learn. I will never know all the
answers, and that's just fine with me!

Richard

"Franco Del Principe" wrote in
message ...
| Dick Pierce wrote:
|
| snip
|
| Richard,
|
| I've been following this thread a bit and found it very
| interesting. I must admit that I learned quite a bit from
| your broad knowledge.
|

Thank you.
Dick Pierce, too, has been providing a different perspective, I
feel that it's as valid as mine, although we're coming from
completely different vantage points. I do, though, agree with his
assessments of the older factory instruments -- someone had to
come first in the 20th Century. After studying performance
practice at two conservatories, and especially having been both a
performer and an instrument maintainer (and an audio person,
too), my view is that there is no one right way to build
instruments and no single right way to reproduce an "authentic"
performance. For example, if given our modern plastics and
metalurgy, what kinds of harpsichords would the builders of the
past have made today?

I'm a woodwind player. I have four plastic recorders built by
three different builders. Two of them were molded of phenolic and
finished by hand; the other two are stright out of their
injection molds. They are all excellent; listening to me play,
you'd think that the instruments were made of wood. Their molds
were carefully made.

There are scholars who can point the way from limited historic
examples; we do enlightened groping, and hope that in the process
that we can share a profound musical experience with our
listeners. There are performers whose renditions make sublime
musical sense to me; others who make sound supported by
scholarship that's uninspired, repetitive, predictable, and
boring. These days, musicians (I hope) render
"historically-informed" performances, not "historically dictated"
versions.

Until Mr. Pierce replied to my post, I'd forgotten about how the
harpsichord world has denizens who are fiercely loyal to one or
another builder or school of construction. each convinced that he
knows the correct answers and that everyone else is wrong. I was
familiar with the excellent work of the Boston builders
(including the incredible woodwind artisan Friedrich von Heune).
However, being based in New York, I only saw the Hubbard and Dowd
harpsichords that Dick mentions occasionally. My experience
included a few brands other than the ones I mentioned. Most of
those were really unsuited to everyday use, since they were
constantly falling apart.

| Just out of curiosity:
|
| Do you happen to know what type of harpsichord Keith Jarret
| plays "Bach: The Goldberg Variations, ECM" on and how it is
| tempered?

I'm sorry; haven't heard the recording. One thing that I must
mention is that, like it or not, the equal-temperment system is
the modern standard. Musicians are used to it, and when playing
in an ensemble of diverse instruments, all players will attempt
to adhere to a common standard. In other words, chances are that
Jarret's instrument was tuned in modern fashion.

How do you like his play? It sure is completely
| different from Glenn Gould's on piano...
|

I haven't heard it, Franco.
Since I sometimes worked at the Columbia 30th Street studio, I
was able to get a few looks at the two pianos that Gould kept
there. They were custom Steinways that were modified to his
requirements. The patented Steinway piano action resists the
player; working against that resistance gives the performer the
ability to achieve more subtle gradations than with other (not
all) instruments. Gould went one step further; his actions were
raised closer to the strings. This reduced the maximum loudness
of the instrument, but permitted even further subtlety in the
piano-to-medium range. In order to play loud on his pianos, Gould
had to pound like hell. That's how Gould wanted it. He was able
to work with those actions to produce Bach fugues in which the
listener can pick out the different voices and follow them with
the mind, the voices having different colorations and emphasis.

By comparison, most other concert pianists can't even comprehend
the lower end of the piano's dynamic range; their playing is
almost all Forte through Fortissimo, with occasional quiet
moments to set off the bombast. It hurts my ears as well as my
sensibility.

Of course, the piano had just begun to exist in Bach's waning
years. So Gould's renditions on the piano are not authentic. I
ask myself, though, if Gould's performances were true to the
spirit of the compositions. I ask myself, "If J.S. Bach was
sitting in the control room at the 30th Street studio while Gould
was being taped, would he be picking the performance apart
angrily or would Bach been sitting there digging the music, head
bobbing, shouting 'Yeah, Yeah!,'" like the tuned-in listeners at
a bebop gig. And in my mind's eye, I suspect the second vision.

When Gould was good, he was very, very good. When he was bad, he
was horrid. He had good days and bad days; good years and bad
ones. I have a promotional interview with his producer in which
he said that he renounced the renditons of his early records (the
reasons have been repeated and are well-known). I do enjoy the
good ones very, very much. Gould had an innate understanding of
the need for keeping steady tempos, which convey the hypnotic
quality that's built into so much of Bach's work. His recordings
were played and edited to build the listener's experience from
beginning to end of each movement; we're carried upon a journey.
Most concert pianists and many modern "historically-accurate"
conductors are deaf to this -- they speed up and slow down
constantly, putting their own "emotions" into it and wrenching
the listener away from what the composer wrote. In doing a
rhythmic analysis of Bach's work while in college, I was
impressed with the with the subtle and patient way that Bach
introduces changes into his lines. The music takes its time (you
may notice that), builds and morphs, gradually. It takes a
special performer to bring this out; one dedicated to the spirit
of the music and not just his own ego.

One great thing about music is that there's so much to it that
there's always something else to learn. I will never know all the
answers, and that's just fine with me!

Richard

"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
om...
| "Richard Steinfeld" wrote in
message ...
|
| I was the leading harpsichord tuner in New York for a few
years;
| you've heard my work. Think of your garden-variety two-manual
| instrument with two sets of 8' strings, one set of 4'
strings,
| one set of 16 foot. I worked on them fairly often, especially
| Neuperts. Or, briefly, the high-tension aviation-age Pleyels
| beloved by Wanda Landowska and Rafael Puyana.
|
| If you're primary work was on Neuperts and Pleyels then, no, I
| have not heard your work.
|

Your exposure to recorded music must be rather limited, then.
Please re-read my post. I said "briefly" about the Pleyels. I
worked at one time or another on different brands of instruments,
some from builders who came and went. Are you aware that there
were many European harpsichordists who liked playing on Neuperts?
Did they know something that perhaps you don't?

If you are alive in the United States, you have heard my work.
You may not have liked the music in which it was used, but you've
heard it. In fact, I don't like the music of much of where it was
used. At some time, perhaps when forced to endure top-40 drivel
in a supermarket, or "environmental music" in an elevator. Or
when you once watched The Voice of Firestone years ago, or run
screaming away (as I once did -- from the control room) from The
Mitch Miller Show. Man, I tell you, I'm everywhere! The real-life
world of working musicians has many facets; Mozart wrote dinner
music, you know. So did Telemann. You've also heard me on
Nonesuch, you've heard me on Musical Heritage Society.

Because I had to take whatever instruments that were thrown at me
in the course of my daily work, I had the opportunity to be
exposed to the concepts of a range of different builders. In
fact, I may have had more experience with a wider range of
instruments than anyone else in the country -- just think about
all the different kinds of harpsichords that could wind up in New
York City. So, I had the opportunity to think of the good and bad
points of each of them (if given enough time). Many of these
harpsichords (and clavichords) were transitional designs and
experiments -- builders who came and went. Some were unmusical.
But there was a lot of variety of approach. Some simply could not
withstand New York's traditional steam heat. And some just fell
apart all by themselves (Mendler-Shramm (sp?) comes to mind).

| Neuperts and Pleyels are NOT "garden variety two-manual
| instruments." Harpsichords with the disposition of 16'+8' on
| the lower manual and 8'+4' on the upper manual are NOT "garden
| variety two-manual instruments."
|

Neuperts were very commonly used for recording in Europe, weren't
they?
Perhaps people in Boston only listen to recordings made in
Boston?

| They are in fact, very unusual in the harpsichord world for a
| variety of reasons. Neither are based on any real historical
| artifacts, most especially the Pleyel, which is a piano in
every
| respect but the action.

I agree. I don't like them. On the release record of a
Mercury/Philips session I worked on, the harpsichords sound like
pipe organs! Although this was partially due to the microphone
technique, it's also due to the weirdness of the instruments. But
the Pleyels were pioneering harpsichords in the 20th Century;
someone had to come first (early music had been almost totally
forgotten before 1950).

Microphone technique (hey, we're talking on rec.audio.tech,
remember?) can have a profound effect on how a harpsichord comes
out of the speakers. Some recording engineers don't know how to
get it right. I recall that one of your Boston record companies,
a while back, made a point of using custom-rebuilt old RCA ribbon
microphones just to get the harpsichord spot-on (and they did).
But, let's say, with a condenser microphone, set for a spot
pattern, from an effective pickup point of perhaps a foot above
the strings, by god, the Pleyel sounds like a bloody organ. And
that's not cool!

Event the Neupert so-called "Bach" model
| is a ******* child, built into a heavy case, strung heavily,
with
| a disposition that has no historical precendent whatsoever and
is,
| in fact, based on a single instrument of dubious lineage,
article
| 316 from the Staatliche Sammlung fur Musikinstrumente at the
Scloss
| Charlottenburg in Berlin. Hubbard (Three Centuries of
Harpsichord
| Making, Harvard University Press 1967) pretty thoroughly
demolishes
| the case that the dispostion of this instrument is original,
pointing
| our numerous and obvious modifications happening long after the
| instrument left the hands of the maker, and, likely, long after
| Bach and any other person had left this earth.
|

| That being said, I am not at all surprised by your disdain for
| the sound of such instruments "coupled up." They are , at best,
| bad caricatures of harpsichords at unison pitch with their
| innappropriate scaling, excessively heavy stringing and
construction,
| thick, over-braced piano-style soundboards, their complex but
| ineffectual mechanical contrivances and all the rest. Now, add
| the 4' and 16', and they go from lousy to intolerably awful.
|

They hurt my ears when used this way. They sound mechanical. The
music does not breathe. I just never got off on the sound of
parallel octaves; the sound is ugly to me. Players who couple
everything up this way usually play insensitively, too. Notice
that I'm not using the term "coupled" the "correct" way, about
having struts pushing keys from one keyboard to the other. I mean
coupled in the sense of all simultaneously-plucked strings,
regardless of how it's accomplished.

| These instruments should suffer the fate that befell the
instruments
| in the Palace of Versais in the early 19th century: they should
be
| broken down for firewood (that woudln't work with a Pleyel:
these
| ARE pianos, complete with enormous cast-iron frames and
behemoth
| piano cases).
|

Well, perhaps they can be useful for practice instruments for
someone. Erroll Garner did a couple of delightful jazz cuts on a
harpsichord of unmentioned origin, probably something sitting in
the studio, maybe even the dreadful English instrument used on
Sing Along with Mitch. One of the tunes has a marvelous fantasy
fugue. Somebody can do something with an instrument, no matter
how unauthentic.


| In the recording world, in the typical studio situation, the
| emphasis is on practicality rather than historical accuracy.
| Although I set up instruments for people like Fernando
Valente,
| Sylvia Kind, the NY Philharmonic, Hague Philharmonic, chamber
| music recordings, etc., etc., most of my bread-and-butter was
| with Zuckermann Harpsichords and especially Caroll Instrument
| Rental Service. And you wanna know what most of the
recordings
| were that used harpsichords? They were TV commercials and
top-40
| records. Your mileage may vary.
|
| My friend, I would suggest that the recording world of the
likes
| of the NY Phiharmonic a generation ago was FAR from
representative
| of the state of the harpsichord world.

Picky, picky. That's one of those condescending "my friends," no?
Most of my work did not involve authenticity of either
applications or instruments. And I rarely worked for the NY
Philharmonic. Frankly, I don't see how this orchestra would have
been capable of rendering an authentic baroque performance at any
time in its history, considering the orientation of its members.
I suspect that you are arguing with me about apples vs. oranges.
Our experiences have been very different. Perhaps our ideals
about historic music are different, too.

At least in the Boston area
| and elsewhere, there was a far higher level of enlightenment
and
| appreciation of the true art and history of harpsichord. We're
| talking about performers and scholars like Ralph Kirkpatrick,
| Kenneth Gilbert, Leonhardt, Gibbons and many others who shunned
the
| technically marvelous but musically disasterous heavy-weight
| plucking-pianos like Neupert and Pleyel, prefering instead far
more
| historically accurate and appropriate, FAR better sounding
examples
| from Hubbard, Dowd and many others.

Beg pardon, but Kirkpatrick was one of the worst music butchers
I've ever heard. Leohardt bores the hell out of me; some people
swear by him, but to me, he's as exressive as a typewriter. I'm
interested in musical sense, cohesiveness, expressiveness (within
context). There's a point at which my musician's bull**** antenna
begins to question whether the research is, indeed, correct, and
especially, whether it should be a point for departure. For
example, Tartini's Treatise on Ornamentation seems to me a
textbook in how to play methodically, predictably, and boringly.
You follow these rules precisely and you're going to put your
audience to sleep. So, we can read what he wrote as a "norm" and
then do what we suspect a musical artist would have done at that
time.

My outlook is that it is very good to be historically informed,
not historically rigid. There are different ways to play early
music; my guide is whether the performance makes sense. And
sometimes, whether the music itself makes sense. We've now got a
bunch of people in the world playing Bach cantatas so fast that
the singers can hardly take breaths and so fast that the
instrumentalists can't quite keep together due to being barely
able to make the notes. Just listen to the recordings: it's all
there. The conductors lurch their tempos, their dynamics heave
and roll like an old Studebaker with worn shock absorbers.

The practitioners all claim to be faithful to extensive
historical research and scholarship. In other words, performers
during the 18th Century all heaved and rolled, sped up and slowed
down constantly, always put swells on long notes, and most
importantly, played fast as hell all the time. This is
authenticity? Note: tempos have sped up in almost all classical
music since the early 1970s.

Not every baroque composer was a genius; not every 18th Century
harpsichord builder made great artist-grade instruments; just
because an instrument was "authentic" doesn't mean that the
musicians liked playing on it. Let's face it; some historic
builders made junk, just like cheap junky band instruments have
been made in Elkhart, Indiana. Think about how many American
pianos were made from commercial component assembles thrown
together in a locally-made cabinet. Just like some stereo
products or the original IBM PC.

Having worked with the products of a number of different
builders, I would ask myself if the instrument made sense (was it
at home with itself), was it reliable, and if it was good at
anything. Let me illustrate. I began with Zuckermann, the
harpsichord kit popularizer. His harpsichord (first, long-running
model) was made to a certain Italian model (of some sort). It
wasn't good for very much in the world of the harpsichord
recitalist. But I cannot think of any instrument better suited to
Monteverdi continuo. With enough experience, one begins to
recognize that one cannot make great pronouncements; there are
always exceptions. I've even heard someone play great accordian.
I've heard great tuba playing (democratic Hindemith gives
everyone good things to do).

|
| As an example of the absurdity of instruments like the Pleyel,
| Italian 2x8' instruments, a common continuo instrument, weigh
| less than the bench for an instrument like a Pleyel, and had
| case walls that were thinner than the soundboard of such an
| instrument, and soundboards that were thinner still. Such
| instruments, being of such lightweight construction and having
| the commensurate light stringing with no over-spun wire, were
| brighter, far louder, more responsive, blended better and more
| cohesive then the musical ******* children of some misguided
| industrial-mechanical program from Neupert and Pleyel.
|

Yeah, yeah, I know. Pleyel is a crazy piece of aircraft. It's a
slam-dunk that without a steel frame (a product of the late 19th
& 20th centuries -- think Bessemer, Pittsburgh), a Pleyel just
could not exist. And this dictates lighter strings under low
tension (so as to not buckle the wood). Not the same sound. The
Neuperts were of wood.

But whether it's authentic or not, can someone not make good
Baroque music on it? I don't know. I haven't heard it enough in
that context. I can say that I don't like the instrument, and
yes, it is a "piano" with a steel frame, coarse and fine tuning
pins (!), an incredible range and weird sound. But someday, I may
hear someone playing great baroque music on one. The sound won't
be authentic, but will it be decent on the music? Look; the Piano
didn't exist for most of Bach's life, but at certain times, Glenn
Gould rendered the very essence of Bach's intentions upon one
(and Gould's piano was not even an "authentic" Steinway). If
present in the control room at Columbia's 30th Street studio, do
you think that Bach would have run out screaming, "How dare you!
That's not authentic! I wrote this composition to be played
exclusively on a (insert builder name here) harpsichord, not that
infernal Piano *******!?"
Or would he have said to Gould, "That was wonderful; that's
exactly what I had in mind. I've never heard my keyboard music
played so perfectly.?"

And a Neupert is not a Pleyel.
And all Neuperts are not built the same way. I've personally
handled at least two completely different mechanical designs that
had nothing whatsoever in common with each other.

| The largest instrument I now have, a two-manual 2x8', 1x4'
based
| on the 1750 Taskin weighs all of 96 pounds, and ALL the strings
| on the instrument weigh less than a single bass string on a
Pleyel.
| Coupling the 4' on that instrument results in a cohesive, full,
| articulate sound, nothing like the disjointed, schizophrenic
buzz
| and ruslte of a Neupert.
|

I do believe you about your instrument; it must be great to play
it, and very satisfying. What music sounds perfect on it?

But even beyond what I've already said, all Neuperts are not the
same. For example, are you aware that Neupert made/makes three
different versions of each model, depending on where in the world
it will be used, in order to be stable in the climate? The
tropical version can't take the weather in Boston.

| Now, to be fair, more contemporary Neuperts have migrated more
| towards what is now the real mainstream of harpsichord
practice,
| but they did so quite reluctantly, dragged kicking and
screaming
| into musical propriety by a market that simply refused to buy
any
| more of their crap.
|

I suspect that they did indeed sell them. Like McDonald's
hamburgers, perhaps. A lot of people buy harpsichords with no
care for authenticity. They just want to play arond with one, or
impress their friends. Such a Neupert is cheaper for that purpose
than a Dowd. I had a few such customers. They'll buy ordinary
Neuperts right off the rack. Other people would buy a Neupert as
their first harpsichord because they were affordable. Perhaps
later, if they had gotten serious about playing harpsichord,
they'd trade it in on a more "serious" artisan-built instrument.

| With this type of madness,
| one can gain an appreciation for plastic jack guides, uniform
| plastic quills, aluminum mechanicals, etc.: they're reliable.
| When one is playing rapid repeated notes in Scarlatti, does
one
| get better musical service from natural frayed quills that'll
| hang on the strings or from self-lubricating hard plastic?
Will
| the player's artistry be better served by having to spend
hours
| every week futzing with the harpsichord or from practicing
the
| music?
|
| And interesting veiwpoint, as the most problematic harpsichord
I EVER
| worked on was a Neupert Bach model:

Which version of the Bach model? Was it the mass-produced version
or the artist version? Had it been properly maintained? Were the
jack assemblies worn out because nobody ever cleaned them?

save on older Zuckerman kit that
| had a wrestplank glue joint fail,

Was the Zuckermann made by Zuckermann or was it made by a
drunkard from a kit?

I have NEVER encountered an instrument
| until the Neupert that had such abysmal reliability. Their
fancy-dancy
| aluminum jacks were useless.
|

Useless?

What if I made a pronouncement that Dowd harpsichords were junk
based on one experience with one that had been moisture-damaged
and had never been maintained?

Fernando Valente complimented my work after I set up an ordinary
Neupert for him to play on. And not just once but every week, and
different instruments (whatever we had in the store). The
instruments performed flawlessly during his recitals. As you may
recall, Valente was the machine-gunner of Scarlatti; this music
is rife with rapid-fire, high-speed repeated notes. Scarlatti, in
his hands, required an exceptionally-reliable mechanism capable
of fast movement. He got it from various Neuperts and he got it
from me. I don't know of any music that's a better test of
mechanical repetition than Scarlatti. Are we living on the same
planet?

Like any other instrument, the Neuperts could require adjustment,
and people could abuse them. The aluminum/plastic assemblies were
precise. They could be fouled by dirt and air pollution. Perhaps
the instrument you examined was not in the best of health, and
you've generalized from an anomaly. One problem that I found was
that the jacks could lock up in their sleeves at about 96 degrees
F. I found the instruments to be cost-effective and mostly quite
reliable, as did Valente. Valente, however, normally recorded
with his John Challis instrument. But he loved doing the Neupert
demonstration recitals.


| And your comment is interesting in light of my own and many
other's
| experience with instruments from the likes of Hubbard and Dowd
and
| others. I have NONE of the problems you speak, and do NOT spend
| hours per week, nor have I ever, "futzing" with the instrument.
|

There are more builders in the world than Hubbard and Dowd. There
are other cities in the world than Boston. Hubbard and Dowd
instruments are really good, but they may not fare as well in
certain other climates. In my experience, the average
harpsichordist must spend an inordinate amount of time adusting
and tuning their instruments, alhough not quite as much time as
an oboist must spend upon oboe reeds.

Here in the San Francisco area, we have a myriad of
microclimates. Further, our temperature and humidity can vary
widely during the course of a single day. We have one or more
excellent harpsichord builders such as John Phillips (there's a
world beyond Boston). Many authentic harpsichords would need to
be tuned twice per day in this climate. One must make certain
deviations in the service of music.


| The entire world of historic performance always involves
| tradeoffs. I favor enlightened distinctions. As a guide, I
ask
| myself, "If Bach came here today and heard our modern
| instruments, what would he have preferred? What would have
been
| the best tools to serve his music?"
|
| He'd probably scoff at the Pleyel, show bemusement at
Landowska's
| style, and find a good madern reproduction to be VERY reliable.
|

I'm curious about the materials in the modern instruments you're
talking about. I don't know if he'd scoff at the Pleyel, although
I don't think he'd find the sound familiar. Like I said earlier,
I don't like them. For one thing, I find them hell to tune --
it's hard to hear what I'm doing. Up close, the instruments
sounded rather dull and indistinct to me. They sure are strange.


| | The largest common instruments, from then and now, are two
| manual
| | instruments with three sets of strings. The lower manual
plays
| two
| | strings, on sounding at unisin, the other sounding at an
| octave,
| | while the upper manual plays the second unison choir. The
ONLY
| | "coupling up" such instruments are capable of is coupling
the
| | uppoer manual to the lower. This does not couple up or down
an
| | octave, but rather at unison, so you have the capability of
| playing
| | the 2 unison choirs together, or adding the octave choir to
the
| | unison.
| |
|
| I'd actually prefer such an instrument. I've been out of this
for
| a long time, so things change. The larger Neuperts I recall
we
| top manual -- 8' + 4', lower manual -- 8' + 16'
| For the bystander, let me explain that Neupert was (is?) the
| foremost manufacturer of mass-produced harpsichords.
|
| No, they were NOT the "foremost," they were only the largest.

????
My emphasis was on "mass-produced."

They
| might be considered the MacDonalds of harpsichords. This, in
many
| eyes, is NOT a virtue.
|

????
The instruments in their catalog are, indeed, mass produced.
Steinway makes some pretty mediocre pianos, too (you should hear
the tuners in New York who used to work at Steinway complain
about the pianos). But there's a different realm of Neuperts that
are made for artist work; many of these use a conventional flat
jack design. This is like Steinway themselves, who keep a group
of artist instruments that are used for recording and concerts.
These are indeed excellent pianos. However, unlike Steinway, the
artist Neuperts can be purchased on special order by anyone. But
you've got to know about them; they aren't flipped out like
burgers.


| And Neupert had, decades ago, lost its market supremecy, simply
| trampled into the dust by their own refusal to adapt to what
the
| market wanted. Instead, they tried to continue with selling the
| crap they did: silly caricatures of harpsichords, not
harpsichords.
|
| These were
| based upon certain historical models,
|
| Now, they were not, as Hubbard quite soundly demonstrated
nearly 40
| years ago.
|

Based, not exact. The basis is very loose. The names of the
models are just names, the same way that Blaupunkt car radios are
named for cities.

| but were not authentic
| reproductions. The firm also made custom instruments to
| historical configurations. These custom instruments, however,
| still made use of modern mechanism materials.
|
| And, until Huepert really changed their tune in the late 1970's
they
| were dismal failures in a market increasingly dominated by more
| knowledgeable performers.
|
| | Sorry, but you're ignoring the entire class of authentic
| Baroque
| | instruments that include the octave (4') choir. Included in
| that
| | class are most double manual instruments of the era, from
| France,
| | Flanders, Germany and England.
| |
|
| Now that we're talking shop, let me continue. What bugs me is
the
| harpsichordist who just couples up the instrument and plays
| flat-out that way from beginning to the end of the piece --
| there's no contrast in the sound. A fine artist of the time,
I'd
| hope, would engage the 4' for occasional color or emphasis.
Since
| the harpsichord cannot gradate the intensity of the pluck, I
see
| one of the tools in the harpsichordist's bag of tricks being
to
| convey the -impression- of dynamic changes through the art of
| phrasing, subtle (really subtle) metric changes, etc.
|
| This engaging and disengaging of stops is almost entirely a
modern
| artifact resulting from the incorporation of stop-changing
pedals,
| something which NEVER existed on historical instruments. You
will
| find, however, historical precedent in mirroring or echoing
sections
| on two keyboards, for example, playing the lower keyboard
coupled
| gives 2x8, or 2x8+2x4, while the upper manual gives simply 1x8.
|

Agreed.

| |
| | Please, I REALLY hope you are not equating
"well-temperement"
| with
| | "equal-temperment." They are most decidely NOT the same
thing,
| as
| | bach and many before and since nknew full well.
| |
|
| Please explain.
|
| It's very simple: "equal temperement" is one thing," "well
temperment"
| is something else altogether.
|
| Equal temperment simply treats every half step identically, all
| having a ratio of 2^(1/12). Period. End of discussion. It's
| mathematically "perfect" as far as evenly dividing the octave
| geometrically across 12 intervals. It results in nearly pure
5ths,
| and awful sounding 3rds, but ALL fifths are nearly pure, and
ALL
| 3rds are equally awful. It allows free transposition to any
key,
| with the assurance that things will be equally
mediocre-sounding
| no matter how far you transpose. There is exactly one and only
one
| variety of equal temperement.
|
| There are a number of well-temperments, but, in general, they
sacrifice
| a little bit on the purity of the fifths and gain an enormous
advantage
| in better consonance of the thirds. They do NOT allow free and
arbitrary
| transpositions, all keys do NOT have identical intervals, and
all half-
| steps are NOT the same. But unlike true just intonations, all
keys
| are plausible, and distant modulations are not disasterous.
|

We may be getting too far afield for the readers in this NG.
Nonetheless, the tuning does indeed affect the character of the
music and how it's perceived.

| A more rigorous explanation can be found in texts ranging
anywhere
| from Mersenne, Aron, Werkmeister, Kirnberger and other older
sources
| through Helmholtz (The Sensation of Tone) through to more
modern
| texts like Barbour and Fespermann.

I enjoyed reading Sensations of Tone very much when I was a
student. The elaborations by the translator were especially good.
I felt that the quality of Helmolz's research was amazing,
considering that he had to invent mechanical methods to test his
theories -- there were no oscilloscopes. I once had a fantastic
conversation about Helmholz with my optometrist, who had read his
book on sight and optics, and had no idea that Helmholz had
worked in the arena of sound!

Richard

"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
om...
| "Richard Steinfeld" wrote in
message ...
|
| I was the leading harpsichord tuner in New York for a few
years;
| you've heard my work. Think of your garden-variety two-manual
| instrument with two sets of 8' strings, one set of 4'
strings,
| one set of 16 foot. I worked on them fairly often, especially
| Neuperts. Or, briefly, the high-tension aviation-age Pleyels
| beloved by Wanda Landowska and Rafael Puyana.
|
| If you're primary work was on Neuperts and Pleyels then, no, I
| have not heard your work.
|

Your exposure to recorded music must be rather limited, then.
Please re-read my post. I said "briefly" about the Pleyels. I
worked at one time or another on different brands of instruments,
some from builders who came and went. Are you aware that there
were many European harpsichordists who liked playing on Neuperts?
Did they know something that perhaps you don't?

If you are alive in the United States, you have heard my work.
You may not have liked the music in which it was used, but you've
heard it. In fact, I don't like the music of much of where it was
used. At some time, perhaps when forced to endure top-40 drivel
in a supermarket, or "environmental music" in an elevator. Or
when you once watched The Voice of Firestone years ago, or run
screaming away (as I once did -- from the control room) from The
Mitch Miller Show. Man, I tell you, I'm everywhere! The real-life
world of working musicians has many facets; Mozart wrote dinner
music, you know. So did Telemann. You've also heard me on
Nonesuch, you've heard me on Musical Heritage Society.

Because I had to take whatever instruments that were thrown at me
in the course of my daily work, I had the opportunity to be
exposed to the concepts of a range of different builders. In
fact, I may have had more experience with a wider range of
instruments than anyone else in the country -- just think about
all the different kinds of harpsichords that could wind up in New
York City. So, I had the opportunity to think of the good and bad
points of each of them (if given enough time). Many of these
harpsichords (and clavichords) were transitional designs and
experiments -- builders who came and went. Some were unmusical.
But there was a lot of variety of approach. Some simply could not
withstand New York's traditional steam heat. And some just fell
apart all by themselves (Mendler-Shramm (sp?) comes to mind).

| Neuperts and Pleyels are NOT "garden variety two-manual
| instruments." Harpsichords with the disposition of 16'+8' on
| the lower manual and 8'+4' on the upper manual are NOT "garden
| variety two-manual instruments."
|

Neuperts were very commonly used for recording in Europe, weren't
they?
Perhaps people in Boston only listen to recordings made in
Boston?

| They are in fact, very unusual in the harpsichord world for a
| variety of reasons. Neither are based on any real historical
| artifacts, most especially the Pleyel, which is a piano in
every
| respect but the action.

I agree. I don't like them. On the release record of a
Mercury/Philips session I worked on, the harpsichords sound like
pipe organs! Although this was partially due to the microphone
technique, it's also due to the weirdness of the instruments. But
the Pleyels were pioneering harpsichords in the 20th Century;
someone had to come first (early music had been almost totally
forgotten before 1950).

Microphone technique (hey, we're talking on rec.audio.tech,
remember?) can have a profound effect on how a harpsichord comes
out of the speakers. Some recording engineers don't know how to
get it right. I recall that one of your Boston record companies,
a while back, made a point of using custom-rebuilt old RCA ribbon
microphones just to get the harpsichord spot-on (and they did).
But, let's say, with a condenser microphone, set for a spot
pattern, from an effective pickup point of perhaps a foot above
the strings, by god, the Pleyel sounds like a bloody organ. And
that's not cool!

Event the Neupert so-called "Bach" model
| is a ******* child, built into a heavy case, strung heavily,
with
| a disposition that has no historical precendent whatsoever and
is,
| in fact, based on a single instrument of dubious lineage,
article
| 316 from the Staatliche Sammlung fur Musikinstrumente at the
Scloss
| Charlottenburg in Berlin. Hubbard (Three Centuries of
Harpsichord
| Making, Harvard University Press 1967) pretty thoroughly
demolishes
| the case that the dispostion of this instrument is original,
pointing
| our numerous and obvious modifications happening long after the
| instrument left the hands of the maker, and, likely, long after
| Bach and any other person had left this earth.
|

| That being said, I am not at all surprised by your disdain for
| the sound of such instruments "coupled up." They are , at best,
| bad caricatures of harpsichords at unison pitch with their
| innappropriate scaling, excessively heavy stringing and
construction,
| thick, over-braced piano-style soundboards, their complex but
| ineffectual mechanical contrivances and all the rest. Now, add
| the 4' and 16', and they go from lousy to intolerably awful.
|

They hurt my ears when used this way. They sound mechanical. The
music does not breathe. I just never got off on the sound of
parallel octaves; the sound is ugly to me. Players who couple
everything up this way usually play insensitively, too. Notice
that I'm not using the term "coupled" the "correct" way, about
having struts pushing keys from one keyboard to the other. I mean
coupled in the sense of all simultaneously-plucked strings,
regardless of how it's accomplished.

| These instruments should suffer the fate that befell the
instruments
| in the Palace of Versais in the early 19th century: they should
be
| broken down for firewood (that woudln't work with a Pleyel:
these
| ARE pianos, complete with enormous cast-iron frames and
behemoth
| piano cases).
|

Well, perhaps they can be useful for practice instruments for
someone. Erroll Garner did a couple of delightful jazz cuts on a
harpsichord of unmentioned origin, probably something sitting in
the studio, maybe even the dreadful English instrument used on
Sing Along with Mitch. One of the tunes has a marvelous fantasy
fugue. Somebody can do something with an instrument, no matter
how unauthentic.


| In the recording world, in the typical studio situation, the
| emphasis is on practicality rather than historical accuracy.
| Although I set up instruments for people like Fernando
Valente,
| Sylvia Kind, the NY Philharmonic, Hague Philharmonic, chamber
| music recordings, etc., etc., most of my bread-and-butter was
| with Zuckermann Harpsichords and especially Caroll Instrument
| Rental Service. And you wanna know what most of the
recordings
| were that used harpsichords? They were TV commercials and
top-40
| records. Your mileage may vary.
|
| My friend, I would suggest that the recording world of the
likes
| of the NY Phiharmonic a generation ago was FAR from
representative
| of the state of the harpsichord world.

Picky, picky. That's one of those condescending "my friends," no?
Most of my work did not involve authenticity of either
applications or instruments. And I rarely worked for the NY
Philharmonic. Frankly, I don't see how this orchestra would have
been capable of rendering an authentic baroque performance at any
time in its history, considering the orientation of its members.
I suspect that you are arguing with me about apples vs. oranges.
Our experiences have been very different. Perhaps our ideals
about historic music are different, too.

At least in the Boston area
| and elsewhere, there was a far higher level of enlightenment
and
| appreciation of the true art and history of harpsichord. We're
| talking about performers and scholars like Ralph Kirkpatrick,
| Kenneth Gilbert, Leonhardt, Gibbons and many others who shunned
the
| technically marvelous but musically disasterous heavy-weight
| plucking-pianos like Neupert and Pleyel, prefering instead far
more
| historically accurate and appropriate, FAR better sounding
examples
| from Hubbard, Dowd and many others.

Beg pardon, but Kirkpatrick was one of the worst music butchers
I've ever heard. Leohardt bores the hell out of me; some people
swear by him, but to me, he's as exressive as a typewriter. I'm
interested in musical sense, cohesiveness, expressiveness (within
context). There's a point at which my musician's bull**** antenna
begins to question whether the research is, indeed, correct, and
especially, whether it should be a point for departure. For
example, Tartini's Treatise on Ornamentation seems to me a
textbook in how to play methodically, predictably, and boringly.
You follow these rules precisely and you're going to put your
audience to sleep. So, we can read what he wrote as a "norm" and
then do what we suspect a musical artist would have done at that
time.

My outlook is that it is very good to be historically informed,
not historically rigid. There are different ways to play early
music; my guide is whether the performance makes sense. And
sometimes, whether the music itself makes sense. We've now got a
bunch of people in the world playing Bach cantatas so fast that
the singers can hardly take breaths and so fast that the
instrumentalists can't quite keep together due to being barely
able to make the notes. Just listen to the recordings: it's all
there. The conductors lurch their tempos, their dynamics heave
and roll like an old Studebaker with worn shock absorbers.

The practitioners all claim to be faithful to extensive
historical research and scholarship. In other words, performers
during the 18th Century all heaved and rolled, sped up and slowed
down constantly, always put swells on long notes, and most
importantly, played fast as hell all the time. This is
authenticity? Note: tempos have sped up in almost all classical
music since the early 1970s.

Not every baroque composer was a genius; not every 18th Century
harpsichord builder made great artist-grade instruments; just
because an instrument was "authentic" doesn't mean that the
musicians liked playing on it. Let's face it; some historic
builders made junk, just like cheap junky band instruments have
been made in Elkhart, Indiana. Think about how many American
pianos were made from commercial component assembles thrown
together in a locally-made cabinet. Just like some stereo
products or the original IBM PC.

Having worked with the products of a number of different
builders, I would ask myself if the instrument made sense (was it
at home with itself), was it reliable, and if it was good at
anything. Let me illustrate. I began with Zuckermann, the
harpsichord kit popularizer. His harpsichord (first, long-running
model) was made to a certain Italian model (of some sort). It
wasn't good for very much in the world of the harpsichord
recitalist. But I cannot think of any instrument better suited to
Monteverdi continuo. With enough experience, one begins to
recognize that one cannot make great pronouncements; there are
always exceptions. I've even heard someone play great accordian.
I've heard great tuba playing (democratic Hindemith gives
everyone good things to do).

|
| As an example of the absurdity of instruments like the Pleyel,
| Italian 2x8' instruments, a common continuo instrument, weigh
| less than the bench for an instrument like a Pleyel, and had
| case walls that were thinner than the soundboard of such an
| instrument, and soundboards that were thinner still. Such
| instruments, being of such lightweight construction and having
| the commensurate light stringing with no over-spun wire, were
| brighter, far louder, more responsive, blended better and more
| cohesive then the musical ******* children of some misguided
| industrial-mechanical program from Neupert and Pleyel.
|

Yeah, yeah, I know. Pleyel is a crazy piece of aircraft. It's a
slam-dunk that without a steel frame (a product of the late 19th
& 20th centuries -- think Bessemer, Pittsburgh), a Pleyel just
could not exist. And this dictates lighter strings under low
tension (so as to not buckle the wood). Not the same sound. The
Neuperts were of wood.

But whether it's authentic or not, can someone not make good
Baroque music on it? I don't know. I haven't heard it enough in
that context. I can say that I don't like the instrument, and
yes, it is a "piano" with a steel frame, coarse and fine tuning
pins (!), an incredible range and weird sound. But someday, I may
hear someone playing great baroque music on one. The sound won't
be authentic, but will it be decent on the music? Look; the Piano
didn't exist for most of Bach's life, but at certain times, Glenn
Gould rendered the very essence of Bach's intentions upon one
(and Gould's piano was not even an "authentic" Steinway). If
present in the control room at Columbia's 30th Street studio, do
you think that Bach would have run out screaming, "How dare you!
That's not authentic! I wrote this composition to be played
exclusively on a (insert builder name here) harpsichord, not that
infernal Piano *******!?"
Or would he have said to Gould, "That was wonderful; that's
exactly what I had in mind. I've never heard my keyboard music
played so perfectly.?"

And a Neupert is not a Pleyel.
And all Neuperts are not built the same way. I've personally
handled at least two completely different mechanical designs that
had nothing whatsoever in common with each other.

| The largest instrument I now have, a two-manual 2x8', 1x4'
based
| on the 1750 Taskin weighs all of 96 pounds, and ALL the strings
| on the instrument weigh less than a single bass string on a
Pleyel.
| Coupling the 4' on that instrument results in a cohesive, full,
| articulate sound, nothing like the disjointed, schizophrenic
buzz
| and ruslte of a Neupert.
|

I do believe you about your instrument; it must be great to play
it, and very satisfying. What music sounds perfect on it?

But even beyond what I've already said, all Neuperts are not the
same. For example, are you aware that Neupert made/makes three
different versions of each model, depending on where in the world
it will be used, in order to be stable in the climate? The
tropical version can't take the weather in Boston.

| Now, to be fair, more contemporary Neuperts have migrated more
| towards what is now the real mainstream of harpsichord
practice,
| but they did so quite reluctantly, dragged kicking and
screaming
| into musical propriety by a market that simply refused to buy
any
| more of their crap.
|

I suspect that they did indeed sell them. Like McDonald's
hamburgers, perhaps. A lot of people buy harpsichords with no
care for authenticity. They just want to play arond with one, or
impress their friends. Such a Neupert is cheaper for that purpose
than a Dowd. I had a few such customers. They'll buy ordinary
Neuperts right off the rack. Other people would buy a Neupert as
their first harpsichord because they were affordable. Perhaps
later, if they had gotten serious about playing harpsichord,
they'd trade it in on a more "serious" artisan-built instrument.

| With this type of madness,
| one can gain an appreciation for plastic jack guides, uniform
| plastic quills, aluminum mechanicals, etc.: they're reliable.
| When one is playing rapid repeated notes in Scarlatti, does
one
| get better musical service from natural frayed quills that'll
| hang on the strings or from self-lubricating hard plastic?
Will
| the player's artistry be better served by having to spend
hours
| every week futzing with the harpsichord or from practicing
the
| music?
|
| And interesting veiwpoint, as the most problematic harpsichord
I EVER
| worked on was a Neupert Bach model:

Which version of the Bach model? Was it the mass-produced version
or the artist version? Had it been properly maintained? Were the
jack assemblies worn out because nobody ever cleaned them?

save on older Zuckerman kit that
| had a wrestplank glue joint fail,

Was the Zuckermann made by Zuckermann or was it made by a
drunkard from a kit?

I have NEVER encountered an instrument
| until the Neupert that had such abysmal reliability. Their
fancy-dancy
| aluminum jacks were useless.
|

Useless?

What if I made a pronouncement that Dowd harpsichords were junk
based on one experience with one that had been moisture-damaged
and had never been maintained?

Fernando Valente complimented my work after I set up an ordinary
Neupert for him to play on. And not just once but every week, and
different instruments (whatever we had in the store). The
instruments performed flawlessly during his recitals. As you may
recall, Valente was the machine-gunner of Scarlatti; this music
is rife with rapid-fire, high-speed repeated notes. Scarlatti, in
his hands, required an exceptionally-reliable mechanism capable
of fast movement. He got it from various Neuperts and he got it
from me. I don't know of any music that's a better test of
mechanical repetition than Scarlatti. Are we living on the same
planet?

Like any other instrument, the Neuperts could require adjustment,
and people could abuse them. The aluminum/plastic assemblies were
precise. They could be fouled by dirt and air pollution. Perhaps
the instrument you examined was not in the best of health, and
you've generalized from an anomaly. One problem that I found was
that the jacks could lock up in their sleeves at about 96 degrees
F. I found the instruments to be cost-effective and mostly quite
reliable, as did Valente. Valente, however, normally recorded
with his John Challis instrument. But he loved doing the Neupert
demonstration recitals.


| And your comment is interesting in light of my own and many
other's
| experience with instruments from the likes of Hubbard and Dowd
and
| others. I have NONE of the problems you speak, and do NOT spend
| hours per week, nor have I ever, "futzing" with the instrument.
|

There are more builders in the world than Hubbard and Dowd. There
are other cities in the world than Boston. Hubbard and Dowd
instruments are really good, but they may not fare as well in
certain other climates. In my experience, the average
harpsichordist must spend an inordinate amount of time adusting
and tuning their instruments, alhough not quite as much time as
an oboist must spend upon oboe reeds.

Here in the San Francisco area, we have a myriad of
microclimates. Further, our temperature and humidity can vary
widely during the course of a single day. We have one or more
excellent harpsichord builders such as John Phillips (there's a
world beyond Boston). Many authentic harpsichords would need to
be tuned twice per day in this climate. One must make certain
deviations in the service of music.


| The entire world of historic performance always involves
| tradeoffs. I favor enlightened distinctions. As a guide, I
ask
| myself, "If Bach came here today and heard our modern
| instruments, what would he have preferred? What would have
been
| the best tools to serve his music?"
|
| He'd probably scoff at the Pleyel, show bemusement at
Landowska's
| style, and find a good madern reproduction to be VERY reliable.
|

I'm curious about the materials in the modern instruments you're
talking about. I don't know if he'd scoff at the Pleyel, although
I don't think he'd find the sound familiar. Like I said earlier,
I don't like them. For one thing, I find them hell to tune --
it's hard to hear what I'm doing. Up close, the instruments
sounded rather dull and indistinct to me. They sure are strange.


| | The largest common instruments, from then and now, are two
| manual
| | instruments with three sets of strings. The lower manual
plays
| two
| | strings, on sounding at unisin, the other sounding at an
| octave,
| | while the upper manual plays the second unison choir. The
ONLY
| | "coupling up" such instruments are capable of is coupling
the
| | uppoer manual to the lower. This does not couple up or down
an
| | octave, but rather at unison, so you have the capability of
| playing
| | the 2 unison choirs together, or adding the octave choir to
the
| | unison.
| |
|
| I'd actually prefer such an instrument. I've been out of this
for
| a long time, so things change. The larger Neuperts I recall
we
| top manual -- 8' + 4', lower manual -- 8' + 16'
| For the bystander, let me explain that Neupert was (is?) the
| foremost manufacturer of mass-produced harpsichords.
|
| No, they were NOT the "foremost," they were only the largest.

????
My emphasis was on "mass-produced."

They
| might be considered the MacDonalds of harpsichords. This, in
many
| eyes, is NOT a virtue.
|

????
The instruments in their catalog are, indeed, mass produced.
Steinway makes some pretty mediocre pianos, too (you should hear
the tuners in New York who used to work at Steinway complain
about the pianos). But there's a different realm of Neuperts that
are made for artist work; many of these use a conventional flat
jack design. This is like Steinway themselves, who keep a group
of artist instruments that are used for recording and concerts.
These are indeed excellent pianos. However, unlike Steinway, the
artist Neuperts can be purchased on special order by anyone. But
you've got to know about them; they aren't flipped out like
burgers.


| And Neupert had, decades ago, lost its market supremecy, simply
| trampled into the dust by their own refusal to adapt to what
the
| market wanted. Instead, they tried to continue with selling the
| crap they did: silly caricatures of harpsichords, not
harpsichords.
|
| These were
| based upon certain historical models,
|
| Now, they were not, as Hubbard quite soundly demonstrated
nearly 40
| years ago.
|

Based, not exact. The basis is very loose. The names of the
models are just names, the same way that Blaupunkt car radios are
named for cities.

| but were not authentic
| reproductions. The firm also made custom instruments to
| historical configurations. These custom instruments, however,
| still made use of modern mechanism materials.
|
| And, until Huepert really changed their tune in the late 1970's
they
| were dismal failures in a market increasingly dominated by more
| knowledgeable performers.
|
| | Sorry, but you're ignoring the entire class of authentic
| Baroque
| | instruments that include the octave (4') choir. Included in
| that
| | class are most double manual instruments of the era, from
| France,
| | Flanders, Germany and England.
| |
|
| Now that we're talking shop, let me continue. What bugs me is
the
| harpsichordist who just couples up the instrument and plays
| flat-out that way from beginning to the end of the piece --
| there's no contrast in the sound. A fine artist of the time,
I'd
| hope, would engage the 4' for occasional color or emphasis.
Since
| the harpsichord cannot gradate the intensity of the pluck, I
see
| one of the tools in the harpsichordist's bag of tricks being
to
| convey the -impression- of dynamic changes through the art of
| phrasing, subtle (really subtle) metric changes, etc.
|
| This engaging and disengaging of stops is almost entirely a
modern
| artifact resulting from the incorporation of stop-changing
pedals,
| something which NEVER existed on historical instruments. You
will
| find, however, historical precedent in mirroring or echoing
sections
| on two keyboards, for example, playing the lower keyboard
coupled
| gives 2x8, or 2x8+2x4, while the upper manual gives simply 1x8.
|

Agreed.

| |
| | Please, I REALLY hope you are not equating
"well-temperement"
| with
| | "equal-temperment." They are most decidely NOT the same
thing,
| as
| | bach and many before and since nknew full well.
| |
|
| Please explain.
|
| It's very simple: "equal temperement" is one thing," "well
temperment"
| is something else altogether.
|
| Equal temperment simply treats every half step identically, all
| having a ratio of 2^(1/12). Period. End of discussion. It's
| mathematically "perfect" as far as evenly dividing the octave
| geometrically across 12 intervals. It results in nearly pure
5ths,
| and awful sounding 3rds, but ALL fifths are nearly pure, and
ALL
| 3rds are equally awful. It allows free transposition to any
key,
| with the assurance that things will be equally
mediocre-sounding
| no matter how far you transpose. There is exactly one and only
one
| variety of equal temperement.
|
| There are a number of well-temperments, but, in general, they
sacrifice
| a little bit on the purity of the fifths and gain an enormous
advantage
| in better consonance of the thirds. They do NOT allow free and
arbitrary
| transpositions, all keys do NOT have identical intervals, and
all half-
| steps are NOT the same. But unlike true just intonations, all
keys
| are plausible, and distant modulations are not disasterous.
|

We may be getting too far afield for the readers in this NG.
Nonetheless, the tuning does indeed affect the character of the
music and how it's perceived.

| A more rigorous explanation can be found in texts ranging
anywhere
| from Mersenne, Aron, Werkmeister, Kirnberger and other older
sources
| through Helmholtz (The Sensation of Tone) through to more
modern
| texts like Barbour and Fespermann.

I enjoyed reading Sensations of Tone very much when I was a
student. The elaborations by the translator were especially good.
I felt that the quality of Helmolz's research was amazing,
considering that he had to invent mechanical methods to test his
theories -- there were no oscilloscopes. I once had a fantastic
conversation about Helmholz with my optometrist, who had read his
book on sight and optics, and had no idea that Helmholz had
worked in the arena of sound!

Richard

"Dick Pierce" wrote in message
om...
| "Richard Steinfeld" wrote in
message ...
|
| I was the leading harpsichord tuner in New York for a few
years;
| you've heard my work. Think of your garden-variety two-manual
| instrument with two sets of 8' strings, one set of 4'
strings,
| one set of 16 foot. I worked on them fairly often, especially
| Neuperts. Or, briefly, the high-tension aviation-age Pleyels
| beloved by Wanda Landowska and Rafael Puyana.
|
| If you're primary work was on Neuperts and Pleyels then, no, I
| have not heard your work.
|

Your exposure to recorded music must be rather limited, then.
Please re-read my post. I said "briefly" about the Pleyels. I
worked at one time or another on different brands of instruments,
some from builders who came and went. Are you aware that there
were many European harpsichordists who liked playing on Neuperts?
Did they know something that perhaps you don't?

If you are alive in the United States, you have heard my work.
You may not have liked the music in which it was used, but you've
heard it. In fact, I don't like the music of much of where it was
used. At some time, perhaps when forced to endure top-40 drivel
in a supermarket, or "environmental music" in an elevator. Or
when you once watched The Voice of Firestone years ago, or run
screaming away (as I once did -- from the control room) from The
Mitch Miller Show. Man, I tell you, I'm everywhere! The real-life
world of working musicians has many facets; Mozart wrote dinner
music, you know. So did Telemann. You've also heard me on
Nonesuch, you've heard me on Musical Heritage Society.

Because I had to take whatever instruments that were thrown at me
in the course of my daily work, I had the opportunity to be
exposed to the concepts of a range of different builders. In
fact, I may have had more experience with a wider range of
instruments than anyone else in the country -- just think about
all the different kinds of harpsichords that could wind up in New
York City. So, I had the opportunity to think of the good and bad
points of each of them (if given enough time). Many of these
harpsichords (and clavichords) were transitional designs and
experiments -- builders who came and went. Some were unmusical.
But there was a lot of variety of approach. Some simply could not
withstand New York's traditional steam heat. And some just fell
apart all by themselves (Mendler-Shramm (sp?) comes to mind).

| Neuperts and Pleyels are NOT "garden variety two-manual
| instruments." Harpsichords with the disposition of 16'+8' on
| the lower manual and 8'+4' on the upper manual are NOT "garden
| variety two-manual instruments."
|

Neuperts were very commonly used for recording in Europe, weren't
they?
Perhaps people in Boston only listen to recordings made in
Boston?

| They are in fact, very unusual in the harpsichord world for a
| variety of reasons. Neither are based on any real historical
| artifacts, most especially the Pleyel, which is a piano in
every
| respect but the action.

I agree. I don't like them. On the release record of a
Mercury/Philips session I worked on, the harpsichords sound like
pipe organs! Although this was partially due to the microphone
technique, it's also due to the weirdness of the instruments. But
the Pleyels were pioneering harpsichords in the 20th Century;
someone had to come first (early music had been almost totally
forgotten before 1950).

Microphone technique (hey, we're talking on rec.audio.tech,
remember?) can have a profound effect on how a harpsichord comes
out of the speakers. Some recording engineers don't know how to
get it right. I recall that one of your Boston record companies,
a while back, made a point of using custom-rebuilt old RCA ribbon
microphones just to get the harpsichord spot-on (and they did).
But, let's say, with a condenser microphone, set for a spot
pattern, from an effective pickup point of perhaps a foot above
the strings, by god, the Pleyel sounds like a bloody organ. And
that's not cool!

Event the Neupert so-called "Bach" model
| is a ******* child, built into a heavy case, strung heavily,
with
| a disposition that has no historical precendent whatsoever and
is,
| in fact, based on a single instrument of dubious lineage,
article
| 316 from the Staatliche Sammlung fur Musikinstrumente at the
Scloss
| Charlottenburg in Berlin. Hubbard (Three Centuries of
Harpsichord
| Making, Harvard University Press 1967) pretty thoroughly
demolishes
| the case that the dispostion of this instrument is original,
pointing
| our numerous and obvious modifications happening long after the
| instrument left the hands of the maker, and, likely, long after
| Bach and any other person had left this earth.
|

| That being said, I am not at all surprised by your disdain for
| the sound of such instruments "coupled up." They are , at best,
| bad caricatures of harpsichords at unison pitch with their
| innappropriate scaling, excessively heavy stringing and
construction,
| thick, over-braced piano-style soundboards, their complex but
| ineffectual mechanical contrivances and all the rest. Now, add
| the 4' and 16', and they go from lousy to intolerably awful.
|

They hurt my ears when used this way. They sound mechanical. The
music does not breathe. I just never got off on the sound of
parallel octaves; the sound is ugly to me. Players who couple
everything up this way usually play insensitively, too. Notice
that I'm not using the term "coupled" the "correct" way, about
having struts pushing keys from one keyboard to the other. I mean
coupled in the sense of all simultaneously-plucked strings,
regardless of how it's accomplished.

| These instruments should suffer the fate that befell the
instruments
| in the Palace of Versais in the early 19th century: they should
be
| broken down for firewood (that woudln't work with a Pleyel:
these
| ARE pianos, complete with enormous cast-iron frames and
behemoth
| piano cases).
|

Well, perhaps they can be useful for practice instruments for
someone. Erroll Garner did a couple of delightful jazz cuts on a
harpsichord of unmentioned origin, probably something sitting in
the studio, maybe even the dreadful English instrument used on
Sing Along with Mitch. One of the tunes has a marvelous fantasy
fugue. Somebody can do something with an instrument, no matter
how unauthentic.


| In the recording world, in the typical studio situation, the
| emphasis is on practicality rather than historical accuracy.
| Although I set up instruments for people like Fernando
Valente,
| Sylvia Kind, the NY Philharmonic, Hague Philharmonic, chamber
| music recordings, etc., etc., most of my bread-and-butter was
| with Zuckermann Harpsichords and especially Caroll Instrument
| Rental Service. And you wanna know what most of the
recordings
| were that used harpsichords? They were TV commercials and
top-40
| records. Your mileage may vary.
|
| My friend, I would suggest that the recording world of the
likes
| of the NY Phiharmonic a generation ago was FAR from
representative
| of the state of the harpsichord world.

Picky, picky. That's one of those condescending "my friends," no?
Most of my work did not involve authenticity of either
applications or instruments. And I rarely worked for the NY
Philharmonic. Frankly, I don't see how this orchestra would have
been capable of rendering an authentic baroque performance at any
time in its history, considering the orientation of its members.
I suspect that you are arguing with me about apples vs. oranges.
Our experiences have been very different. Perhaps our ideals
about historic music are different, too.

At least in the Boston area
| and elsewhere, there was a far higher level of enlightenment
and
| appreciation of the true art and history of harpsichord. We're
| talking about performers and scholars like Ralph Kirkpatrick,
| Kenneth Gilbert, Leonhardt, Gibbons and many others who shunned
the
| technically marvelous but musically disasterous heavy-weight
| plucking-pianos like Neupert and Pleyel, prefering instead far
more
| historically accurate and appropriate, FAR better sounding
examples
| from Hubbard, Dowd and many others.

Beg pardon, but Kirkpatrick was one of the worst music butchers
I've ever heard. Leohardt bores the hell out of me; some people
swear by him, but to me, he's as exressive as a typewriter. I'm
interested in musical sense, cohesiveness, expressiveness (within
context). There's a point at which my musician's bull**** antenna
begins to question whether the research is, indeed, correct, and
especially, whether it should be a point for departure. For
example, Tartini's Treatise on Ornamentation seems to me a
textbook in how to play methodically, predictably, and boringly.
You follow these rules precisely and you're going to put your
audience to sleep. So, we can read what he wrote as a "norm" and
then do what we suspect a musical artist would have done at that
time.

My outlook is that it is very good to be historically informed,
not historically rigid. There are different ways to play early
music; my guide is whether the performance makes sense. And
sometimes, whether the music itself makes sense. We've now got a
bunch of people in the world playing Bach cantatas so fast that
the singers can hardly take breaths and so fast that the
instrumentalists can't quite keep together due to being barely
able to make the notes. Just listen to the recordings: it's all
there. The conductors lurch their tempos, their dynamics heave
and roll like an old Studebaker with worn shock absorbers.

The practitioners all claim to be faithful to extensive
historical research and scholarship. In other words, performers
during the 18th Century all heaved and rolled, sped up and slowed
down constantly, always put swells on long notes, and most
importantly, played fast as hell all the time. This is
authenticity? Note: tempos have sped up in almost all classical
music since the early 1970s.

Not every baroque composer was a genius; not every 18th Century
harpsichord builder made great artist-grade instruments; just
because an instrument was "authentic" doesn't mean that the
musicians liked playing on it. Let's face it; some historic
builders made junk, just like cheap junky band instruments have
been made in Elkhart, Indiana. Think about how many American
pianos were made from commercial component assembles thrown
together in a locally-made cabinet. Just like some stereo
products or the original IBM PC.

Having worked with the products of a number of different
builders, I would ask myself if the instrument made sense (was it
at home with itself), was it reliable, and if it was good at
anything. Let me illustrate. I began with Zuckermann, the
harpsichord kit popularizer. His harpsichord (first, long-running
model) was made to a certain Italian model (of some sort). It
wasn't good for very much in the world of the harpsichord
recitalist. But I cannot think of any instrument better suited to
Monteverdi continuo. With enough experience, one begins to
recognize that one cannot make great pronouncements; there are
always exceptions. I've even heard someone play great accordian.
I've heard great tuba playing (democratic Hindemith gives
everyone good things to do).

|
| As an example of the absurdity of instruments like the Pleyel,
| Italian 2x8' instruments, a common continuo instrument, weigh
| less than the bench for an instrument like a Pleyel, and had
| case walls that were thinner than the soundboard of such an
| instrument, and soundboards that were thinner still. Such
| instruments, being of such lightweight construction and having
| the commensurate light stringing with no over-spun wire, were
| brighter, far louder, more responsive, blended better and more
| cohesive then the musical ******* children of some misguided
| industrial-mechanical program from Neupert and Pleyel.
|

Yeah, yeah, I know. Pleyel is a crazy piece of aircraft. It's a
slam-dunk that without a steel frame (a product of the late 19th
& 20th centuries -- think Bessemer, Pittsburgh), a Pleyel just
could not exist. And this dictates lighter strings under low
tension (so as to not buckle the wood). Not the same sound. The
Neuperts were of wood.

But whether it's authentic or not, can someone not make good
Baroque music on it? I don't know. I haven't heard it enough in
that context. I can say that I don't like the instrument, and
yes, it is a "piano" with a steel frame, coarse and fine tuning
pins (!), an incredible range and weird sound. But someday, I may
hear someone playing great baroque music on one. The sound won't
be authentic, but will it be decent on the music? Look; the Piano
didn't exist for most of Bach's life, but at certain times, Glenn
Gould rendered the very essence of Bach's intentions upon one
(and Gould's piano was not even an "authentic" Steinway). If
present in the control room at Columbia's 30th Street studio, do
you think that Bach would have run out screaming, "How dare you!
That's not authentic! I wrote this composition to be played
exclusively on a (insert builder name here) harpsichord, not that
infernal Piano *******!?"
Or would he have said to Gould, "That was wonderful; that's
exactly what I had in mind. I've never heard my keyboard music
played so perfectly.?"

And a Neupert is not a Pleyel.
And all Neuperts are not built the same way. I've personally
handled at least two completely different mechanical designs that
had nothing whatsoever in common with each other.

| The largest instrument I now have, a two-manual 2x8', 1x4'
based
| on the 1750 Taskin weighs all of 96 pounds, and ALL the strings
| on the instrument weigh less than a single bass string on a
Pleyel.
| Coupling the 4' on that instrument results in a cohesive, full,
| articulate sound, nothing like the disjointed, schizophrenic
buzz
| and ruslte of a Neupert.
|

I do believe you about your instrument; it must be great to play
it, and very satisfying. What music sounds perfect on it?

But even beyond what I've already said, all Neuperts are not the
same. For example, are you aware that Neupert made/makes three
different versions of each model, depending on where in the world
it will be used, in order to be stable in the climate? The
tropical version can't take the weather in Boston.

| Now, to be fair, more contemporary Neuperts have migrated more
| towards what is now the real mainstream of harpsichord
practice,
| but they did so quite reluctantly, dragged kicking and
screaming
| into musical propriety by a market that simply refused to buy
any
| more of their crap.
|

I suspect that they did indeed sell them. Like McDonald's
hamburgers, perhaps. A lot of people buy harpsichords with no
care for authenticity. They just want to play arond with one, or
impress their friends. Such a Neupert is cheaper for that purpose
than a Dowd. I had a few such customers. They'll buy ordinary
Neuperts right off the rack. Other people would buy a Neupert as
their first harpsichord because they were affordable. Perhaps
later, if they had gotten serious about playing harpsichord,
they'd trade it in on a more "serious" artisan-built instrument.

| With this type of madness,
| one can gain an appreciation for plastic jack guides, uniform
| plastic quills, aluminum mechanicals, etc.: they're reliable.
| When one is playing rapid repeated notes in Scarlatti, does
one
| get better musical service from natural frayed quills that'll
| hang on the strings or from self-lubricating hard plastic?
Will
| the player's artistry be better served by having to spend
hours
| every week futzing with the harpsichord or from practicing
the
| music?
|
| And interesting veiwpoint, as the most problematic harpsichord
I EVER
| worked on was a Neupert Bach model:

Which version of the Bach model? Was it the mass-produced version
or the artist version? Had it been properly maintained? Were the
jack assemblies worn out because nobody ever cleaned them?

save on older Zuckerman kit that
| had a wrestplank glue joint fail,

Was the Zuckermann made by Zuckermann or was it made by a
drunkard from a kit?

I have NEVER encountered an instrument
| until the Neupert that had such abysmal reliability. Their
fancy-dancy
| aluminum jacks were useless.
|

Useless?

What if I made a pronouncement that Dowd harpsichords were junk
based on one experience with one that had been moisture-damaged
and had never been maintained?

Fernando Valente complimented my work after I set up an ordinary
Neupert for him to play on. And not just once but every week, and
different instruments (whatever we had in the store). The
instruments performed flawlessly during his recitals. As you may
recall, Valente was the machine-gunner of Scarlatti; this music
is rife with rapid-fire, high-speed repeated notes. Scarlatti, in
his hands, required an exceptionally-reliable mechanism capable
of fast movement. He got it from various Neuperts and he got it
from me. I don't know of any music that's a better test of
mechanical repetition than Scarlatti. Are we living on the same
planet?

Like any other instrument, the Neuperts could require adjustment,
and people could abuse them. The aluminum/plastic assemblies were
precise. They could be fouled by dirt and air pollution. Perhaps
the instrument you examined was not in the best of health, and
you've generalized from an anomaly. One problem that I found was
that the jacks could lock up in their sleeves at about 96 degrees
F. I found the instruments to be cost-effective and mostly quite
reliable, as did Valente. Valente, however, normally recorded
with his John Challis instrument. But he loved doing the Neupert
demonstration recitals.


| And your comment is interesting in light of my own and many
other's
| experience with instruments from the likes of Hubbard and Dowd
and
| others. I have NONE of the problems you speak, and do NOT spend
| hours per week, nor have I ever, "futzing" with the instrument.
|

There are more builders in the world than Hubbard and Dowd. There
are other cities in the world than Boston. Hubbard and Dowd
instruments are really good, but they may not fare as well in
certain other climates. In my experience, the average
harpsichordist must spend an inordinate amount of time adusting
and tuning their instruments, alhough not quite as much time as
an oboist must spend upon oboe reeds.

Here in the San Francisco area, we have a myriad of
microclimates. Further, our temperature and humidity can vary
widely during the course of a single day. We have one or more
excellent harpsichord builders such as John Phillips (there's a
world beyond Boston). Many authentic harpsichords would need to
be tuned twice per day in this climate. One must make certain
deviations in the service of music.


| The entire world of historic performance always involves
| tradeoffs. I favor enlightened distinctions. As a guide, I
ask
| myself, "If Bach came here today and heard our modern
| instruments, what would he have preferred? What would have
been
| the best tools to serve his music?"
|
| He'd probably scoff at the Pleyel, show bemusement at
Landowska's
| style, and find a good madern reproduction to be VERY reliable.
|

I'm curious about the materials in the modern instruments you're
talking about. I don't know if he'd scoff at the Pleyel, although
I don't think he'd find the sound familiar. Like I said earlier,
I don't like them. For one thing, I find them hell to tune --
it's hard to hear what I'm doing. Up close, the instruments
sounded rather dull and indistinct to me. They sure are strange.


| | The largest common instruments, from then and now, are two
| manual
| | instruments with three sets of strings. The lower manual
plays
| two
| | strings, on sounding at unisin, the other sounding at an
| octave,
| | while the upper manual plays the second unison choir. The
ONLY
| | "coupling up" such instruments are capable of is coupling
the
| | uppoer manual to the lower. This does not couple up or down
an
| | octave, but rather at unison, so you have the capability of
| playing
| | the 2 unison choirs together, or adding the octave choir to
the
| | unison.
| |
|
| I'd actually prefer such an instrument. I've been out of this
for
| a long time, so things change. The larger Neuperts I recall
we
| top manual -- 8' + 4', lower manual -- 8' + 16'
| For the bystander, let me explain that Neupert was (is?) the
| foremost manufacturer of mass-produced harpsichords.
|
| No, they were NOT the "foremost," they were only the largest.

????
My emphasis was on "mass-produced."

They
| might be considered the MacDonalds of harpsichords. This, in
many
| eyes, is NOT a virtue.
|

????
The instruments in their catalog are, indeed, mass produced.
Steinway makes some pretty mediocre pianos, too (you should hear
the tuners in New York who used to work at Steinway complain
about the pianos). But there's a different realm of Neuperts that
are made for artist work; many of these use a conventional flat
jack design. This is like Steinway themselves, who keep a group
of artist instruments that are used for recording and concerts.
These are indeed excellent pianos. However, unlike Steinway, the
artist Neuperts can be purchased on special order by anyone. But
you've got to know about them; they aren't flipped out like
burgers.


| And Neupert had, decades ago, lost its market supremecy, simply
| trampled into the dust by their own refusal to adapt to what
the
| market wanted. Instead, they tried to continue with selling the
| crap they did: silly caricatures of harpsichords, not
harpsichords.
|
| These were
| based upon certain historical models,
|
| Now, they were not, as Hubbard quite soundly demonstrated
nearly 40
| years ago.
|

Based, not exact. The basis is very loose. The names of the
models are just names, the same way that Blaupunkt car radios are
named for cities.

| but were not authentic
| reproductions. The firm also made custom instruments to
| historical configurations. These custom instruments, however,
| still made use of modern mechanism materials.
|
| And, until Huepert really changed their tune in the late 1970's
they
| were dismal failures in a market increasingly dominated by more
| knowledgeable performers.
|
| | Sorry, but you're ignoring the entire class of authentic
| Baroque
| | instruments that include the octave (4') choir. Included in
| that
| | class are most double manual instruments of the era, from
| France,
| | Flanders, Germany and England.
| |
|
| Now that we're talking shop, let me continue. What bugs me is
the
| harpsichordist who just couples up the instrument and plays
| flat-out that way from beginning to the end of the piece --
| there's no contrast in the sound. A fine artist of the time,
I'd
| hope, would engage the 4' for occasional color or emphasis.
Since
| the harpsichord cannot gradate the intensity of the pluck, I
see
| one of the tools in the harpsichordist's bag of tricks being
to
| convey the -impression- of dynamic changes through the art of
| phrasing, subtle (really subtle) metric changes, etc.
|
| This engaging and disengaging of stops is almost entirely a
modern
| artifact resulting from the incorporation of stop-changing
pedals,
| something which NEVER existed on historical instruments. You
will
| find, however, historical precedent in mirroring or echoing
sections
| on two keyboards, for example, playing the lower keyboard
coupled
| gives 2x8, or 2x8+2x4, while the upper manual gives simply 1x8.
|

Agreed.

| |
| | Please, I REALLY hope you are not equating
"well-temperement"
| with
| | "equal-temperment." They are most decidely NOT the same
thing,
| as
| | bach and many before and since nknew full well.
| |
|
| Please explain.
|
| It's very simple: "equal temperement" is one thing," "well
temperment"
| is something else altogether.
|
| Equal temperment simply treats every half step identically, all
| having a ratio of 2^(1/12). Period. End of discussion. It's
| mathematically "perfect" as far as evenly dividing the octave
| geometrically across 12 intervals. It results in nearly pure
5ths,
| and awful sounding 3rds, but ALL fifths are nearly pure, and
ALL
| 3rds are equally awful. It allows free transposition to any
key,
| with the assurance that things will be equally
mediocre-sounding
| no matter how far you transpose. There is exactly one and only
one
| variety of equal temperement.
|
| There are a number of well-temperments, but, in general, they
sacrifice
| a little bit on the purity of the fifths and gain an enormous
advantage
| in better consonance of the thirds. They do NOT allow free and
arbitrary
| transpositions, all keys do NOT have identical intervals, and
all half-
| steps are NOT the same. But unlike true just intonations, all
keys
| are plausible, and distant modulations are not disasterous.
|

We may be getting too far afield for the readers in this NG.
Nonetheless, the tuning does indeed affect the character of the
music and how it's perceived.

| A more rigorous explanation can be found in texts ranging
anywhere
| from Mersenne, Aron, Werkmeister, Kirnberger and other older
sources
| through Helmholtz (The Sensation of Tone) through to more
modern
| texts like Barbour and Fespermann.

I enjoyed reading Sensations of Tone very much when I was a
student. The elaborations by the translator were especially good.
I felt that the quality of Helmolz's research was amazing,
considering that he had to invent mechanical methods to test his
theories -- there were no oscilloscopes. I once had a fantastic
conversation about Helmholz with my optometrist, who had read his
book on sight and optics, and had no idea that Helmholz had
worked in the arena of sound!

Richard

an octive higher than a freq is 2x the freq
ie a= 440 next one up= 880 and so on
"ras" wrote in message
...

Pitch math ... can somebody explain what that: "an octave ... which
itself is a frequency ratio of 2:1" means?

This is an excerpt from the book: "Audio Explained" by Michael
Talbot-Smith:

------
Pitch ... the frequency ratio between two adjacent semitones is
approximately 6%. In scientific terms the exact number is ¹²V2 (the
twelfth root of 2).

[V = suppose to the root char, cannot find the key combination for it
on the windows system.]

The reasoning behind this is that there are 12 equal semitone
'intervals' in an octave, which itself is a frequency ratio of 2:1.
Each step must therefore be ¹²V2.
------

I understand that a octave have 12 'intervals' as well as how you do
the math (twelfth root of 2) but not why an octave: "is itself a
frequency ratio of 2:1".

Any help will be most appreciated, thanks
Mike

Mike wrote

I understand that a octave have 12 'intervals' as well as how you do
the math (twelfth root of 2) but not why an octave: "is itself a
frequency ratio of 2:1".

Well, you have it right the Multiplying the 12 intervals each a
ratio 2^(1/12) apart gives (2^(1/12))^12 = 2! Voila!

Or did I miss you misunderstanding?

Per.


Any help will be most appreciated, thanks
Mike