About twenty-five years ago I helped Colin Tilney collect a
Dolmetsch/Chickering clavichord from Richard Treger, then living in
Edmonton, Alberta. Richard had sold the instrument to Colin. I flew out
there from Winnipeg (where I then lived), rented a van, and the next day,
Colin and I began a road trip east, first stopping overnight in Saskatoon,
Saskatchewan, when we stay with friends of my wife. The clavichord, which
we carried inside from the van, was given a test drive by Colin, in the
form of a little hauskonzert. Our hosts were polite but a bit perplexed.

The next day we arrived at my home in Winnipeg, and again we brought in the
clavichord. The next day Colin gave a lovely recital for about a dozen or
so friends from the town's early music community. A dozen or so was about
as many as our living room could hold. Which is not to say we were cramped
- it was a good sized room; none of us sat closer than ten feet from the
instrument. Yes, the clavichord is a quiet instrument, but we all heard it
clearly, partly because of its timbre, but also because of the nature of
Colin's playing. Never forced, Colin's fingers new precisely how much
pressure to exert on each key, just the right amount of bebung where it was
called for, he drew from the instrument its full and (and huge) dynamic
range.

I learned from this concert why one could give a recital on a clavichord:
it takes the complicity of the audience to accept the instrument's dynamic
range, however soft that may be. Complicity, because this is an engagement
between the performer, the audience and the instrument.

Of course this is not a situation unique to clavichords - witness the
willingness of audiences to put up with modern piano performances, often
loud, louder, and louder still. And then, louder than that.

Don't get me started on that subject.

Anyway, the next day we continued our journey east, until we arrived in
Toronto two days later.

-dpj

On Sat, Apr 15, 2017 at 7:43 AM, Philip Kimber <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> In answer to David Pickett's comment about the difficulty of listening to
> clavichord recordings because of the volume problem, I suppose the only
> solution is to play oneself or for a small audience to gather round the
> player at the instrument in real life. But there are almost no opporunities
> to do the latter.
>
> Best
>
> Ph.
>
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Note:  opinions  expressed on HPSCHD-L are those of the  individual con-
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versity of Iowa.  For a brief  summary of list  commands, send mail to
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