This 82 year came from a environment at John Broadwoods and what Tilman write is very true indeed.
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Wednesday, 10 February 2016, 07:43 +0000 from [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>:
>I think the discourse was a bit more complex than that. For one, the modern manufacturer's rhetoric was quite defiant. Deciding between the modern or historical constructions wasn't simply a matter of sitting down and collegially comparing sounds. Instead, there was a heavy focus on technological issues of "betterness": why modern materials, designs, production methods, etc. would produce more durable, stable and "professional" (i.e. suited for the high demands of "modern" music making) results.
>When my father and his colleagues entered the German market with historical models in the mid fifties, the typical argument against their work would have been "those instruments don't even sound that bad, perhaps, but they will not last."
>
>Some radio people in the sixties then set out to try to reconcile the worlds, or at least to create some awareness around sound. I myself remember a series of "tests" in the home of my parents during which Leonhardt alternately recorded Bach on a Neupert or Wittmayer (I don't recall, which) and a two-manual Skowroneck for Radio Bremen. That must have been in '68 or so; it was my first exposure to a large modern harpsichord (a year before I heard a much smaller one in a private home and got a fit of giggles...).
>
>Then again, historical non-sixteen-foot harpsichords can't reproduce the specific tutti sound of these instruments and their specific touch; professional players of the time had their artistic identities pretty much tied up with the "grand" feel and sound of the modern beasts, and it must have been difficult to step away from it. People tried, mind. In our letter archives there's a curious exchange between someone who asks to order a harpsichord on behalf of Karl Richter, and my dad who writes in his lengthy answer that Mr. Richter would not like such an instrument because of its light touch and unfamiliar disposition.
>
>Tilman
>
>
>On Wed, 10 Feb 2016 13:43:47 +1100, Andrew Bernard < [log in to unmask] > wrote:
>
>>What I find curious about this period of manufacture is how they could
>>have thought that sound was equal to or superior to the historical
>>instruments from the master workshops of the past. There seems to have
>>been some sort of perceptual/cultural blindness to the qualities of
>>the fine instruments from Ruckers, or Taskin, or heavens above,
>>anybody!
>
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