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Harpsichords and Related Topics

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Subject:
From:
James McCarty <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Harpsichords and Related Topics <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Sat, 9 Feb 2008 06:59:23 -0600
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on 2/9/08 4:38 AM, David Calhoun at [log in to unmask] wrote:

> Well ... 
> 
> Back in the days when Lutz Bungart was part of a Seattle shop,
> another of those involved made one of his "English" harpsichords
> for an outlying college.  These things were long, 63 notes, with
> both peau _and_ cut-thru, a sort of machine coupler which took itself
> apart on removing the keys and I could never get back together, and
> other such like. 
> 
> The college sent it back from delivery with a demand that the maker
> remove his "advertising" from the cheek.  As Wolfgang (or somebody)
> wrote, "the quality of the instrument is often inversely proportional
> to the size of the name on the nameboard."

That's been my experience as well. About 1984, there was a young man here
who was making hpds in his spare time. He was given an order by the wife of
an eminent chemistry professor who in his retirement was teaching part time
at what passes for our local university. He had made his name at Harvard,
and I have no idea how they ended up here. But, as Calhoun says, I digress.

At any rate, they were lovely people who lived in a lovely home, and many of
us were invited there for the inaugural recital of the wife's new Flemish
single. Gracing the relatively small instrument was a name batten about four
inches wide, with the maker's name in three-inch-high letters. You could
have read it from Cambridge. The instrument, of course, was inconsequential.
The owner, who had very good taste and a fine sense of proportion, sent the
box back for a less pretentious inscription.

-- 
James R. (Jay) McCarty, MD
Fort Worth, TX

"Sine arte, scientia nihil est"

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