Hello Jan,

If you have not acquired Lindley and Boxall's two volumes of pieces fingered from the time, they are very useful. But what I found to be the greatest resource is Claudio Di Veroli's early fingering method, which is entirely based on the sources. It's great value is comes from the fact that it shows that  early techniques from many original sources were almost entirely in accord. The differences are mostly small, and though interesting, are statistically and measured by the standing of source authors and players who are in agreement, really just something to consider off to the side. (Probably really worth looking at if you are playing pieces by those sources!) Before coming across Claudio's method six or seven years ago, I was unable to see the forest for the trees, and for trees I had nearly all the books, papers, articles, examples and treatises available. It all needed to be gone through by someone interested in drawing out the individual techniques as applied to representative passages and patterns so that core practices and commonalities could be drawn out. It is, if you will, a scientific approach.

In any case, just as players (and the listening public) 40 years ago wondered whether early instruments could ever be played with complete mastery and beauty, as suggested by original commentaries, treatises, and the music itself, it just took time for modern players to digest all the information and practice enough to make it happen. I suggest that the same is true withearly keyboard fingering. Only those who completely commit themselves to cross-fingering and all the other techniques of the day, without compromise, will be able to discover the ins and out of it all. 

When I play fast passages I try and try to accomplish them using just cross fingering, hoppins, etc. If today I cannot make it work I do not give up and conclude that it shouldn't or can't be done, and in the meantime do what may be cheating to get by. For myself, only time will tell as I live with these early techniques which challenges finally call for other solutions, and which ones merely needed more time and practice. You may want to see what Di Veroli's method says about "thumb over" and hand shifting. what I have found with hand shifting is that it inevitably wants to produce some kind of space between the two notes at the shift. If the notes before and after the shift are played with the same spacing then it works. as a reference 

My thoughts/opinion on what needs to be considered regarding questions about early fingering. I would posit that the point of all musical techniques is to efficiently and pleasurable arrive at the desired effects, and that the effects desired by players of any given instrument were similar to those sought by contemporary players of other instruments. I think it is invaluable to hear how similar passages sound when played on wind and bowed instruments, where tonguing and bow reversals produce the effect of small separations between individual notes, and also two-note pairs. Why would harpsichordists of the day be relieved of achieving these common effects? Would not their playing, except for what is uniquely idiomatic to their particular instrument, be in accord with the articulations of their fellow musicians? 

Can it possibly be that accomplished keyboardists of the day simply did not know how to pass the thumb under? It is not rocket science. Did not avoid the thumb out of fear? No, they specifically said that the middle three fingers were best suited to bring about the desired musical effects, and used the little finger and thumb according to what they did best. Dome did argue about which of the primary fingers was the most good or strong, but as anyone who has learned early fingering knows from experience, you can just as easily achieve the same two note groupings whether your first or second fingers take the lead.  "Avoiding" the thumb must have been about avoiding a repeated disruption of what the primary fingers needed to do, and which the thumb, being a simple lever, can only mimic for a note or two. When the thumb did come into greater use, as in the case of Bach, it did not disrupt the core set of techniques, it just came to be used more because of Bach's extraordinary counterpoint with many voices, and his pushing the limits in may ways. But all the evidence indicates that the core, cross fingered practices remained.

Maybe I am crazy Jan, but I don't doubt the masters until I have, to the best of my ability, tried working just with what they suggested, and nothing else. How else can one tell, over time, whether they left some important things out, or even strongly suggest that they did?

Comments? (Other than that my posts are too long:)

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