You wrote:
 
>
>Yes, but (correct me if I'm wrong...;-) weren't these works *written*
for
>Landowska?  I seem to recall some of these composers actually working
with
>her, to best understand and utilize the resources of her instrument.
(As
>Persechetti did with Elaine Comparone.) If this is the case, a stronger
>argument certainly exists for using this type of instrument.  That
said, I
>must admit that I do not object to hearing these works done (more
>successfully, in some ways) on historically-styled instruments.  But
isn't
>your argument (DS) rather like that of the revivalists themselves? ie,
if
>the baroque composers had known about pedals, etc, they'd have used
>them...?
>
>Dave Kelzenberg
>
I wasn't going to follow this thread, but I cannot resist.
 
At the first Berkeley Festival, I think it was, I witnessed the rather
bizarre spectacle of a young, talented, and certainly earnest
harpsichordist wailing away on a contemporary (more or less) piece that
was written with lotsa pedals and stuff in mind.  He had an assistant
(let us dub this person a _registrante_) whose job it was to hover over
the player's back, every few seconds jabbing an arm in to the player's
left or right to flick a stop lever or a buff stop.  Very entertaining!
How was the music, you ask?  I forgot to listen.
 
Some of us dinosaurs date back to the time when pedalpushers were the
only type of hrpcd around- especially out here in Calif.  Concerts with
the things were a nightmare- no one could here, and if it was an
ensemble piece, there was no ensemble, so people tried to make up with
mics and amplifiers and... and ...
 
In the last years of that phase both Neupert and Wittmeyer built instr's
with speakers in the soundboard!  Very expensive instr's.
 
What we learned from the historical types is that you could get rid of a
lot of complications.  People could hear, instruments played well
together, it all made music and it made sense.
 
no one wants to return to those days.  But with the music of Falla
Poulenc and others that was composed for such things, they make sense.
And the very phenomena of the instruments themselves was too important,
too widespread, and too longlasting to ignore and forget.  They gained
their own historicity.
 
Joseph Spencer
 
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