Word: clavichords
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Jazz once meant improvised music. Now jazzmen have taken to improvising musical instruments. Some of the weirdest recorded jazz sounds currently around come from a "gooped up" harpsichord and a clavichord caught by a closeup microphone. They are the products of two men from different sides of the musical tracks: 48-year-old Texan Red Camp, who supports himself by giving piano lessons in Corpus Christi, and Manhattan's Bruce Prince-Joseph, 32, the pianist, harpsichordist and organist of the New York Philharmonic...
...church organist. By the time the boy was eleven, he had mastered the organ, piano and violin and had turned to the cello and the music of Bach (later he was to begin each of his days by playing a few minutes of Bach's Well Tempered Clavichord). Packed off to Barcelona to study, he played in a gambling casino to support himself. Said one awed casino patron: "He transformed a cage into a concert hall, and a concert hall into a temple." Eventually, Casals attracted the attention of Spain's Queen Mother, Maria Cristina. who invited...
...goes to work and soon has his money back in pocket. But by that time he has something else (Diana Lynn) in prospect, almost as hot as Texas and not nearly so flat. She's a schoolmarm, and she plays him mountain music on what sounds like a clavichord. Poor slavey-she's got more sex than teacher, but what good is sex, she asks herself ruefully, against a clavichord? Silly girl. The hero soon enough succumbs to manifest destiny...
...texts are relatively unfamiliar (the singers wisely read an English translation of the texts before each vocal piece). The instruments used are now obsolete and belong to what wee called "low instruments"--the lowness referring not to pitch but to decibels--in this case, the recorder, lute, viol and clavichord, all of which had minute expressive range. The music, furthermore is mainly of an intimate sort designed to be heard at close range, not from the rear of a long hall. Nevertheless, the evening was a great success form the standpoint of both performers and audience...
...four clavichord pieces played by Edward Dunham III, the last three were delightful. The first was dull but interesting as an historical curiosity, for it is the earliest extant keyboard music (dated c.1325). Dunham demonstrated that the clavichord can produce all the dynamic shades from very soft to very, very, very soft. He underlined the informality of the evening by puffing a pipe in time to his playing...