Word: harpsichords
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ELLIOTT CARTER: DOUBLE CONCERTO (Columbia). This terse, intensely cerebral score creates its stereophonic effect across the expanse of a normal concert stage, as two small orchestras, one centered around a harpsichord and the other around a piano-but both conducted by Frederik Prausnitz -toss questions and answers back and forth on some unnamed, obviously serious topic. The most striking musical effect is a slow, undulating, ill-tempered growl from the percussion toward the end of the piece that seems to sweep back and forth from one group to the other, murmuring imprecations at both...
Miss Vosgerchian has taught at Harvard since 1959, when she took over the Basic Piano program. For the last three years she has taught first-year harmony in Music 51. In her office, sitting among dulcimers, stringless lutes, a harpsichord, and a chamber organ, she is revealed also as the Curator of Ancient Instruments. But it is the concert career preceding her work at Harvard that best explains her effluent style of teaching. She threatens, exhorts, raises her eyes in anguish, then emerges with a reassuring smile...
First, though, there are prayers to be said, friends to chat with, a roast goose to be eaten. Papa even allows himself an extra glass of his favorite Rhenish wine, which he calls a "noble gift of God." After the meal, he eases his thick frame down before a harpsichord in the parlor. Crowding about the creche and the candlelit tree, the party joins in singing a carol or one of Luther's mighty hymns. Then Papa-head thrown back, fingers marching over the keys in a steady, stately rhythm-begins to improvise, outlining a succession of daring harmonies...
...landed a similar position with Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Cothen; the defection so angered Duke Wilhelm that Bach was clapped in the Weimar jail for a month. Once he arrived at Cothen, Bach devoted five placid, productive years to superb keyboard and chamber pieces, including the French Suites for harpsichord, the unaccompanied music for cello and violin, and the six Brandenburg Concertos. This period is usually labeled Bach's secular phase, though he was not fussy about the distinction between sacred and secular. Bach often borrowed from his secular music for sacred occasions, just as Martin Luther had used...
...conversation-each speaking grammatically, completing his sentences and remaining silent when he had nothing to add. Now, in the compositions of his 50s and 60s, Bach became more than ever a teacher. He produced collection after collection summing up the accumulated skill of a lifetime: the Goldberg Variations for harpsichord, the Catechism Preludes for organ, the unfinished The Art of Fugue...