Back in my days when I minored in harpsichord with that Pied Piper of all things Baroque, Laurette Goldberg, on occasion I would take a lesson with Laurette’s graduate assistant. I forget her name. She was a representative of a vanishing breed, the colorless rabbity type who sought a career in the quiet confines of academia rather than duking it out in the far more competitive world of mainstream performance. In music schools, the general term for such a student is refugee, someone who lacks the wherewithal for a successful mainstream career and thus seeks an outlet elsewhere. For some, that means switching from their former major (piano or violin or whatnot) to music theory; for others, composition departments have served as convenient landing pads. The advent of the early music movement proved to be a godsend to refugee majors, providing them with a comforting and safe zone where a lack of technique or bonafide talent could be turned to an advantage.
As they used to say, there are good pianists, there are mediocre pianists, and there are harpsichordists. They used to say it because it isn’t really true any more; the early music movement has matured and no longer serves as a safety net for flailing instrumentalists and singers. However, one still encounters a sprinkling of wan refugees in early music, although nowadays their chances at an actual performing career are slender. In the 1970s, when I was a student, they were still common.
I would categorize my occasional-assistant harpsichord teacher as a prime specimen of the bloodless, characterless, passionless type who tended to gravitate to the harpsichord in those days, goaded I think more by a fear of the testosterone-enhanced bravura of the piano world than a real love for the harpsichord itself. (It was one of Laurette Goldberg’s most compelling characteristics that she was a real, flesh-and-blood musician with all the passion and brio that was so conspicuously lacking in many of her colleagues.)
I played my piece — I forget what it was — for my rabbit-harpsichordist teacher-for-the-day. Since I was coming to the harpsichord as a second instrument, with a notably successful career so far on the piano, I brought a pianist’s training to my harpsichord playing. True, the harpsichord requires a somewhat different technical approach than the piano, but the two instruments are more alike than not; they have keys in the same places, fingering for piano works just fine for harpsichord, and basic technique is the same for both instruments — scales, chords, etc. But the piano’s technical demands far outweigh the harpsichord’s, thanks to the centuries of development following the harpsichord’s slide into obscurity until its renaissance in the later 20th century. Harpsichordists have never dealt with anything on the order of the Chopin études, so their technical training proceeds with an overall lower bar. That doesn’t make them lesser players, mind you; it just means that they do not have to struggle with Chopin, Liszt, Rachmaninoff, and the like.
But I did play that stuff. So my harpsichord playing exhibited a physical bravura that was highly unusual amongst harpsichordists. Given that I was also a male in his early 20s, with abundant flowing hormones, my playing was anything but discreet. That wasn’t going to sit well with rabbit-harpsichord-teacher. But she was far too polite, in that aloof and passive-aggressive manner of refined lady academics, to say something like Christ almighty, you sure like it ballsy, don’t you?
Her remark: Well …. ahem … you’re very … …. … facile.
I have to admit I was choking down a temptation to say something along the lines of oh, you think that’s facile?? Get a load of THIS, baby! while unzipping, whipping it out, and brandishing it in her bespectacled face. It would have happened only in a Walter Mitty-ish fantasy realm, of course, but still the urge arose.
I hadn’t thought about that little episode in decades until I came across a recent review. The situation: a world-renowned pianist played an all-Bach recital at a major symphony hall, to a capacity audience. This pianist is one of the great Bach interpreters of our time, a stellar musician and pianist, and he gave a splendid accounting of the works and received all the audience adulation he so richly deserved. All very well and good. But the reviewer is a latter-day version of that same rabbity-harpsichordist type, and he was torn between acknowledging the undeniable excellence of the concert and staying true to his cultish identity as a weak-skilled HIPster who has wisely chosen a career in musicology over performance.
His article administered a pointless flogging to a long-dead horse, notably the differences between harpsichord and piano. It also highlighted the tendency amongst some early-music types to see themselves as a breed apart from mainstream musicians. The very fact that this concert took place in a major symphony hall, with high ticket prices and even higher publicity, obviously stuck in the reviewer’s craw: the harpsichord has failed to achieve much traction as a solo instrument outside of academia. More than anything, though, I was impressed by the cloistered and sealed attitude that permeated the article, that tired old sensibility of separateness that was such a bore back when the early music movement was getting started, and which I thought had largely died out as HIP became more mainstream. Apparently not, and that’s a shame.
In a nutshell, this was his review of the great pianist’s performance: Well …. ahem … you’re very … …. … facile.