The
Clavichords of Haydn and C.P.E. Bach
Dr
Charles Burney paid a visit to C.P.E. Bach and his family on the 12th October
1772. Burney's description of Bach's
clavichord playing on this occasion is well-known, but it will do no harm to
quote from it here:
M.
Bach was so obliging as to sit down to his Silbermann
clavichord and favourite instrument, upon which he played three or four of
his choicest and most difficult compositions... In the pathetic and slow
movements, whenever he had a long note to express, he absolutely contrived to
produce, from his instrument, a cry of sorrow and complaint, such as can only
be effected on the clavichord, and perhaps by himself.
After
dinner... I prevailed upon him to sit down again to a clavichord, and he
played, with little intermission, till near eleven o'clock at night. During
this time, he grew so animated and possessed,
that he not only played, but looked like one inspired. His eyes were fixed, his under lip fell, and
drops of effervescence distilled from his countenance. He said, if he were to
be set to work frequently, in this manner, he should grow young again
In
another passage, Burney refers to the maker of this favourite clavichord:
His
great knowledge of mechanics, his originality and adequate means whereby he is
enabled to maintain a permanent stock of good old timber, mean that all his
instruments are extraordinarily beautifully and carefully made. The Hamburg
Bach possesses one of the master's clavichords, which displays, besides its
other perfections, three virtues to be met with, perhaps, in no other
clavichord in the world. First, it does not rattle, notwithstanding that it is
almost thirty years old and that its owner has played myriads of notes upon it;
second, it requires scarcely any tuning; and thirdly, its construction is such,
that its tone sustains considerably longer than that of other clavichords, and
all possible gradations of forte and piano may be performed upon it, and portamento and Bebung distinctly executed without extraneous noise.
Although
this passage has the ring of authentic Burney, it apparently occurs only in the
contemporary German edition, and may have been added by the translator,
Christophe Daniel Ebeling who, as a Hamburg resident and friend of Bach, would
have known the instrument well.
Burney
is not the only writer to admire the Silbermann clavichord and Bach's
performance on it. This is from Johann Friedrich Reichardt:
Herr
Bach plays not only a quite slow, singing adagio with the most touching
expression... he also sustains in such a slow movement a note of the duration
of six semiquavers with all the varying degrees of loudness and softness, and
this in the bass as well as in the treble. This, however, is only possible on
his very beautiful Silbermann clavichord for which he has especially written
some particular sonatas in which long notes must be sustained. The same is true
of the extraordinary loudness which Herr Bach occasionally produces; it is the
utmost fortissimo; another clavichord would fall to pieces; and it is again the
same with the finest pianissimo which another clavichord could not produce at
all. It is a pity that we have so few such outstanding instruments and that the
organ and instrument makers of today are not equal to the art of that skilful
man [at this point I should make it clear, I think, that I am still quoting the
words of Johann Friedrich Reichardt]. The newly invented instruments with six
and twelve stops are only cobblers' patches and children's toys when compared
to a Silbermann clavichord.
This
Silbermann clavichord must have been something of a phenomenon in its day. Apparently it had, to a high degree, certain
tonal qualities which were sought-after in a clavichord: sustaining power, allied to a wide dynamic
range. By implication, many other
instruments fell short of this ideal.
Now,
there are a number of questions about this celebrated instrument which call for
an answer:
Which member of the Silbermann family was the maker?
What was the instrument like? Was it, for example, fretted or unfretted? What
was its compass?
And why did Bach sell it in 1781 nine years after Burney's visit and seven
years before his own death to Dietrich Ewald von Grotthuss? a transaction
which inspired the beautiful 'farewell' rondo.
As
far as we know, only two members of the Silbermann family made clavichords.
Firstly, there is Gottfried Silbermann of Freiburg in Saxony, famous throughout
Germany as an organ builder, and also as the inventor of the cembal d'amour and a pioneer of the
early pianoforte. The other possible candidate is his nephew Johann Heinrich
Silbermann, who studied with his uncle before setting up as an instrument maker
in Strasbourg. These two are frequently
confused, I'm sorry to say, by makers and buyers of clavichords, but it's worth
remembering that they were of quite different generations. Gottfried was almost an exact contemporary
of Bach's father, J.S. Bach, whereas Johann Heinrich was 44 years his junior,
and younger, in fact, than C.P.E. Bach himself.
Now,
if the clavichord had been in Bach's possession for "almost thirty
years" as Burney states and this is confirmed by a note made by
Grotthuss when he received the clavichord from Bach it could not have been
made any later than the mid-1740's. At
that time Johann Heinrich would have been a young man of only 18 or so: rather
early in life for him to have become established as an independent instrument
maker. Moreover Reichardt, in the
passage I quoted a moment ago, clearly implies that the maker of Bach's
clavichord was of an earlier generation, not a contemporary like Johann
Heinrich. It seems almost certain,
therefore, that the maker of Bach's instrument was Gottfried Silbermann.
It
is, of course, surprising that Burney speaks of him in the present tense, since
at the time of his German tour Gottfried had been dead for 19 years, and
Ebeling, if not Burney himself, would surely have been aware of this: but news
travelled slowly in the eighteenth century, and perhaps even then there was a
tendency to confuse the identities of these two Silbermanns.
Having
established that Gottfried was the likely maker, how wonderful it would be if
we could refer to clavichords made by him, to establish the compass and other
technical features of Bach's instrument. Sadly, none survive, at any rate no
genuine ones. There are at least six
surviving clavichords attributed to Johann Heinrich Silbermann: these cannot
tell us directly about the nature of Bach's instrument, but they may represent
a later stage in the tradition which produced it. I'll come back to this is a moment.
In
the absence of actual instruments, what other clues do we have as to the nature
of Bach's clavichord? It is often
assumed that it must have been a big five-octave unfretted one, but this is not
necessarily so. Such instruments were indeed made in the 1740's, but fretted
clavichords with a smaller compass would have been far more common. C.P.E. Bach
himself says in his Essay on the True Art
of Playing Keyboard Instruments the famous Versuch that "in addition to a lasting, caressing tone"
(note that emphasis, once again, on sustaining power) "[a clavichord
should have] the proper number of keys, extending at the very least from the
great octave C to the three-lined e".
Admittedly,
this was published in 1753, nearly twenty years before the date of Burney's
visit: but in fact much of Bach's solo keyboard music will fit into this Ce3 range. The "Farewell" Rondo which was
presumably meant to be played on the clavichord which inspired it appears to
be an exception, since it requires one semitone lower, namely BB natural: however, since neither C natural or C# are required, either of these notes could be tuned down in order
to play the rondo. And Grotthuss's
cheerful companion piece, Joy on receiving
the Silbermann clavichord, does seem to have been intended for a clavichord
with a compass of Ce3,
limits which it touches several times but does not exceed.
What
about fretting? In his prescriptions in
the Versuch, Bach does not mention
it. It is a remarkable fact that,
despite its adventurous modulations and extreme chromaticism, there is nothing
in the Rondo or Grotthuss's response
which cannot be realised on a clavichord which is diatonically fretted on the
usual German system. I have not been able to examine all Bach's keyboard works,
but my impression is that the same applies to most of them.
It
is therefore at least possible that Bach's famous Silbermann clavichord was a
diatonically-fretted instrument of modest size, with a compass of four octaves
and a major third.
In
this case, though, how to explain those pieces which are undoubtedly clavichord
music, but which go below bottom C? An example is the well-known Free Fantasy in
F# minor, the Empfindungen
fantasy.
Well,
the Silbermann was not Bach's only clavichord.
From the inventory prepared by his widow, it appears that he owned two
clavichords at the time of his death: one by Christian Ernst Friederici and one
by Heinrich Wilhelm Jungcurth. The
likelihood is that these were five-octave unfretted instruments, like the fine
example by Friederici in the Leipzig museum, and that he possessed at least one
of them in 1781 when he disposed of the Silbermann.
Bach
expressed his admiration of Friederici clavichords in a letter to Johann Nikolaus
Forkel dated November 1773 roughly a year after Burney's visit. He said:
I
greatly prefer Friederici clavichords to those of Fritz and Hass because of
their construction and the absence of octave strings in the bass, a thing I
cannot bear.
Barthold
Fritz and the Hass family were local Hamburg makers, whereas Friederici's
workshop was at Gera in Saxony. Those
of you who have grown old with the BCS, so to speak, may remember one of our
earliest meetings when John Barnes compared the clavichords of the Saxon makers
with those made in Hamburg. These are
two distinct schools. Some of the more
obvious differences between them are listed on your handouts: the Saxon instruments, for example, have
plain wood cases with soundboard roses, whereas the Hamburg ones are painted
and gilded and without roses. More
significantly, octave strings which we know Bach disliked are used on the
Hamburg clavichords but never in the Saxon ones. The most celebrated exponent perhaps the creator of the Saxon
style, the man who trained Friederici, was Gottfried Silbermann himself.
Now
C.P.E. Bach, remember, was brought up in Saxony in Leipzig and it seems to
me that he remained faithful to the Saxon type of clavichord all his life,
disdaining the Hamburg product despite his long residence in that city. His ownership of a clavichord by Jungcurth
seems, at first sight, to contradict this, since Jungcurth was registered as a
harpsichord maker in Hamburg: however, he was a Saxon by birth and (probably)
by training, so I suggest that he may well have brought the Saxon style with
him to Hamburg, where it would be natural for him to seek the friendship and
patronage of his illustrious musical compatriot. (Incidentally, a clavichord by this maker dated 1760 survived
until 1885 when it was shown at The International Inventions exhibition in
London, but it has most frustratingly never been heard of since)
The
only thing that is slightly surprising about this conclusion that Bach's
instrument was of Saxon type is the emphasis which the contemporary observers
place on its sustaining powers. John
Barnes, in the discussion following his talk, suggested that the Saxon
instruments were characterised by their quick response, whereas it was the
Hamburg ones which had a really long-sustained tone. Modern Hass copies such as the one which will be used later
today in Derek Adlam's recital certainly don't seem lacking in sustaining
power, or in any of the other qualities needed to perform Bach's music
effectively. It is interesting that
most of the artists in Francis's survey of recordings coming after this
chose Hamburg-style instruments.
Before
I pass on to Haydn, what about the other question we posed earlier: why did
Bach sell his beloved Silbermann in 1781?
We do not know; but maybe it was because the compass which seemed
adequate in the 1750's, when the Versuch
was published, was out of date by 1781. If Bach possessed other fine
instruments of the type he admired (such as the Friederici) with a larger compass,
he might have decided thetime had come to let his Silbermann go to a suitably
good home, of course.
Now
to Haydn. In the early 1750's, when
Bach was writing his Versuch, Haydn,
in his early twenties, was a freelance musician in Vienna. Years later he recalled for his biographer
Georg August Griesinger his unheated, leaky room and exiguous wardrobe, but
declared:
Sitting
at my old worm-eaten clavichord, I did not envy any king his luck.
When
later he entered the service of the Esterhazy court, at least two clavichords
were at his disposal, and he must have used them during that great period of
experimentation when he developed his keyboard idiom. He certainly used a clavichord in his final, great composing
period, after leaving full-time employment with the Esterhazys in 1790.
The
clavichord of this late period has actually survived, and I shall describe it
in a moment. We know nothing about the
early worm-eaten instrument, but it is most likely to have been a humble
four-octave fretted one: commonplace, cheap and going out of fashion, the only
kind of instrument which an impoverished musician could afford.
It
is harder to be certain about the kind of clavichord Haydn would have used
during his middle period at Esterhazy.
If we assume that it was a local product (rather than one imported from
Saxony, Berlin or Hamburg) then we may get some clues from an anonymous
clavichord which was sold here in London at Sotheby's auction rooms in 1993,
which is one of the rare examples of a surviving Viennese clavichord of the
mid-eighteenth century. It is fretted
diatonically, and for its compass, FF to f3 it is remarkably small:
only just over 4 feet in length (which compares, for example, with the Leipzig
Friederici which is 5 foot 8 inches long).
In part this is achieved by the use of the so-called 'Viennese' short
and broken bass octave. This
arrangement of keys is found on harpsichords and pianos, as well as
clavichords, made in Vienna before about 1775: your handouts have a
diagram. It saves a good deal of space
because the lowest octave occupies the width of only four naturals rather than
seven. Haydn must have been familiar
with the arrangement, since there are left-hand stretches in some keyboard
works which cannot be played on any other keyboard: an example occurs, for
example, in the Acht Sauschneider
variations (no doubt Derek will cope with it admirably on a conventional
keyboard).
Interestingly,
this clavichord has a scale which suggests the use of iron strings in the
treble. A description and photograph
can be found in Richard Maunder's recent book Keyboard Instruments in Eighteenth-Century Vienna.
Unfortunately
I cannot say anything about its tonal qualities: the original is unplayable, and as far as I know no copies have
yet been attempted.
One
clavichord almost certainly owned by Haydn has survived: this is the instrument
dated 1794 by Johann Bohak in the Royal College of Music Museum here in
London. An interesting description and
history of this instrument by John Barnes is contained in De Clavicordio III. It is an unfretted instrument with a full
five octaves from FFf3: no short-octave complications this time,
but at 4 foot 10 inches long it is still quite compact for a five-octave
instrument. Once again, iron treble
strings seem to have been intended: at least one other surviving Viennese
clavichord had them, and so this may have been a distinctive feature of
Viennese clavichords, compared with the Hamburg and Saxon ones which always
seem to have had brass strings.
Unfortunately
the Bohak clavichord underwent a drastic modernisation in the 1830's, so that
it is impossible to be absolutely certain about some features of its original
design. In the circumstances, it was
thought best not to attempt to restore it, so it remains unstrung and therefore
unheard. To judge from modern
reconstructions, it might have had a sweet, quite long-sustained but not very
strong sound.
I
would suggest, though, that it is probably wrong to think of it as the one
ideal medium for interpreting Haydn's clavichord music, as the Haydn clavichord. He
acquired it very late in his career, when his keyboard works were undoubtedly
created with the English or Viennese fortepiano in mind. The early days of feverish experimentation
at the Clavier were over. A clue to the way he used the clavichord at
this time is given by his reported words on presenting the instrument as a
gift to the young Demetrius Lichtenthal in 1803:
Here
I make you a present of this instrument for your boy... in case when he is older
he should care to learn upon it. I have composed the greater part of my Creation upon it.
No
doubt Haydn continued to play and improvise on the clavichord as he had done
all his life, but I suggest the main use he had for it at this late date was as
an aid to composing large works for voices and orchestra. We must accept, I think, that by the 1790's
the clavichord was no longer at the cutting edge of musical advance, as it had
been at the time of C.P.E. Bach.
How
interesting it would be, though, to hear Haydn's keyboard music on a
mid-eighteenth-century Viennese clavichord, like the one sold at Sotheby's in
1993. So far as I am aware, no-one has
yet tried to copy this kind of instrument.
I very much hope one of the instrument makers of today will soon rise
to this challenge.
Talk
given by Peter Bavington to the British Clavichord Society meeting in London,
21 November 1998.