Peter Bavington, London

[This article appeared in British Clavichord Society Newsletter No. 27 (October 2003)]

John Shaw’s letter in BCS Newsletter 26 refers to Robert Browning’s poem ‘A Toccata of Galuppi’s’, in which that composer is said to have

sat and played Toccatas, stately at the clavichord.

‘I am wondering,’ he says, ‘if Galuppi composed any Toccatas, and if the instrument he is playing in the poem is perhaps more likely to be a harpsichord than a clavichord.’

On the face of it, everything points to Browning having made a series of errors. The poem was published at the clavichord’s very nadir – 1855 – when we might think it unlikely that the poet had ever heard or seen one; moreover the evidence for the use of the clavichord in eighteenth-century Italy is sparse, whereas we know that the harpsichord was commonplace. A great quantity of keyboard music by Galuppi survives in manuscripts, but most of it has never been printed; it is not well known, even today, and one might think it unlikely that Browning, in 1855, had any access to it. The poem seems to play fast and loose with technical musical terms, introducing that fabulous creature the diminished sixth, and speaking mysteriously of ‘commiserating’ sevenths. There is even an error in the composer’s Christian name (‘Baldassaro’ instead of ‘Baldassare’).

Poetic licence was interpreted pretty freely in the mid-nineteenth century, and poets were sometimes ready to fire off verses without feeling any compulsion to check their facts first. A famous example is Tennyson’s magnificently sonorous line from Locksley Hall (1842):

Let the great world spin for ever down the ringing grooves of change

which is based on a complete misunderstanding of the nature of railway technology (admittedly, at that time a new thing).

Is this another case? Did Browning bring in ‘Toccatas’ and ‘clavichord’ merely to add colour and euphony to his verse? Let us look a little more closely.

The first point to be made is that the poem is a dramatic monologue: the speaker cannot be Browning himself since, referring to the Rialto in Venice, he says

I was never out of England – it’s as if I saw it all

whereas at this date Browning had made more than one visit to Italy, including Venice.

Later in the poem, it becomes clear that the person speaking is a mathematician or scientist, who could perhaps be forgiven for lack of musical knowledge. But was he so ignorant, after all?

On the question whether Galuppi wrote any toccatas, authorities differ. In 1887 Browning himself commented: ‘As for Galuppi, I had once in my possession two huge manuscript volumes almost exclusively made up of his “Toccata-pieces” – apparently a slighter form of the Sonata’; this is quoted in the notes by Daniel Karlin to the Penguin edition of selected poems, which also state baldly that ‘Galuppi composed many keyboard pieces but no toccatas’. However, the New Grove article by James L. Jackman credits him with ‘125 or more sonatas, toccatas, divertimenti, lessons etc. for the keyboard’, surviving in manuscript. On this point, I think we must give the benefit of the doubt to Browning. I wonder what became of his ‘two huge manuscript volumes’: could they be among the Galuppi MSS in the Fitzwilharn Museum or the British Library?

What about that diminished sixth? This means a minor sixth diminished chromatically by one semitone: an example might be G♯–E♭. Play this on the modern equal-tempered piano and all you hear is an open fifth, with no suggestion of ‘sigh on sigh’ about it. But in Galuppi’s day mean-tone tuning was still common; and in mean-tone G♯–E♭ is a genuine diminished sixth – an agonizingly discordant interval, which composers sometimes deliberately used for extreme effect.

And the clavichord? Even if Galuppi had one, is it likely that he would have played it in company? P. Turner, in his edition of Men and Women (OUP, 1972), points out that the clavichord’s soft tone would be ‘almost inaudible against the noise of general conversation’. But isn’t that the point? The couple in the poem have to ‘break talk off’ in order to listen.

And the fact is that Galuppi did own a clavichord; about that, at least, there can be no doubt. Charles Burney visited him in Venice on 16 August 1770, and in The Present State of Music in France and Italy (London, 1773) reported

He was so obliging as to present me to Signora Galuppi, to show me his house … and to carry me into his working room, with only a little clavichord in it, where, he told me, he dirtied paper.

Browning had access to his father’s immense private library, and it is quite conceivable that he had actually read and remembered this passage.

It seems that Browning’s scientist might not have been so wide of the mark after all. Perhaps this should warn us to beware of jumping to conclusions on the basis of what we think we know, a constant danger when dealing with history. With further research, it might be possible to answer John Shaw’s questions with greater certainty. A catalogue of Galuppi’s keyboard compositions, based on a careful examination of all the surviving sources, would be particularly helpful; but, as far as I know, none exists at present.