Reflections of an American Harpsichordist Unpublished Memoirs, Essays, and Lectures of Ralph Kirkpatrick

on editing bach’s GOLDBERG VARIATIONS ❧ 101
a greater knowledge of German instruments of the eighteenth century in the
sense that, thanks to the work of Ernst, Hubbard, Russell, and Boalch, we now
know how little is known about the German harpsichord compared with what
we know about those of France and England, for example. The myth of the
Berlin “Bach harpsichord” had been exploded. Although its legendary connec-
tion with Bach is long known to have originated in the late nineteenth century,
it has now been shown that its very disposition, as described by Rust in 1859,
was already the result of a post-eighteenth-century alteration.
While much in the section on ornamentation is still valid, the short grace
note and its combinations with the mordant should have been more amply dis-
cussed. Everywhere, the term grace note could better be substituted for appoggia-
tura. Furthermore, something might have been done, like quoting from earlier
French sources, to affect the disproportionate and misleading authority con-
ferred on C. P. E. Bach and later writers. Mention could now be made of the
important distinction between accenting the auxiliary note and throwing the
accent onto the main note, which in practice I consider more important than
the distinction between anticipating grace notes or playing them on the beat.
When I look at the sections on phrasing, tempo, dynamics, and general
interpretation, I feel much as I did in 1956, that intervention is no longer
possible, that there is much which is acceptable, but that there is also much
which I would now say or already have said differently. On the whole, however,
the principal need for qualifi cation, annotation, or revision occurs in the sec-
tions dealing with ornamentation and with harpsichords. Otherwise, I feel as
I suppose others do on looking back over an even longer span, that the forty
immensely varied and changing years since the date of that preface have served
less as a separation and more as a connection with the person who wrote it and
the persons who caused me to write it.
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