Reflections of an American Harpsichordist Unpublished Memoirs, Essays, and Lectures of Ralph Kirkpatrick

2 ❧ introduction
Although Kirkpatrick had fi rst seen a harpsichord in 1927, he did not really
become interested in the instrument until his junior year at Harvard, when
the university acquired a harpsichord and he was given the opportunity to
learn how to play the instrument. In May 1930, he gave his fi rst public harpsi-
chord recital in Paine Hall at Harvard. After graduating in 1931, he traveled to
Europe on a John Knowles Paine Fellowship. He studied with Nadia Boulanger
and Wanda Landowska in Paris, with Arnold Dolmetsch in England, and with
Günther Ramin and Heinz Tiessen in Germany. Even at that young age, he
had strong opinions about the musicians with whom he studied and clearly
wanted to gain as much information about technique, instruments and instru-
mentation, and music theory from as many musicians as he could. He was not
focused on studying solely with Wanda Landowska, as some musicians were,
but sought out other musicians from whom he thought he could gain broader
musical experience beyond harpsichord specialization. As many people know,
he had very mixed feelings about Landowska, and his experiences and opin-
ions about her were revealed in letters that he wrote to his family while study-
ing with her.
In January 1933, he made his European concert debut in Berlin performing
Bach’s Goldberg Variations. He also performed several concerts in Italy, including
a clavichord recital in 1933 at the Florence villa of Bernard Berenson. He was
a member of the faculty at the Mozarteum in Salzburg during the summers of
1933 and 1934 and interacted with many musical and literary luminaries there.
In 1936, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to study seventeenth- and
eighteenth-century chamber and keyboard music in Europe. He worked exten-
sively in libraries in Paris, London, and Berlin and accumulated a vast amount
of material on the performance of music prior to 1800. In 1938, he inaugu-
rated a festival of Baroque music at the Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg,
Virginia, and for a number of years he continued to be the adviser and princi-
pal performer in annual festivals there. In 1940, he was appointed to the music
faculty at Yale University and he remained at Yale until his retirement in 1976.
His pupils included distinguished harpsichordists such as William Christie,
Albert Fuller, Mark Kroll, Martin Pearlman, and Fernando Valenti. In the
1940s, he gave numerous recitals throughout the United States and Europe.
He was one of the fi rst artists invited to perform in Germany in 1948 through
the sponsorship of the US government’s Visiting Artist Program. He played a
number of concerts in Berlin, including one with the Berlin Philharmonic, as
well as a concert in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchestra.
While in Europe during the 1940s, he continued his research into the life
and works of Domenico Scarlatti that he had begun in the late 1930s. When
he visited Spain to do research in various libraries, he discovered descen-
dants of Domenico Scarlatti living in Madrid who provided him with valuable
sources of information. Twelve years of research culminated in Kirkpatrick’s
KKirkpatrick.indd 2irkpatrick.indd 2 2/8/2017 9:56:12 AM 2 / 8 / 2017 9 : 56 : 12 AM