134 ❧ chapter thirteen
faces and gave me to understand that none of this carried beyond the edge
of the stage and that it simply wasn’t getting across. There has been no fur-
ther progress on the full fi ve-octave Italian harpsichord since then. I’ve had no
chance to make further experiments, and part of the problem is that no instru-
ment maker has found a model that he is willing to copy.
The most recent Scarlatti program, the one that I played here in October,
represents the latest views. It was pillaged entirely from pupils of mine. It was
made up entirely from sonatas that I had taught at various times and decided
I wanted to play myself. It has been looked at fi rst from the outside as I heard
pupils dealing with sonatas and advising them, and then underwent the neces-
sary transformation from the inside as I had to deal with it myself. By this time,
the registrations had become so pure that there is not inside any one of the
eighteen sonatas a single change of color. There is no change even between
clearly separated sections. Each sonata has a color for itself and these colors
are greatly reduced below what the possibilities of the instrument might have
been. I’m using today, since it happened to be available, rather than one of
the historic instruments, the instrument on which I played that program. It
happens to be the instrument on which I make my current compromises and
is perhaps more illustrative of what I’m talking about than a genuine French
harpsichord would be. But I found increasingly in preparing this program, and
also in teaching Scarlatti, that having gotten rid of the 16-foot a long time ago,
I now have a strong desire to get rid of the 4-foot, too. The texture of the
entire works of Scarlatti somehow seems to be conceived in a playing with one
medium, a battle against one kind of resistance, a fi xed level which Scarlatti
uses as a point of departure for making his color effects, his contrasts. Even,
for example, changing colors between the two sonatas of a pair seems to me
increasingly a dubious procedure; the playing, for example, of the fi rst sonata
of a pair on coupled 8-foots and then the adding of a 4-foot for the second
sonata, which happens to be a little more brilliant. Well, I do that still in this
program but I wonder if I will always continue to do it. The real problem, of
course, occurs in the real discrepancy between the interpretive faithfulness
and the performer’s desire and need to make an effect that comes in mixed
recital programs, because if one concedes that the ideal Scarlatti instrument
is this restricted in range of color, it’s going to sound awfully dull on the same
program with other music in which the full resources of the instrument are
exploited. This is the principal thing which has held me back in a mixed pro-
gram from doing a really pure Scarlatti registration. This applies also to cer-
tain registrations of French music which I suspect of having been conceived
much more modestly. One is tempted all the time to make the analogy with
graphic art: that much of the best and fi nest harpsichord music is working
deliberately in a restricted medium like the medium of engraving or of certain
forms of drawing; that the use of color, while it heightens the superfi cial effect,
Kirkpatrick.indd 134Kirkpatrick.indd 134 2/8/2017 9:58:20 AM 2 / 8 / 2017 9 : 58 : 20 AM
rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
#1