140 ❧ chapter thirteen
say, vastly stimulating. One of the pieces that he played for me was the E-major
Sonata [K. 380]. It was, in terms of what I demonstrated about the instrumen-
tation and the stylistic source, I think, demonstrably completely wrong; but it
was ravishingly beautiful. Although I was urged to speak my opinion in matters
of style, I simply knew that I would destroy something very beautiful if I said
one word, so I simply said with perfect sincerity that I thought it very beautiful.
I didn’t say a word about the fact that it wasn’t at all, it seemed to me, what it
was intended to be. It had simply been turned into something else. In general,
I think I noted here, and with other pianists, a certain timidity about some of
the really big, crashing passages, the passages for unrestrained thumping of
drums, and blowing of out-of-tune wind instruments, and for village orches-
tras. I think one can afford to let go, I don’t think that there’s any danger of
upsetting basic proportions. I suggested this, I remember in the case of one
sonata, to Mr. Horowitz—“I wonder how this would sound with that particular
quality that you get out of such-and-such a Hungarian Rhapsody”—and so he
tried it and it was absolutely gorgeous. But he wouldn’t go through with it. He
felt that it was irreverent and sacrilegious.
Here are a few more backward glances at themes that came up; for example,
the infl uence of an instrument or of the concept of an original instrument.
Certainly we are abundantly aware of what we can learn from original French
instruments by those in this room. We have had no original Scarlatti instru-
ment to study, viva voce, and yet we have been able to piece together a series of
ideas through documents and by deduction from the music about what such
an instrument must have been. And I think my personal history will show you
how far-reaching such an infl uence can be.
What are the requirements for such an instrument for a player? This leads
me back to a point that I forgot to make in the talk about Couperin and the
French harpsichord. It was my entire reason for bringing in Couperin’s decla-
mation and for reading aloud to you in French the other day, and it got skipped
inadvertently. No matter what the diversities of individual instruments may be
or of the manners in which they are regulated and voiced, I think they must
be able to declaim, they must be able to speak with something better than a
cleft palate, they must be able to pronounce consonants as well as vowels. And
this is particularly true of the French harpsichord. It’s true, as I have already
intimated, of the Scarlatti harpsichord. The Scarlatti harpsichord must be able
to purr and it must be able to roar. It must be able to execute those sharp bru-
tal sforzatos of the coloratura chords, which certainly were never meant to be
softened up and arpeggiated, as I showed you in that short example, the kind
of thing that goes on . . .
[Plays music]
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rick simeone
(Rick Simeone)
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