Reflections of an American Harpsichordist Unpublished Memoirs, Essays, and Lectures of Ralph Kirkpatrick

the performance of “early music” ❧ 163
on the inevitable problems that arise when a work of art is pulled out of its
own time and out of the context in which it was placed and intended to be
performed.
We might attempt a provisional catalogue of some of the vices and virtues
that characterize the crusaders for early music. Public vice, so to speak, was
dominated in the world of music at the beginning of the twentieth century by
professionals who were thoroughly saturated with nineteenth-century concepts
which they carried into their bread-winning in a way which made them not
only reluctant but unable to reconsider the style of their performances. The
private virtues were more easily found in the unspoiled amateur who, though
he may have lacked skill and cultivation, was not stuffed with prejudices and
undesirable habits. As a result, much early music was put squarely into the
hands of amateurs and confi ned to small groups in intimate surroundings.
In public, it was diffi cult to practice any of the private virtues of dedicated
amateurs in the face of overwhelming nineteenth-century concepts and preju-
dices. The necessity of putting older music across, of winning a place for it
against the fi rmly established prejudices of nineteenth-century trained musi-
cians was a cause of many of the antics of the best-known practitioners of early
music. Concert programs had to be devised in such a way as to make old music
acceptable. It was not until the very late 1930s, for example, that Landowska
played a complete harpsichord recital. What salvaged many a program of hers
was the execution at the end of the concert of the Mozart “Turkish March,”
fi rst on the piano and then on the harpsichord with every conceivable change
of registration thrown in. The very presentation of this music in concert halls
and the necessities of its arrangement on programs often produced a complete
falsifi cation of the context of the music. And the conservatory professionalism
of the performer often excluded any element of improvisation and even the
improvisatory realization of the continuo part, so that the aesthetic of the set-
piece performer was relentlessly imposed on an aesthetic which was basically
one of improvisation and freedom.
As for the private vices, fi rst on the list came, and still comes, incompetence.
I need not describe it further. And with it came a need for a kind of shelter,
under the cloak of old music or of crusading, from artistic responsibility and
from criticism by professionals. As against these private vices, we have the con-
spicuous virtues of professional competence, elegance, the need in front of the
public to be interesting, the assumption of artistic responsibility and the obli-
gation to practice in performance what one preaches. They reach their highest
point when the desire to please is dominated by the desire to convince.
But none of these early crusaders could see the extent of the victory that
was coming. It was won in the years 1939 to 1950, largely as a result of the very
Industrial Revolution against which the cult of early music had begun, and by
the phonograph which made accessible vast amounts of early music.
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