Reflections of an American Harpsichordist Unpublished Memoirs, Essays, and Lectures of Ralph Kirkpatrick

memoirs, 1933–77 ❧ 17
In the spring of 1938 I was put in touch with the authorities of Colonial
Williamsburg, Inc. Some elementary research on the role of music in prerevo-
lutionary Williamsburg had uncovered a few anecdotes, inventories, newspaper
advertisements of music offered for sale, and of theatrical performances. Now
the idea was being explored of putting on some concerts in the Governor’s
Palace. On the basis of the research that had already been done, supplemented
by the very considerable bibliographical command of the music of the period
that I had gained from my recent work in the British Museum, I put together
three programs of harpsichord music that had either been defi nitely known
or that could be supposed likely to have been known in eighteenth-century
Williamsburg. I believe these were the fi rst concerts ever held in the recon-
structed Governor’s Palace.
In those days there was scarcely anything to do in Williamsburg in the eve-
nings and those tourists who came to lull themselves in dreams of an eigh-
teenth century that never really existed, or at least that never existed in the
terms on which it is presented to the twentieth-century visitor, had no choice
but to swap centuries in the local movie theater or go to bed. The audiences
that were attracted to my fi rst concerts in Williamsburg were quite unaccus-
tomed to listening to music at all, or at least not in concerts. But they brought
a freshness and simplicity of response that made up in large measure for their
lack of sophistication.
The setting was beautiful. The palace ballroom and the supper room behind
it were furnished in impeccable taste—indeed, in a taste doubtless far supe-
rior to that of any eighteenth-century inhabitant. All was ablaze with candles,
and the garden patios to the front and rear of the palace were lit with fl ares.
Black fl unkies in handsome liveries guided the arriving guests into the palace,
and Williamsburg ladies showed them to their places while their every move-
ment within hoop skirts and not very tightly laced bodices betrayed more of
the twentieth century than of the eighteenth. To the right of the supper room
door stood an eighteenth-century English harpsichord looking very hand-
some, but which was actually in such a sorry state of repair that I could only
use it for those encores in which I could improvise an accompaniment that
would cover up the missing notes, as, for example, in “Believe Me, If All Those
Endearing Young Charms,” which, to everyone’s general satisfaction, I would
produce at the end of a concert, making them forget that it was also the tune
for “Fair Harvard.” On the left of the supper room door, raised on a platform
for visibility, my Dolmetsch-Chickering harpsichord (with a false pedigree in
the program notes relating it to Handel) glowed sumptuously red and gold in
the candlelight.
But then came I, the central anachronism of all concerts that I have ever
played in historic spots. For I have steadfastly refused ever to put on a wig or
knee breeches. Under no circumstances would I do this under my own name,
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