Chapter Five

On Harpsichords

and Their Transport

A few weeks after I had fi rst entered Harvard in the fall of 1927, I saw a harp-
sichord for the fi rst time being played by Arthur Whiting in the fi rst concert
of his annual “expositions of chamber music.” When as a child I had asked my
mother what a harpsichord was, she must have mentioned its two keyboards.
Keyboards had always fascinated me, and on Sunday mornings I gazed intently
at the multiple manuals of the organ above the minister’s pulpit. What grati-
fi ed me most was their color, that they were not white like those of pianos but
golden brown; perhaps they were made of boxwood. But in 1927, neither mul-
tiple keyboards, nor Arthur Whiting’s program, nor the fl aming Chinese red
interior of his harpsichord led me to any further investigation.
Two years later, on learning that one of these same Dolmetsch-Chickering
harpsichords had been given to the Music Department of Harvard, I obtained
permission to examine it at close range. The encounter prompted me to
request access to the instrument for the rest of the college year. In May 1930,
at a concert of the Harvard Musical Club in Paine Hall, I made my fi rst public
appearance as a harpsichordist. I played the “Earl of Salisbury Pavan” and its
Galliard by Orlando Gibbons, and an A-minor Fantasy and Fugue of Bach.
By December of that year, I had already decided that I wished to specialize
in the cultivation of early keyboard music and most particularly in the perfor-
mance of Bach on the harpsichord and clavichord. The award of a travelling
fellowship to Europe enabled me further to pursue my aims. When I commit-
ted myself to the harpsichord, I little foresaw the adventures into which the
instrument and its transport would lead me. Many of them have been exasper-
atingly repetitious, but after more than forty years, they can still take entirely
new and unsuspected turns. Most of these episodes have been unpleasant, and
I look back on them all with little satisfaction, except as in their fantastic and
varied ways they represented tests of fortitude or challenges to keep my temper.
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