One player’s view:
Colin Booth asks: The harpsichord: An instrument for the head – or the heart?

Thirty years ago the Early Music Revival was flavour of the month. Throughout the world, the rediscovery of Baroque music and the upsurge of interest in original instruments, coincided with a widespread reaction against the overtly romantic performance of music in general. The foot-tapping, but essentially simple and repetitive rhythms of concertos by Vivaldi – or indeed, Bach – suddenly had a huge appeal, while the intellectual approach to music exemplified by counterpoint – in other words, The Fugue – also appealed to those who found themselves turned off by “romantic slush”. The harpsichord, in particular, the Baroque instrument par excellence, was liked partly because of its apparently neutral and clean sound projection. Where the piano moved ones sensibilities, the harpsichord did not cloy – indeed it could not cloy.

Nowadays we have moved far beyond such a simplistic approach, both to the instruments and to the music. We want some of our Baroque music to move us too, and several decades of research into repertoire and performance practice have gone some way to re-discovering the techniques which allowed our 18th century predecessors to be moved by the music of their time.

But can the harpsichord actually move the listener? Certainly, it helps greatly if the ear is trained by frequently hearing good playing

(see also – Radio 3: The harpsichord’s worst enemy?).

But decades of good instruments and good teaching have allowed us to reach a point where some harpsichordists can not only thrill an audience through the brilliance which their instrument so readily projects – but occasionally move them too.

The pianist Steven Kovacovicz has written of Colin Booth’s playing: "..the most emotional Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue I have ever heard – on any instrument."
And Rob Barnett, writing for Classical Music on the Web, commented (on Colin’s performance of music by the neglected Elizabethan genius, Peter Philips): "One is not accustomed to intense pathos or drama in such music, but a surprising measure of these qualities does come through"

Colin is indeed passionate about his instrument, and his approach to performance is deeply felt. But an instrument like the harpsichord has to work on a different level from the piano, in seeking to excite the emotions. Pianists have very overt devices at their disposal: in particular, they can use dynamic nuance, in a very personal way. Indeed, pianists are judged in particular by their ability to convey their own personality through the music. Even a very good harpsichord can only exploit to a small degree, variation of dynamic through touch. Subtle timing, articulation, placing of notes, and their actual quantity or duration at a particular moment – all these have long been recognised as the harpsichordist’s tools.

Above all, although no two performances will ever be the same, harpsichordists succeed best when they subdue their own personality and seek to elucidate the intentions of the composer, or of a player of the composer’s own epoch. In Colin’s case, the depth of his interest in this, led to an in-depth study of notation and performance conventions. Following ten years of lecturing and research, his book on the subject, intended to help all keyboard players to get further "inside" the score, whatever their instrument, is entitled: Did Bach Really Mean That? – deceptive notation in Baroque keyboard music. It will be published by Positif Press of Oxford, during 2008.