A harpsichordist’s handbook

Abstract

This new volume in the Cambridge Companion series brings together 17 studies on ‘just about every aspect of the harpsichord’, as the editor proclaims, covering a period from the late 15th century to the present. In his introduction Mark Kroll writes: ‘As a harpsichordist, I have long felt that we needed a comprehensive but user-friendly source of information about the instrument and its repertoire’ (p.1). Inevitably, there is some overlap with earlier publications on this subject, especially with Keyboard music before 1700, ed. A. Silbiger (1995; 2/2004) and Eighteenth-century keyboard music, ed. R. Marshall (1992; 2/2003) but there is also a great deal of important new information, especially about countries and regions that have hardly been discussed in previous studies. The book’s 17 chapters are the work of 14 contributors, active as performers, university academics, or both. Material is sometimes duplicated between chapters. The essays can be divided in four categories: genres (virginalists, contemporary harpsichord music); composers (Domenico Scarlatti, J. S. Bach, G. F. Handel); countries and territories (England, France, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Russia, the Netherlands, northern Germany, south Germany, the Austro-Hungarian empire, and colonial Spanish and Portuguese America); and the instrument (its history, construction, tuning and temperament). Standing by itself is an essay about the role of the harpsichord in ensemble playing.