VOWS OF SILENCE
for Robert A. Johnson
While completing my M.A. Degree at the University of Washington, I signed up for piano lessons from Else Geissmar, a German lady who fled her homeland at the beginning of WW II and settled in Seattle. A strict technician and precise taskmaster, as one might have expected from a Teutonic musical dominatrix, with iron fingers on her tiny hands, she spoke in a heavily accented English. Fortunately, she possessed a quirky sense of humor as well as splendid musicianship, and I enjoyed her company as well as my lessons and rapid progress with her. Else was not the only European musician who had sought refuge at the University, and I soon enjoyed the experience of meeting and getting to know her colleague, Eva Heinitz, an expert cellist and master of the viola da gamba, whose English was less accomplished, but whose memories of her journey to America were fantastic and whose tales, both musical and historical, were legendary. A stout woman, almost square in shape, Eva, when she sat down to play, became simply angelic.
Within a few years of her arrival, Eva had transformed the Music Department at the University, and, during the Summer, performed at the Bach Festival in Carmel, California. She brought, in addition to her German background and remarkable technique, a great love for Bach, for Baroque Music, and managed somehow, in the early 1950’s, to put together a group of musicians to join her in presenting programs featuring recorders, harpsichords, lutenists, a consort of viols, and other baroque instruments – instruments and sounds previously unknown to many of us at that time. Entranced by the sounds of these unfamiliar keyboards, with dark keys where the white ones are on a piano, and white ones where the black keys usually reside, I ordered a virginal, my first plucked-string instrument, by mail, from the English builder, Alec Hodsdon, in 1959.
Meanwhile, I completed my Master’s degree, received a Fulbright Scholarship to France, and, during that year, made a trip to Lavenham, Suffolk, to visit Mr. Hodsdon while he was building the instrument. Thus began my rocky career as a harpsichordist.
Returning from France in the Summer of 1960, I pursued a doctoral program at UCLA in French Literature and Civilization, where I also planned to study the harpsichord. My experience in the academic environment turned out to be less than pleasant and led me to abandon an academic life. In a lucky quirk of fate, the US Government, just as I was about to flee UCLA, sent a letter to French Departments in a number of major universities requesting single, male persons who were fluent in French to participate in Government-sponsored gift programs to nine, newly-independent African nations. Each of the nine nations had the option to receive a Mobile Medical Vehicle or a Mobile Cinema Vehicle. Both were designed to travel out of cities and into remote areas, many without electricity. Several of the larger nations were to receive both vehicles.
Marina Preussner, the Russian secretary of the UCLA French Department, my great friend and ally, in her infinite wisdom persuaded me to complete the term, apply for the Government program, and thereby receive a letter of recommendation from the Chairman of the Department while making a graceful exit from UCLA. Accepted into the program, I attended a Summer crash course in African Studies at Indiana University as preparation, following which I went on assignment for a year to the Congo Republic, where I was given a modified Jeep filled with mobile cinema equipment, instructed to choose a team of young Congolese, and teach them, in French, to operate the equipment, repair film damaged in the harsh, equatorial climate, and program tours into remote Congo bush country to show “educational” films in regions without electricity to people who had never seen films. It was clear from my second week in Brazzaville that the Minister of Education coveted the vehicle and that the minute my job was completed and I was out of the picture, the vehicle would be his, and whatever programs had begun during my tenure would end with my departure.
Returning to the US in the late Spring of 1961, I found a job in Salinas replacing, for the remainder of the semester, a French teacher at the local high school who departed suddenly on maternity leave. Thanks to a suggestion by undergraduate friends from Berkeley, Donna and Richard Sloan, who were then living on the coast at Pacific Grove, just south of Monterey, I found a room there, rented a harpsichord, and decided to seriously practice the instrument and learn the literature. With another stroke of good luck, I met and became friendly with Alan Curtis, a baroque scholar and fine harpsichordist on the faculty at UC Berkeley, who agreed to give me weekly lessons.
Alan introduced me to the keyboard music of Louis Couperin, François Couperin, Domenico Scarlatti, Antonio Soler, Jan Sweelinck, Bach, of course, and a host of lesser lights in the baroque stellar firmament, and encouraged my musical sophistication by playing entire Handel and Monteverdi operas, while we watched the scores, as well as generally laying out the history and development of several hundred years of glorious keyboard music not only by listening, but by performing it.
During the summer, Donna and Richard introduced me to a gentleman farmer named Wolterding, proprietor of Rancho Rico in Big Sur, who invited me there to spend the Summer. He claimed a great love of music and wanted to “help me with my career.” A closet case of vast proportions and a recovering Christian Scientist, who professed adherence to the tenets of that organization but who liked to drink secretly, he would throw empty wine bottles into a ravine on his ranch and sneak into my room in the middle of the night, uninvited, to help my career with a clandestine blowjob in my “sleep.” His hypocrisy bothered me far more than the blowjobs, and I became uncomfortable. After a week or so at the ranch, he invited two of his neighbors for dinner, Emile Norman and Brooks Clement. Emile was an artist and Brooks an accomplished photographer, carpenter, electrician, and businessman. They had been partners for fifteen years and had built their own house and studio on nearby Pfeiffer Ridge. Handsome, sexy, funny and smart, they were absolutely compelling, and the next day, wearing only a pair of shorts, I set off to find their house. It was a long ways – much further than I’d anticipated – and I arrived parched, sunburned, and hungry. They gave me something to eat and drink, and before I knew it we were all in the pool, naked. I stayed there for a glorious year.
When I brought my things over, Emile was entranced by the Hodsdon virginal and asked if he could make a wood inlay in the lid. I was thrilled, and during the next month or two, he imagined the grain in the walnut lid as a sunset and inlaid, with tiny pieces of rare woods and ivory, a setting sun and a flock of birds flying below, as if to emulate the sounds emanating out of the instrument. By this time, my harpsichord proficiency was improving, the small, rented harpsichord was becoming unsatisfactory, and Alan Curtis had introduced me to the beauties of modern, hand-made harpsichords by Frank Hubbard, Bill Dowd, and Martin Skowronick. I also developed a deep yearning for an authentic, 18th-century instrument and began to make inquiries as to where I might find one.
My research led to Robert Johnson, a Jungian analyst in Los Angeles, who loved baroque music and instruments, and who represented the Neupert organization in the US. (Wittmayer and Neupert were two German companies then making commercial harpsichords and spinets.) A very gentle man, Bob was shy, calm, quiet, and deliberate. He moved slowly, due to an injury which had cost him one leg, and he was delighted in my interest in finding an ancient instrument. He owned a double-manual Ruckers, an early 18th century Flemish instrument which was entrancing, both visually and acoustically. Almost miraculously, within a month or so, he had located a single-manual Kirckman harpsichord from 1764, which was available for $2,500. Emile lent me part of the money to buy it, and we had it delivered to the studio in Big Sur. Bowed and warped by two hundred years of pressure from the strings stretched over the soundboard, it was a gorgeous sight to behold. The walnut case was dark with age, and the brass fittings had not been polished for decades. Emile was appalled when I told him the first thing I intended to do was polish the brass. He was worried about ruining the patina. I told him the brass fittings and hinges were meant to contrast with the wood, not resemble it, and I set about polishing them all. Because of the age of the instrument, I could never bring them back to what they had looked like originally, but they cleaned up successfully and gleamed splendidly against the dark walnut.
Then we began to examine the strings and action. Like a virginal, the unique sound of a harpsichord is produced by a tiny plectrum made of quill lodged in a mechanism on the jack, the wooden shaft which rises and falls as the string is plucked on the way up after the key is struck. A tiny spring on the back of the jack allows the quill mechanism to slide over the string on the return without making a sound, and a small piece of felt damps the sound of the string as the jack returns to its base position. The quills on the Kirckman were in terrible condition, and, due to warping of the frame, a significant number of notes were unplayable.
My responsibility, as part of the household, was to help Emile make woodblock prints, when he was in the mood for that. At other times, when he was sculpting or painting, I was free to practice and work on the Kirckman. During the Summer I restrung the entire instrument, which had three sets of strings, renovated the action, put new springs on the jacks, replaced the felt dampers, and filed the jacks where they rubbed or jammed against the rails. Robert sent me a treatise entitled “The Gentle Art of Quilling,” which began with a sentence stating that quills were best prepared from feathers obtained from “a middle-aged crow or raven.” The second sentence was: “Prepare the quills as you would for a pen.” Because I had no access to middle-aged crows or ravens, nor any idea how to make a pen, I collected seagull feathers from the beach, trimmed the feathers, and learned how to make a pen. With that exercise satisfactorily accomplished, I practiced making quills and eventually quilled the entire instrument with seagull plectra. (Alan told me that his teacher and mentor, Gustav Leonhardt, quilled his 17th and 18th- century instruments with condor quills obtained from the Amsterdam zoo.)
The first concert on the renovated Kirckman, with a soprano, oboist, and cellist from the Carmel Bach Festival, was a great success. The house and studio are all made of wood, the acoustics were not unlike those of an English or French salon, and the instrument looked and sounded golden. In the course of time, I learned why seagull feather quills are not often used: they wear out quickly. Alan then introduced me to Delrin, a plastic material which, when shaved and trimmed, resembles quill and lasts much longer. (Harpsichord builders, I was told, don’t like the word “Delrin” and tend to call it either “Goosite” or “Crowflex.”) As the seagull plectra wore out, I gradually replaced them all with Delrin. The sound remained the same, but the plectra, happily, don’t wear out for years.
My interest and delight in baroque keyboard music continued. I performed several times at Berkeley, as well as privately in San Francisco and around the Bay Area, and Alan encouraged me to apply for a grant to study at the Amsterdam Conservatory with Gustav Leonhardt. I received an Alfred Hertz grant and left Big Sur, reluctantly and with great excitement, in the Fall of 1963. The year in Amsterdam, followed by an extension of the grant to attend summer courses at the Mozarteum Academy in Salzburg, was glorious. In addition to my harpsichord studies, I was given the opportunity to practice and play some of the finest baroque organs in the world, not only in Amsterdam but in Haarlem, Alkmaar, and elsewhere. To his students, Leonhardt was a magisterial figure, personally and musically, and we all believed him to be the reincarnation of the great 17th Dutch composer and performer, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck.
Leonhardt, in addition to teaching and serving as mentor and example, also gained us access to the collections of ancient instruments in The Hague, Paris, Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna, where we were able to perform on period instruments, including some of Mozart’s and Beethoven’s pianos, as well as surviving and renovated great instruments from England, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, France, Italy and Spain, including harpsichords, virginals, spinets, clavichords, chamber organs, and unusual instruments such as the clavicytherium (an upright harpsichord) and the giraffe (an upright grand piano.) It was a heady year, in every way!
While studying in Amsterdam, I was encouraged by Leonhardt to order a modern harpsichord, in addition to the Kirckman. Skowroneck’s waiting list was ten years, Hubbard’s and Dowd’s were each five years, so I ordered a new, two-manual, Flemish- style harpsichord from Rainer Schütze, a builder in Heidelberg who promised to have the instrument completed in a year. Following a series of miscommunications for a period, due to his poor English and my poor German, I went to Heidelberg to visit him when the instrument had been partially finished, and, as promised, the completed harpsichord was delivered to me in San Francisco in the Fall of 1964. Thus began the beginning of the demise of my career as a harpsichordist, but I didn’t realize it for another seven years.
Having become accustomed to small halls in castles and grand houses in Amsterdam, Salzburg, Vienna, Paris, and London, I discovered San Francisco had little to offer in the way of appropriate settings for baroque music. I played on houseboats in Sausalito, in coffee shops in San Francisco, on the radio, on television, and with friends. To make a living, however, I had to teach, like so many musicians, and also moonlight doing catering work. Though lucrative, this was hard on my self-image.
Interestingly, as a harpsichordist, one loses patience with loud sounds. Most modern pianos sound vulgar, in comparison, and the habit of applause which most audiences demand, is inimical to the enjoyment of a clavichord or harpsichord program. I frequently asked audiences NOT to applaud until the end of a program, but people found it impossible to resist when they were pleased.
A high point of that period was a visit to Robert Johnson in Three Rivers, Michigan, where he had become a Lay Brother at a Benedictine Monastery. He was, like all monks, obliged to take vows of poverty, and did so with two exceptions: he refused to give up his beloved 1714 Ruckers harpsichord, a Flemish instrument of extraordinary beauty, and his newly acquired, modern German clavichord.
Whereas my Kirckman had a typically English, golden, rich, round, resonant sound, Bob’s Ruckers had a silvery, almost etched, crystalline sound, unmatched in my experience. Although a connoisseur of baroque music, because of his shy and retiring nature, Bob did not enjoy performing in public. He invited me to visit him at the monastery and to perform for the brothers on his Ruckers. I was thrilled to accept his invitation.
Upon arrival, I was startled when Bob welcomed me in a brown monastic robe. It hadn’t occurred to me that he’d actually be dressed like a monk. He motioned for me to follow him, took me aside and explained that all the monks there had taken vows of silence. That had also never occurred to me, my experience with monasteries at the time being non-existent. I asked if they were allowed to speak at meals, and he said no. A reader, he explained, read aloud during communal meals, but conversation was not possible. I asked: “What do you do if you want the salt?” He replied: “Someone will pass it to you. Simply be aware of your neighbors.” A novel concept for me then, I found the meals surprisingly enjoyable.
When it came time for my performance, Bob warned me not to be disappointed, for there would be no applause. Of course, I was overjoyed, and for the first and only time in my life, the audience of robed monks filed in silently, sat silently, and waited silently for the music to begin. I began with a suite by Louis Couperin, and the unmeasured prelude at the beginning of the suite, followed by the delicately precise dances, sounded almost as they might have when they were first written. The program progressed with several Scarlatti sonatas and concluded with the Fourth Bach French suite. Without interruptions from applause or conversation, the sounds from the Ruckers seemed to grow and expand exponentially, filling every nook and cranny of the small chapel. As a performer, I had never experienced anything like it. It seemed balanced and perfect, thanks to the vows of silence.
The only time during my visit that Bob and I could carry on a conversation was to whisper in his cell. Following the concert, he invited me there to see and hear his German clavichord. In addition to the fact that it was a beautiful instrument, Bob had himself carved the rose in the soundboard and wanted to show it off.
A harpsichord, in comparison to a clavichord, is loud. The instrument is shaped more or less like a grand piano, only the edges of the case are usually angled rather than rounded. Harpsichord strings are plucked by plectra, and two or sometimes three sets of strings on a large, double-manual instrument may be engaged simultaneously, creating a rich and sonorous resonance. A clavichord, in contrast, much smaller and rectangular in shape, has only one set of strings which are struck by small brass tangents, and the sound produced is almost inaudible – which is the reason why clavichord concerts are so rare: a clavichord is almost impossible to hear from more than a foot away. Another difference is that, because of the fact that clavichords have no dampers, a performer has the option of holding the tangents against the strings, and, by moving his or her fingers up and down vertically, may create a vibrato effect. When properly played, the sound is fragile, cantabile, and lovely, although almost too quiet for modern ears.
As Bob played pieces he loved, demonstrating the qualities of the instrument and its sounds, I remarked on a box-like shape resting on the open lid – something I’d never seen on any such instrument. When he’d finished playing, I whispered: “Bob what is that box on top of the instrument?” He reddened slightly, paused, and whispered back: “It’s a mute.”
In disbelief, I repeated stupidly: “A MUTE? On a CLAVICHORD?” This time he actually blushed, and whispered back: “You’ve got to understand, because of the vows of silence here, the sound this thing makes is DEAFENING!”