Bwv555 on a 2m Clavichord with pedalboard

[Ghekorg7]

Hi to all.

Clavichords are one of my passions too along with pipe organs, Harpsichords and spinets and virginals.

On one of my clavichord hunting I came across this site :

http://wn.com/BWV555_Prelude_Fugue__Pedal_Clavichord

Interesting indeed. If you like, listen to the other recordings on the list at right !

What do you think?

Best
Panos

[L.Palo]

Clavichords are wonderful! I have two at home (of which I've built one myself). This recording was done on the Gerstenberg copy in Gothenburg. I have played it myself and at one point I thought of building a copy for myself too. There are drawings for the instrument available on http://www.goart.gu.se/Publications/Technical_Drawings/ if anyone is interested.

Besides being a great musician Harald Vogel (who plays on the recording) is a truly wonderful and great man! I have many fond memmories of both masterclasses and concerts with him from my study time in Piteå School of Music.

Playing the clavichord is really "The" school instrument for learning any keyboard instrument! It's no wonder that the german word for the clavichord was simply "clavier".

The clavichord was also extremely popular in Sweden. Production on large scale didn't stop until about 1820.

Kind regards

Lars P

[Mat]

Hey Panos,

It does have a charm, but I still prefer the organ.

And the recording was played a whole half-step (pun intended) lower than original :P

[wljmrbill]

Enjoyd the link.. Thanks

[Ghekorg7]

Thank you all for replies !

Lars, also for the link and sharing your memories and experiences on clavichords.
It's a fine instument. Have you seen Mozart's one ? Haydn also had one, portable and it is said that he composed on the road inside the coach..... (!)
As it is difficult to get one here in Athens, I use 4 virtual ones : Donat (HW3), SampleTekk's Silbermann 1755 and the small German one (Kontakt4 and gig) and Paul C. Stratmann's for jOrgan.
There's also one from Wavelore for K4 but is very expencive ($175.....).

Mat, pipes are ruling, no doubd, but it's a joy to play Clavichords and Harpsichords too! Have you seen JSBach's room with his small pipe organ and his..... clavichord ?
Yes he played a hole half step, indeed.

Thanks again
Panos

[Dorsetmike]

I just drowned myself in the Passacaglia & fugue (BWV 582), No 13 on the list at the right, sheer bliss.

[L.Palo]

Actually I've seen and played more historic organs and pianos (I mean really old ones!) than clavichords. Except a few in museums I've mostly played copies of old clavichords.

But it was of course a very widely used instrument, very much enjoyed because of it's expressive tone, even though the sheer amount of dB power is not that impressive! :-) But the tone! And the ability to affect it, you're really in contact with the tone! You can vary not only dynamics, but also add vibrato (actually change the pitch)!

The Gerstenberg copy is strung from a calculation of a1 = 415 but according to Speelstra it turned out to be more stable at around a1 = 408. But then again a = 440 is a fairly recent idea. Most really historic organs were tuned at "chorton" which is approximately one half step above our standard. The widely used "kammerton" was generally one half step below current standard.

It's interesting observing how for instance J.S. Bach was aware of the pitch differences and most of the time wrote the organ parts one whole tone below the strings, i.e. the organ in C-major and the strings in D-major so that the two should meet in the middle. (And then again you had the french kammerton, that was approximately one whole tone lower than our standard, which was mostly used for woodwind instruments, but I think there exists french organs in that pitch also...)

Kind regards

Lars P

[Contratrombone64]

Very enjoyable and most likely how Bach heard most of his organ music, as he owned a pedal harpsichord.