by Daniel Hathaway

When I went into this two-week immersion, I thought I’d pursue all the daily activities of a harpsichord student and then toss off an article about the experience every evening. Silly me. That plan evaporated the day I realized that I’d left my room before 8 am and hadn’t returned until after ten in the evening. BPI keeps you busy all day! I’ll stick to the article-a-day schedule, but there’s some catchup writing to be done.

On Wednesday, the harpsichord master classes split into two concurrent sessions, one led by Lisa Crawford, the other (mine) by Mark Edwards. After hearing the C-minor Prelude from The Well-Tempered Clavier Book One (advice: use wrist rotation to mirror the texture of the music; differentiate between speaking and singing) and Antoine Forqueray’s La Montigni (originally a viol piece, so prioritize how to play the notes in the bass line; to avoid “claw hand,” let the hands free fall onto the keyboard from overhead height), I was up next with a rather bizarre piece by an English virginalist. [Read more…]