The Clavichord: Music of Johann Kuhnau and C.P.E. Bach

Contact the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music for information about this recording's next release.


Performer: Joan Benson, clavichord
The clavichord is a keyboard instrument in which a metal tangent at the end of the key strikes a string when the key is depressed. This produces a soft singing tone that can be altered by finger pressure to produce vibrato and other expressive ornaments. The dynamic range is small, the sound petite, but, nonetheless, the clavichord was an important solo instrument for over 200 years. The music is composed by Johann Kuhanu, one of the leading clavichordist of the eighteenth century, and by his pupil, Carl Philipp Emnuel Bach, the most famous clavichordist of all.

Nimrod Journal - Poetry Selections by Joan Benson

Originally published in "Clap Hands and Sing, Writers of Age";
Nimrod; International Journal of Prose and Poetry
Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa, Oklahoma, U.S.A.,
Spring/Summer 1991
"Antichrist 1986"
"Aged Woman Looking At A Man"
"Barren"

The Clavichord in 20th Century America

By Joan Benson
Originally published in "Livro De Homenagem a Macario Santiago Kastner", Fundacao Calouste Gulbenkian, Servico de Musica; Lisboa, 1992


During the American colonial period, the clavichord was a natural part of imported European culture. In the time of J. S. Bach, clavichords were made in Philadelphia by Gottfried Klenn, a former apprentice to the famous Gottfried Silbermann. Later, in 1771, letters by Thomas Jefferson indicate that he ordered from London a fretted Hamburg clavichord for his fiancee “for holding in the lap or laying on a table... veneered over with the finest mahogany”.

Subsequently he changed his mind in favor of the new pianoforte, which was to supersede the clavichord by 1880. Before the end of the nineteenth century, however, the clavichord was revived in England as a symbol of the past. This set the stage for its 20th century revival in North America.


The pioneer and champion of this early revival was Arnold Dolmetsch. Actually, in his family the thin line of clavichord continuity had never been broken: his Swiss grandfather taught his children to play Bach Preludes and Fugues on the clavichord. Dolmetsch, born in Savoie in 1858 and educated at the Brussels Conservatoire, moved to London where he began his lifelong work of rediscovering European music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries and performing it on original instruments.

Recollections of Edwin Fischer

by Joan Benson (as told to Timothy Tikker)
Journal of the American Liszt Society; Volume 21/January-June 1987

“Edwin Fischer was born in Basel on 6 October 1886. His father was born in Prague, where his ancestors had been manufacturers of musical instruments. Both parents of this great pianist loved and practiced the art in which their son would distinguish himself. It was in Basel that Edwin had begun his musical studies, first at the Municipal Gymnasium, then the Conservatory – studies in piano and composition.


"Upon the death of her husband in 1904, Frau Fischer moved to Berlin, where Edwin became the student of Martin Krause, former secretary and disciple of Liszt and Eugene d’Albert. Upon completing his studies, Fischer began a rapid and brilliant career. Professor at the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, accompanist to the famous singer Wulner, he was heard as soloist and recitalist by the great concert associations of his time. He played under the direction of the most famous conductors, such as Nikisch, Weingartner, Walter, Mengelbuerg, Beechum, Furtwangler, and so on.

Qigong for Pianists

by Joan Benson
Piano and Keyboard; September/October, 1998


On a bitterly cold December day I was scheduled to record a disk of Fanny Mendelssohn’s music on an exquisite 19th-century piano at the Schubert Club in St. Paul, Minnesota. Although I looked forward to the opportunity, I felt edgy, my bursitis bothered me, and my body seemed a bundle of nerves. Playing to a bunch of microphones in an empty room always makes me feel that way; I much prefer a live audience.


That morning I was late. I rushed along the snow-covered sidewalk, clutching my wind-frozen hands. Suddenly, I slipped on a sheet of ice and fell forward like a bird in flight. I lay there in agony, my limp right arm loose in its socket. I cradled it like a Raggedy Ann doll.

My upper arm turned out to be badly broken. Needless to say, I missed my recording date. After my initial recovery, my frustration mounted – my arm still felt weak, my bursitis had not abated, and my nerves were still ragged. So I decided to take a break from playing and go to a Catholic retreat center – a nunnery, actually – for some reflection and a little peace and quiet. There I made a discovery that would affect not only my piano playing, but my whole life. I happened upon a room filled with silver-haired, elderly nuns of all shapes and sizes, dressed in jump suits, swaying gently in graceful patterns. They looked positively beatific.

Piano to Clavichord (1925-1962)

by Joan Benson
Clavichord International - Volume 10, Number 2, November 2006
When I was born in 1925, there was a piano in nearly every parlor. Live music was still the fashion, the phonograph and radio were just beginning, and the rage for electronically generated music lay in the future. At age five, I stood before my grandmother's upright, amazed at the lush sounds my flat little fingers made. Then Aunt Myrtle placed me on the piano stool and showed me how to cup my hand as though holding an orange. Thus lessons began.


New Orleans, where I lived, still exuded the soft, leisurely perfume of the romantic, pre-Civil War era. Metairie Park Country Day School, which I attended, resembled a pillared, plantation mansion, with meadows and woods in which to wander and dream. It was the first progressive school in the South, headed by a fine, New England master. We were encouraged to think for ourselves and offered cultural advantages, particularly in the arts. We might study, for example, the music a great pianist would play before attending the performance itself.

I remember one evening when our city's elegant concert hall was filled with the wild excitement saved for popular music bands today. Yet the stage loomed empty except for one king-sized piano and one profiled player, almost motionless, fingers flickering over keys. The sounds, unamplified, were never overly loud, but the dynamic range seemed enormous, the variety of expressive inflections astounding.

Joan Benson visits Indiana University

Tangents/The Bulletin of the Boston Clavichord Society, Fall 2007
by Wendy Gillespie, Chair of Early Music
Indiana University


In early October, at the invitation of the Dean of the Jacobs School of Music and the urging of several Bloomington friends, Joan Benson emerged from her peaceful life in Oregon for two weeks of intense involvement with gifted keyboard students at the Early Music Institute of Indiana University.

Joan had been kind enough to locate a fine Dolmetsch-Chickering clavichord for Indiana to use in her classes and lessons. Keyboard technician David Jensen prepared it on short notice, and also offered a clavichord of his own making.


The students' first exposure to this unfamiliar keyboard instrument and its special playing technique left many heads spinning. The intensity of Joan's teaching opened the students' minds to a reconsideration of all their keyboard playing. As anyone familiar with the "terroriste of the pianissimo" can attest, a lesson with Joan Benson is never a neutral or passive experience!

Clavichord Technique in the Mid-Twentieth Century

by Joan Benson
Proceedings of the International Clavichord Symposium, Atti del Congresso Internazionalie sul Clavicordo, Magnano, 1993


A hundred years ago Arnold Dolmetsch restored, played and then copied his large eighteenth century clavichord. His concerts on this instrument took him from England to California. Fifty years later, there were a small number of clavichord players and builders in Europe and the United States.


Most string keyboardists, however, still believed in the evolution of the piano, which, at best, had not yet lost its colourful, subtle expressiveness. Music by Bach and Mozart was often played by overlapping notes into a long, sweet legato. Similarly, the clavichord was approached in terms of a singing, shaded, legato sound. Both players and builders em phasized the pressing and holding down of keys. In fact, any attempt at clear articulation was obscured by the sluggish release and flickering after-noise of the instruments themselves.

In museums, playable clavichords were often lightly strung. Pianissimos were possible, but it was easy to overstrike strings and force them out of pitch. Fingertips, poised on keys, had to pull inward and forward so as not to wobble the keys or push them down too far.

Clavichord Perspectives from Goethe to Pound

by Joan Benson
De Clavicordio VI; Proceedings of the VI International Clavichord Symposium; September, 2003; Bruachli, Galazzo, and Moody, ed; The International Center for Clavichord Studies


In reading poems and novels for pleasure, I chanced upon five works that contain important passages about the clavichord. Arranged chronologically, these passages trace shifting attitudes toward the clavichord from the late eighteenth to the mid-twentieth century.

The first, very vivid example is found in Johan Wolfgang von Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. Goethe was born in Frankfurt in 1749, the year before J. S. Bach died. As a lad of the Empfindsamkeit period, Goethe pressed his parents into giving him clavichord lessons. Later, in his early twenties, he became a natural exponent of Sturm und Drang. Suffering from unfulfilled love, he contemplated suicide. Instead, he wrote a shocking novel about unbridled emotions. Published in 1774, "The Sorrows of Young Werther" became the rage, inflaming the youth of Europe.

Bach and the Clavier

by Joan Benson
Clavier, Volume 29, No. 2, February 1990


In the world of Johann Sebastian Bach, as in the world of this magazine, the word “clavier” implies any keyboard instrument. Bach himself played on the widely contrasting claviers popular in his day: the harpsichord, clavichord, and organ. In 1747 he also improvised on and approved of the early Silbermann fortepiano owned by King Frederick the Great.
My experience in playing Bach’s clavier music has been highly varied. As a young musician I performed Busoni transcriptions on the modern piano, and audiences found my free, romantic interpretations exhilarating. Later I became a protégée of pianist Edwin Fischer, whose fame reached America through his superb recordings, including Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier...

...Once while playing a Bach fugue in his master class I had a memory lapse that forced me to improvise my own ending. This pleased Fischer more than if I had simply played the correct notes.


Eventually, to Fischer’s regret, I turned to the clavichord; for me it best expressed the subtle beauty and profundity of Bach’s music. I never dreamed of playing Bach on the early Viennese fortepiano, but as I followed the development of this clavier, I discovered that Bach sounded serenely spiritual on the antique pianos of the Mendelssohn-Schumann period.

An Interview with Clavichordist Joan Benson

by Richard Troeger
The Boston Clavichord Society Newsletter, Number 7, Fall, 1999



Richard Troeger: What originally brought you to the clavichord?


Joan Benson: I first heard a clavichord at the Longy School where I was a teenage piano student. Erwin Bodky had a small clavichord that was kept there; I believe it was a Dolmetsch. Bodky gave a concert of J.S.Bach’s music on the relatively unknown harpsichord and clavichord. Afterwards, everyone gathered excitedly around the harpsichord and I went alone to the clavichord, to touch the keys and listen to its tones...

...My studies, however, centered on the piano. In time I left for Europe to become a protégé of Edwin Fischer. It was in Europe that I became obsessed with delicate sounds. In fact, when I played piano for the Lucerne Festival, it was my use of pianissimos that gained special praise. In time, I began to imagine soft, subtle music that no piano could produce. Then I remembered the clavichord and realized that this instrument was meant for my slender, sensitive fingers. Fischer was very kind to me and was pushing me toward a pianist’s career; but something kept urging me to the clavichord. Fischer loved the clavichord and played it himself, but he became upset by the thought of my pursuing this for public performance; he said “Joan, it’s not a performance instrument.” He considered it to be a private instrument, and of course he’s fundamentally right. He tried to discourage my longing to make it my main medium of expression.

A Conversation with Joan Benson

by Penelope Mathiesen
Continuo, The Magazine of Old Music; Ontario Arts Council; April, 1988


How does a performer develop a career? And where does a career lead a performer? For Joan Benson, one of today’s finest performers on the clavichord and fortepiano, it has been a lifelong combination of strong musical instincts and the will to pursue whatever developed from them. She was already launched on a successful piano career when she discovered the clavichord.

The pursuit of its soft, expressive qualities meant losing the backing of her piano mentors. However, it opened up a new world of musical discoveries and cultural exchanges which in turn led to performing, recording, and teaching opportunities in North America, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. I caught up with Joan at the KQED studios in San Francisco, where she was doing a radio interview on the West Coast Weekend show following her appearances at the San Anselmo Organ Festival. Our two days together were an enjoyable recapitulation of many previous conversations, as well as a microcosm of Joan’s ongoing dialogue with music and the world we live in.

Early Music with Joan Benson

(This text is also on Joan's University of Oregon webpage)

Joan Benson is one of the foremost clavichordists of modern times. Projecting intense emotions through soft, subtle dynamics, she has been called "the terroriste of the pianissimo" by a Frankfurt critic.


Benson's worldwide concert career takes her from Lebanon to Hong Kong, from Haydn's Viennese home to the Smithsonian. Each performance is inspired by its setting. In Bali, gamelan music enlivens her sense of rhythm. In New Zealand, hiking high mountains encourages her melodic expansiveness.


Through her highly praised concerts and recordings, Benson has awakened interest in music from 15th century tablatures to 18th century free fantasies of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Applying her sensitive touch to the early and modern piano, she plays repertoire from Mozart through Fanny Mendelssohn to John Cage.