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!