Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organist's Guide (Eastman Studies in Music)

Friederich Griepenkerl, in his 1844 introduction to Volume 1 of the first complete edition of J. S. Bach's organ works, wrote: "Actually the six Sonatas and the Passacaglia were written for a clavichord with two manuals and pedal, an instrument that, in those days, every beginning organist possessed, which they used beforehand, to practice playing with hands and feet in order to make effective use of them at the organ. It would be a good thing to let such instruments be made again, because actually no one who wants to study to be an organist can really do without one."

What was the role of the pedal clavichord in music history? Was it a cheap practice instrument for organists or was Griepenkerl right? Was it a teaching tool that helped contribute to the quality of organ playing in its golden age? Most twentieth-century commentary on the pedal clavichord as an historical phenomenon was written in a kind of vacuum, since there were no playable historical models with which to experiment and from which to make an informed judgment.

At the heart of Bach and the Pedal Clavichord: An Organist's Guide aresome extraordinary recent experiments from the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt) at Göteborg University. The Johan David Gerstenberg pedal clavichord from 1766, now in the Leipzig University museum, was documented and reconstructed; the new copy was then used for several years as a living instrument for organ students and teachers to experience. On the basis of these experiments and experiences, the book explores, in new and artful ways, Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard technique, a technique preserved by his first biographer, J. N. Forkel (1802), and by Forkel's own student, Griepenkerl. It also sifts and weighs the assumptions and claims made for and against the clavichord and pedal clavichord over two and a half centuries: by Bach's son Carl Philipp Emanuel, by such noted Bach scholars as Walter Emery and Robert Marshall, and by sharp-eared music lovers, including one of the most perceptive (and one of the few from his era to have actually encountered a clavichord and recognized its unique qualities), George Bernard Shaw.