Ralph Kirkpatrick

One hundred years ago the art of the harpsichord was dead, victim of the piano's lower cost and wider range of expression. The twentieth century, however, has seen the harpsichord revive to the extent of attracting compositions from such modern composers as Harvard's Walter Piston. The instrument has also found a place in popular music ("Come On 'a My House"), and it is even being taught at Yale. On Sunday afternoon a Yale professor honored Harvard with a concert that illustrated the reasons for the harpsichord's revival.

Playing a harpsichord with two keyboards and seven pedals, Ralph Kirkpatrick presented representative pieces from Baroque masters of England, France, Holland, Germany and Italy. Many of these pieces were stylized dance forms, such as a Galliardo and a Pavana by England's William Byrd. The Pavana was a slowly paced, simple tune adorned with incredibly rapid scale passages and trills.

Since harpsichord strings are plucked rather than hit, the sound is at once precise and shimmering. In Francois Couperin's Le Carillon de Cithere Kirkpatrick achieved a remarkable bell-like effect. The instrument is also capable of melancholy expression, as in Couperin's Allemande la Tenebreuse. J. S. Bach was represented on the program twice: by his Italian Concerto, which adapts for solo harpsichord the complete concerto form; and by his Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, which harkens back to the craggy German organ style of Scheidt and Buxtehude. Perhaps the most electrifying music of the afternoon, however, was Jean Philippe Rameau's Gavotte and Six Variations, in which Kirkpatrick showed his complete technical mastery of the harpsichord, using both of the keyboards and the octave pedals brilliantly.

Closing the concert with his specialty, the keyboard virtuoso played six little known harpsichord sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti and succeeded in bringing out every nuance and shade of expression. His performance demonstrated once again the fascinating possibilities of this instrument.