Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5.0 out of 5 stars
a lotta bang for the buck, March 5, 2009
This book is now available inexpensively from second hand sources, and especially in hardback, represents great value in musings per page as well as book-pound per dollar. Let's face it ... how much can someone who's not Wanda Landowska say about playing the harpsichord, an instrument that's not "velocity sensitive", doesn't even have pedals or MIDI, let alone a little demo tune like "Mario Brothers" you can trigger by holding a button during startup? So this subject is a good test of a writer. Can you tell the user again a little about the history, plus about quills, and about Flemish vs. French harpsichords tone, without going over their heads and quoting Boalch? Can you discuss mordents for many pages without betraying that your contract called for a book of 240 pages+ and so mordents got the bulk of it after you had beaten trills to death?
This book is getting a bit out of date, and was the favorite of D. Jacques Way, president of Zuckermann for years. The fact it has arguably been technically out of date for years in the Historically Correct Performance arena means it's packed with precious information that is just now being rediscovered, and if you follow her advice, you won't sound like last year's records.
To make a long story short, this is a gem. Granted it's for people who know the right from the wrong end of a harpsichord, but it's sensible. It has the obligatory History, Types, Ornaments sections, but it also has them very sensible exercises and many famous pieces by long dead Europeans with wigs analyzed and printed IN FULL as such, with all sorts of cute little signs to (probably) indicate notes that are released straight up from the key, or with a rococo flourish (and a glance to the right) or not-until-you-run-out-of-other-fingers-and-get-worried. I'll figure it out soon, but for now I'm at the hefting and admiration stage. I've purchased a lot of learned books of late, sort of like this one, and this is not only the most endearing as to content, it's also got the best printing job, the paper will last for decades, and the whole experience is just first class. This is perhaps part of the blue "Plain and Easy" series that got beaten out by the yellow "for Dummies series" when it became apparent that the same dummies will buy any book in the yellow color on any subject, while blue is not an "uncritically motivating" color. You can do the experiment by putting a yellow jacket on this book, throw it out in the middle of a busy highway, and see if it's suddenly more accessible. Ms Nurmi's description of the plectrum also defies improvement in bringing several "for dummies" subjects to the table just like that: "The quill might be compared to a shock absorber, or perhaps a fishing pole, which helps the fisherman exert a smooth force on the fish to avoid breaking the line". She even tells you how to voice quills! Any woman who talks about X-Acto blades and Mysterious Barricades, has my attention. OK, I can see this review is not going well. Believe me, you will love this book. So There.
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2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Not really an introduction, May 30, 2002
I expected to find more information about the functionality of a harpsichord in reading this book. First, there are almost no illistrations which makes it hard to picture what their talking about, and the majority of the book is filled with music and how to play. Perhaps a good book for someone who already knows how to play piano and understands how a harpsichord works, but not for someone just getting into the piece.
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by Howard Schott
by Bond Ann
by Donald J. Grout
