For the 171^st consecutive year, the Handel and Haydn Society presents Handel’s Messiah. CitySing, consisting of singers from choral ensembles throughout Greater Boston debuts this year alongside the H+H Orchestra and Chorus, high school aged singers of the H+H Youth Choruses Chamber Choir, and featured soloists Trinidadian soprano Jeanine De Bique, Boston-based countertenor Reginald Mobley, tenor Nicholas Phan, and baritone Sumner Thompson. The oratorio can be heard on Friday, November 29^th at 7:30pm, Saturday, November 30^th at 3:00pm, and Sunday, December 1^st (the 540^th iteration) at 3:00pm. Tickets HERE.

The Society’s penchant for performing on period instruments provides an almost plausible hook for an interview this writer did some weeks back with the Handel & Haydn Society’s principal keyboardist and Associate Conductor Ian Watson.

When Watson learned that I am a guitarist, he asked about my favorites. When I mentioned Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits fame, Ian asked if I knew Jeff Porcaro, cofounder of the band Toto who played drums on “Calling Elvis,” the opening cut on Dire Straits’ swansong album On Every Street (1991). I was impressed — more impressed than when I learned that Harry Christophers is a Led Zeppelin fan!

Watson is a musician’s musician: someone whose knowledge crosses genres. But it isn’t just erudition, it is ability as well. When Watson plays the harpsichord solo towards the end of the first part of the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto (Allegro), his fingers fly across the keyboard with glistening, sublime dexterity. It conjures the abilities of another guitar legend: Eddie Van Halen.

“The main function of keyboards, historically, was to serve in a continuo function,” Watson began our conversation after we waxed about Porcaro — and Gerry and Sylvia Anderson’s British, sci-fi, electronic-marionette show The Thunderbirds. As Stephen Johnson wrote in BBC Music, “A continuo is an accompanying part used in Baroque music, which provides a bassline for the other parts and adds harmony.”*

“The function of the keyboard continuo — or other instruments like the Baroque harp or lute,” Watson said, “was to fill the gap between the contours of the bass and the florid virtuosity of the top solo lines.” The main keyboard instrument used in continuo is the harpsichord, which, Watson claims, “was prevalent in Baroque music for several hundred years — until the end of the 18^th century when the fortepiano took over.” There was a crossover between the two, although harpsichords were famously burned in bonfires to make room for the fortepiano, the “new instrument.”

Watson noted that the global economy and means of communication that we now have did not exist in the late 17^th and early 18^th centuries [that’s kind of obvious]. This meant that the work of the many, but somewhat isolated enclaves of instrument builders was slow to circulate. Early harpsichords often had two separate keyboards and sets of strings [when the need arose] tuned to different pitches in order to play in different keys. Today, two-manual harpsichords owe their design to one developed in Flanders in the 17^th century by the Ruckers brothers, which coupled the two keyboards together (strings tuned to the same pitch) using a slide mechanism to engage the various pluck points, octave couplers, and buff stops, and give them the sound most people are familiar with today. (This is the same harpsichord used by H+H.)

The harpsichord is literally a harp that sits parallel to the floor using a keyboard to operate a plucking mechanism. Though of course the harp was a diatonic instrument,  even the first harpsichords were fully chromatic. The instrument remained the same, by and large, throughout history, other than the slight variations already mentioned. It was the major keyboard instrument used though Bach’s time, though Bach had experimented with a rudimentary gravicembalo col piano e forte, or “harpsichord that plays soft and loud.” Christoph Wolf wrote:

One of [Silbermann’s pianofortes] was seen and played by the late Capellmeister, Mr. Joh. Sebastian Bach. He praised, indeed, admired, its tone; but he complained that it was too weak in the high register and too hard to play. This was taken greatly amiss by Mr. Silbermann, who could not bear to have any fault found in his handiworks. He was therefore angry at Mr. Bach for a long time. And yet his conscience told him that Mr. Bach was not wrong. He therefore decided—greatly to his credit, be it said—not to deliver any more of the instruments, but instead to think harder about how to eliminate the faults Mr. J.S. Bach had observed. By the time Mozart was born, in 1756, functional fortepianos were available in both English and Viennese styles

Bach wrote the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto when he was in Köthen between 1717-1723 to showcase the harpsichord. “He actually played the viola in the ensemble,” Watson explained, “but wanted to show off the new harpsichord which had been recently purchased, so the second violinist moved down to take Bach’s place on viola. This explains why, unusually, there is no second violin part in Brandenburg Five! Normally there would be four or five string players: first and second violin, viola, and cello/bass. H+H occasionally uses the fortepiano, in Haydn’s I for example. Watson says that this decision is purely a matter of preference, as there is an ongoing question as to whether or not keyboardists should use a harpsichord or a fortepiano when playing Haydn’s music, as the use of both overlapped.

Watson and H+H Assistant Concertmaster, Susanna Ogata, recorded all of Beethoven’s piano and violin sonatas (for Coro). They used a replica of an 1803 instrument [who made the original and who made the replica], which would have been right on the cusp of the change between the harpsichord and the fortepiano. “At that time,” Watson remarks, “pianos changed so fast, like modern day computers, that they would have been out of date in six months.” This is due to quick innovations being made. For example, in 1796 Beethoven wrote his first piano concerto, which was actually published as his Piano Concerto No. 2. Ten years later, he wrote a cadenza for that same concerto, but the latter could not be played on the piano for which he wrote the original, because the compass of the instrument was too small.

Whereas violins sound better with age, early pianos, and also harpsichords, do not. Many old pianos have been reconstructed. This, according to Watson, is most likely due to the instrument being more complex and mechanical. The fortepiano typically has five-and-a-half to six-and-a-half octaves as opposed to modern pianos, which span seven full octaves. “I really enjoy playing the fortepiano.” Watson muses. “The sounds are so colorful and varied: the bass end being very buzzy, the singing middle section being sturdy, while the top is more tinkly and ethereal.” The modern piano, in contrast, has much the same sound quality from the lowest to the highest keys. “That’s great if you want to play Rachmaninoff,” Watson observed, “but Beethoven and other great composers wrote music for the instruments they knew.”

This is yet another benefit to hearing H+H perform on period instruments; it gives listeners a window into the minds of the composers, and into the ears of the audiences first enraptured by their compositions. The character and the effect of the music is contingent upon the instruments for which they were originally composed.

I shared with Watson how I was utterly amazed at his lengthy solo during the Fifth Brandenburg Concerto — his technical ability as well as his knowledge of the instrument made me imagine that a sort of aural dance was occurring on stage. He responded saying, “It’s about creating an illusion! You can hit a note on the harpsichord as hard as you like, and it will not make a difference in terms of volume. You need to find other ways of making the instrument speak.” For example, players can hold down the notes as they are played to create the illusion of sonority or momentum.” The faster the speed and the more notes that are played, the more impression one gives of growth, of a flourish. “This is hard to teach,” Watson muses. “One has to feel it.”

Watson clearly feels it whenever he takes the stage with H+H. As their current “You Are the Music” promises, you will feel it, too.

*Stephen Johnson, BBC Music (online). Published June 10, 2016. Accessed August 22, 2024.

John Tamilio III, Ph.D. is the Pastor of the Congregational Church of Canton, a Professor of Philosophy at Salem State University, and a professional guitarist who plays solo acoustic and for the Boston-based classic rock band, 3D.  His playing has been applauded by David Brown (Simon & Garfunkel, Billy Joel), Jack Sonni (Dire Straits), and Carter Allen (WZLX).  An aficionado of classical music, particularly the Baroque era, Tamilio’s publications are vast, covering not only music, philosophy, and theology, but the poetry of T.S. Eliot as well.  He resides in Beverly with his wife Cynthia.