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Gustav Leonhardt as a Teacher

2018; Baldwin Wallace University; Volume: 49; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/bach.2018.0005

2767-4843

Ton Koopman,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Gustav Leonhardt as a Teacher Ton Koopman (bio) My first “encounter” with Gustav Leonhardt was through an LP. When I first heard his recording of Giles Farnaby’s “Up Tails All,” I immediately knew that I wanted to study with him. To apply for a scholarship I had to audition in The Hague. Leonhardt was not on the jury, but his colleague Janny van Wering was. The instrument at the audition was a Neupert harpsichord, 16’ with the usual pedals. I had never had a harpsichord lesson in my life, but I had often played on a so-called “Bach-harpsichord.” My application was successful. I was granted scholarships to study both organ and harpsichord at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and at the same time started to study musicology at the University of Amsterdam. I had a lot of classes to take, but fortunately several overlapped. My first class was a harpsichord lesson (my first ever!) with Leonhardt in room twenty-three of the Conservatorium van Amsterdam. No Neupert, but a copy after Gräbner awaited me. A whole new world to be discovered. I learned articulation. With his tiny pencil, Leonhardt wrote slurs, overlegato, separated notes, manual changes, and many, many more things in my music. When I played, he listened at the window, hand on his brow, in full concentration. He came to turn my page at exactly the right moment, as if he had a photographic memory of all those pages of music. He gave brief comments, made some notes in my score, and then asked me what else I had to play for him. Often you would quickly be done with all you had prepared and find yourself outside the room again, after which the master himself would continue to practice. I remember feeling so surprised, after playing the extended harpsichord solo from Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 and receiving some directions and astute fingerings from Leonhardt, to find myself outside again after only twenty-five minutes! I still have the part that I played from then, with his markings. They are very detailed. His information on strong and weak beats in the bar, for example, are shown with little lines and dynamic indications. Leonhardt was efficient with his time and communication. He was not particularly talkative. Sometimes I would try to start a conversation with him by asking about his latest concerts or asking the naive question whom of his colleagues he held in high esteem—that never really worked. Speaking of [End Page 44] his colleagues, it was actually remarkable that he was one of the few men who played harpsichord. After Wanda Landowska leading the modern harpsichord revival, most harpsichordists had been women. I often heard him play continuo. In those days (the mid-1960s) he wrote out the essentials of continuo accompaniments. He also required his students to write out their basso continuo parts during harpsichord exams. It was not until later that he started to improvise in his continuo playing, playing only from the figured bass. But beautiful examples of his continuo playing have been recorded on LPs of Das alte Werk (Telefunken): consort music by Georg Muffat, for instance, and of course, his Bach cantatas series. His firm opinion on basso continuo playing was that it should not attract the attention of the listener. If it stood out, you did too much. I often questioned him about that, which he did not particularly like. In my musicological studies at the same time, I learned that asking questions is essential. Leonhardt certainly felt that I asked too many questions. But to my amazement, after yet another question from me, he took out a folder full of little notes on which he had carefully written (in his tiny handwriting) all kinds of quotations from a wide range of sources. Leonhardt had certainly done his research. The foundations of his playing were in that folder. I wonder where it has gone. During my studies with Leonhardt, he had four students each year, some from the Netherlands but most from the United States and Japan. In room twenty-three there was a list on which you could write your name to reserve practice time...