INSTRUMENT BUILDING
I approached instrument building from a background of training in music history (Ph.D in Musicology, University of Michigan, 1968), working as an apprentice in the shop of Frank Hubbard in 1973-74. Returning to Ann Arbor, I set up a shop, making keyboards for the Hubbard shop and beginning my own production of instruments. Having access to the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan strongly influenced my career, since the harpsichords in this collection were limited to Italian instruments, two of which pertained to Bartolomeo Cristofori and the Florentine school of cembalo-making. Through restoration and copying I developed a preference for the Italian approach to harpsichord design over those of northern European makers, as the brass-strung Italian instruments seemed to me more useful musically in a variety of situations.
If you would like to inquire about harpsichord or piano commissions, please use the contact page.
HARPSICHORDS
Although I have in the past made iron-strung French, Flemish, and German instruments, my standard models are brass-strung singles and doubles in two basic models-long and short.
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Long Harpsichords My long harpsichords are modeled on original instruments by Cristofori and his successor, Giovanni Ferrini, both of whom carried just scaling (in which string lengths exactly double for each octave of descent) well down into the bass octave, resulting in an unusually long-tailed instrument with sumptuous tone in the bass range. Cases of these instruments are generally of poplar, destined for painted decoration. |
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Short Harpsichords My short models are made to my own design, with foreshortened string-lengths from the low tenor octave downward. While handier in length, these instruments retain a fine, full bass response. I generally make short-model cases of walnut or figured cherry finished in hand-rubbed oil. Both models are available in single-manual or double-manual form, the range of the short models being 56 notes (GG to d3), while the range of the long models is five octaves (FF to f3) or more (CC to f3; FF to g3). Unless otherwise specified, all are equipped with transposable keyboards so that the instrument may sound at either A=415 or A=440, and with an extra course of strings so that all notes are playable in either transposition. Wooden jacks are standard, fitted either with plastic or bird-quill plectra, at the customer's discretion. |
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Pedal Harpsichords I offer pedal harpsichords, also designed along Italianate lines, in that the pedals pull down notes from the instrument proper, rather than constituting a separate division with soundboard, strings, and action. The range is extended down to double C allowing the pedals to sound in sixteen-foot range, transposing down an octave. Thus there is no conflict between notes played in the left hand and those pulled down by the pedals. The pulldown arrangement greatly simplifies the instrument, eliminates the need to kneel on the floor to tune the pedals, and yields a surprising dividend in tonal power and clarity. |
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PIANOS
My interest in Bartolomeo Cristofori and the products of the eighteenth-century Florentine school of cembalo making led naturally to a fascination with Cristofori's piano and those of his followers throughout Europe. The first documentation of a successful piano dates from the year 1700. In 1994, in anticipation of the up-coming tercentenary of the piano's beginning, I received a commission from the Schubert Club in Saint Paul, MN, to make a copy of Cristofori's 1726 piano, conserved in the music instrument collection of Leipzig University. Delivered in 1997, my copy has been heard in several recitals and has been employed in two recording projects. Recently it was loaned to the Smithsonian Institution for the public exhibit, PIANO 300, where it represented Bartolomeo Cristofori's achievement as inventor and first great maker of the piano. Since that first project I have had the opportunity to make another 1726 Cristofori copy for the Chinook Keyboard Centre in Calgary, and a copy of the 1749 Gottfried Silbermann piano, also for the Schubert Club. These have proven themselves to be entirely practical musical instruments of surpassing beauty and unexpectedly wide application.
I look forward eagerly to the prospect of making more of these, and of exploring the works of other followers of Cristofori in Spain and Portugal, In France and in England, and will be happy to discuss all questions which might arise in considering such a commission. If you are interested or have questions, feel free to e-mail me using the contact page.
