Hank Knox
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GEMINIANI Selected harpsichord works • Hank Knox (
April 13, 2011, 12:00 am
GEMINIANI Selected harpsichord works • Hank Knox (hpd) • EARLY-MUSIC.COM 7772 (62:46)
Fanfare May/June 2011 271
When we think of Baroque composers for the harpsichord, certain names spring to mind:
Rameau, François Couperin, Domenico Scarlatti, Bach, and Handel; perhaps Duphly, Seixas, Louis
Couperin, a few others. Geminiani is not among these. He was celebrated during his lifetime as a
composer, a theorist, a violinist with an unusually sweet and beguiling tone that served him well,
according to one account, in his final concert, two years before his death at the age of 74. But what
this album presents is harpsichord music by Geminiani.
These are arrangements of movements drawn from sonatas originally written for violin and
accompaniment. The op. 1 collection that supplies two of the pieces on this album was first published
in 1716, and the op. 2 collection that furnishes one cut was transcribed from concerti grossi
published in 1732. All but one of the remaining 10 selections (a minuet, described in the liner notes
as deriving from an unknown source, presumably part of the group of minuets by the composer published
in various 18th-century anthologies) come from Geminiani’s op. 4 of 1739. The keyboard
arrangements appeared in 1743, both in Paris and London, as Pièces de clavecin tirées des diffrens
ouvrages de Mr. F. Geminiani adaptées par luy même. These would prove popular, especially in
conservative England, where some were reprinted as late as 1778. Indeed, Geminiani was to remain
a name to conjure with in British musical circles long after his star faded elsewhere. As late as 1792,
the brilliant amateur composer John Marsh mentions in his diaries a public concert in which a talented
friend included Marsh’s own organ transcription of a Geminiani “violin concerto.”
The arrangements are densely idiomatic, surprisingly so when one considers both their origins
for violin and continuo, as well as the composer’s lack of known expertise on the instrument. Knox
speculates that it was in 1742, while arranging for the publication of his music in Paris “drawn partly
by the superiority of French music engravers” (though not mentioning how the composer no doubt
wished as well to secure some financial restitution before the notorious Parisian publishers pirated
his new publications) that Geminiani heard Duphly, Daquin, and Rameau in the salon of Madame
Duhalley and her daughter. He might have learned something from these recitals, but it’s equally
likely that he kept abreast of French developments through these same composers’ publications. In
any case, the result is a fluently professional manner that moves easily between the styles of the
French and Italian schools, as in the sonata movements marked tendrement and vivement of op. 4/5
(the latter with overtones of Domenico Scarlatti, who also puts in an appearance in the gigue marked
vivement of op. 4/4). This is imaginative, at times fanciful music that displays a gift to charm, while
neglecting nothing in the way of technical or structural finesse.
Hank Knox manages the dual legacy of the French and Italian schools with ease. He is flexible
where flexibility is clearly called for, as in the op. 4/8 movement marked amoureusement, and just
as solidly rhythmic as required in the modérément from op. 4/6, or the gayment from op. 4/1. The
fugato movement from op. 1/6 finds something between the two, both regular enough to maintain
forward motion while phrasing elastically to highlight the harmonic underpinnings of each important
entry. Technically there are no problems, tempos are well selected, and an understanding of each
piece’s salient musical points is apparent. Knox’s sympathetic treatment of the tendrement from op.
4/5 gives me hope we’ll at some point hear his Rameau.
In the manner of ornamentation, Geminiani, like François Couperin, was explicit in defining
appropriate ornamentation of “good taste,” that he stated in one of his treatises was a matter of
“expressing with Strength and Delicacy the Intention of the Composer.” He described 14 ornaments,
as well as acciaccature, a dissonant note in a chord that is rolled upward or played simultaneously.
He wrote out ornamented changes in repeated passages as well, supplying figurations or variations
to the treble. Knox wisely chooses to follow Geminiani, or where no ornamentation is provided to
proceed along similar lines.
Sound is good, with close miking of a sweet but bright instrument created by Jacob and
Abraham Kirckmann in 1772, the earliest surviving harpsichord by the uncle-and-nephew builders.
It includes an innovative “machine stop” that instantly changes between one and all registers. (Jacob
Kirckmann was to prove less amenable to innovation when it came to installing Adam Walker’s socalled
“Celestina stop” in a new harpsichord ordered by Thomas Jefferson 14 years later, because he
felt the resin used on the silk thread ultimately destroyed the instrument’s entire tone. But the ami-
able Jefferson, as usual, knew his own mind, and the Celestina stop was installed.)
I’ve only one minor quibble. In his liner notes to this release, Knox offers the fact that Geminiani
refused the post of Master of State Music in Ireland in evidence that the composer avoided permanent
institutional positions. Knox may not have been aware that it was made conditional upon Geminiani
converting from Roman Catholicism to Church of England. In any case, Geminiani never lacked for
patrons in his adopted land, and seemed to have an instinctive gift for getting along with others that
several of his other Italian violinist colleagues (including Veracini and Vivaldi) lacked.
Recommended? But of course. This is fine, highly characterized music, excellently played.
More, if you please. Barry Brenesal
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