How I became a harpsichord maker

A more interesting story starts in childhood. Of course, all children play with wooden bricks as I did, and later I moved on to Lego, as well as some other long forgotten alternatives of the the time. Lego had only just invented the wheel so inevitably my brothers and I moved on again to Meccano, now almost forgotten but at that time practically ubiquitous for boys. I began to realise that I enjoyed making things and went through a phase of Airfix kits but soon I began to feel that they did too much for you – it was all ready-made parts, and in many cases they were not actually very well made, with far too much sprue that needed paring off to make a neat job. I learnt a lot from my older brother who was obsessed with trains and always seemed to be able to explain how things worked. Unsurprisingly he went on to become a railway engineer. I was useless at woodwork at school – a little better at metalwork – but I did come to realise that it was something that could be learnt and mastered, and I remember thinking that even if I couldn't get the hang of a plane now, I would do so one day. I attempted to repair some broken dining chairs from my parents‘ miscellaneous collection, and by wrecking some of them even further I learned quite a lot!

I had a very unhappy childhood and spent a lot of time in a kind of dream, but gradually music came to my rescue, firstly through piano lessons with a very sweet teacher who seemed to understand me and never forced me to do exams, and later in the school orchestra after I took up the horn. We had a wonderful music teacher, John Didcock, who conducted the orchestra and introduced us to Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Haydn symphonies, the Flying Dutchman Overture, some Dvorak symphonies, and many other things that were just – only just – within our capabilities. Music became my drug. I was inspired particularly by 3 excellent horn players who allowed me to join them without being condescending and helped me with the mysteries of transposition. I adored their witty company and more broadly I loved the company of the orchestra which gave me something to belong to and through which – to a limited extent – to express myself without drawing attention to myself. Later I played the horn with my friend Miles Hellon and his career path into making harpsichords became a secret inspiration for me.

Since my father was a research chemist, there was an unspoken assumption in our house that Science was the future, both generally and for each of us individually. Music was fine as a hobby but couldn't be a career. And so, I ended up at Liverpool University, where I immediately threw myself into any musical opportunities that came my way, and quickly realised that I had made a big mistake. Somehow wading into the sea in the Isle of Man to count seaweed during the Easter holidays, with barely enough to eat, was less exciting than almost any musical activity: I felt I had to make music my vocation. When I left Trinity College of Music, I was still under the delusion that the horn could be my profession, but the necessity of earning a living forced me to put this on the back burner. It took some years for me to realise that I didn't have either the physique, the teeth or the personality required. I have never regretted this period though because I had some wonderful musical experiences.

For most of my time at EMI I was doing shift work, which meant that alternate weeks I had mornings to myself at home. This was when I really started to make things. In my flat, there was a small bookcase which I decided to copy. I had almost no tools, but once I had got started I began to look out for what I needed anywhere I could find it, like the cellars and attics of deceased relations or neighbours, junk shops, jumble sales, charity shops – anywhere. I acquired a bench that EMI was throwing out. It was very far from flat but it was a start.

Then I attended the Early Music Exhibition in 1979. This was a life-changing experience for me. Here, for the first time, I met apparently ordinary people like myself, who were making wonderful musical instruments, and most of them were encouraging. I wanted to be one of them and 2 years later, with a small back bedroom in a little terraced house for a workshop and a few more tools, I began my first lute. I chose to make lutes to begin with because I rather fell in love with their shape at the exhibition and I decided it would be best to start with something small. Though I intended one day make a harpsichord I knew that some tricky bending would be involved and decided to find out a bit more about bending wood on smaller pieces. I thought that I would learn to play the lute but actually I found that I was far more motivated to make them than to learn to play them. After the second one I realised that one can't realistically make an instrument that one can't play at least at a basic level and so after six years and two lutes I eventually embarked on my first harpsichord.

This was a copy of the Thomas White virginals in the V & A, and I learnt a huge amount from it, from studying the drawing, reading John Barnes' wonderful little book 'Making a spinet using traditional methods', and also FoMRHI quarterlies. Some things I just worked out for myself. And it worked! The keyboard was a bit uneven (I replaced it a few years later) and the mouldings were rough, but the joinery was quite good. The painting was naïve but that was how they always were. I had learnt how to shoot long joints, how to thickness plane flat and square by hand, more or less how to make keyboards and jacks (and how not to) how to make mouldings with a scratcher, how to grind colours and paint in tempera, how to string, basic voicing, basic tuning, how to make embossed papers for key-fronts and borders, how to gild using oil size, how to make gesso and much else besides. I still have the virginals though it seldom gets played, but it has been used on a number of occasions for concerts by well–known players and has even been heard on Radio 3.

My favourite harpsichords at this time were the big late 18th century English ones by Kirckman and Shudi, as much for their appearance as elegant pieces of furniture as for their sound, magnificent though that is. It was therefore a Kirckman that I chose to copy for my next harpsichord, which I began at London Guildhall University, and although it was stupidly ambitious nobody stopped me. I finished it at home the following year, and it actually sounded right and I was pleased with the typically brilliant English sound. I made quite a lot of mistakes of course: the keyboards and jacks were not very good, the lid was never really flat and some of the veneering on it was pretty rough, but I got some things right too. The case veneering in flame mahogany was good, the soundboard and bridges were good and basically it worked. I recently bought this harpsichord back and so now I have had the chance to put right the things that were not very good nearly 30 years ago and send it back out into the world to earn its living – in Hungary.

Interestingly, having seen almost no interest in English harpsichords over the last quarter century, the situation has changed somewhat in the last few years, and I have made almost nothing else – not just Kirckmans but also copies of the William Smith harpsichord, a much more modest and rather undervalued instrument from an earlier period, probably around 1725. I have never made a French double and the way my work is going at the moment, I don't think I will ever need to. Frank Hubbard called the Shudi and Kirckman instruments “...possibl(y)...the culmination of the harpsichord maker's art...”, and I must say that I agree with that. They are demanding to make and maintain but that's a subject for another time. Perhaps at last the English double will take its place alongside the French as a versatile (I would say even more versatile) instrument, better adapted for the modern concert hall, and usable for almost all the repertoire.