Tamesis Issue 231 May 2012

Editorial

I was getting Tamesis ready for printing when the very sad news reached me last week that Michael Procter had died suddenly at home in Germany, aged 61. By the time you read this there will have been a service in Germany, and though it is likely that some sort of musical tribute will take place in this country, it is too soon for any plans to have been made. A fund is being set up for small donations which will be dedicated to help provide for the university education of Michael's son Benedict in about five years time and details will appear on Michael�s website in due course. I owe such a lot to Michael for all the wonderful music-making he provided and the enjoyable social life which always seemed to be such a feature of his courses, from the Benslow baroque operas and the first Venice course to his TVEMF events and the Proctet. I feel rather at a loss for words, so many thanks to Neil Edington for his piece about Michael which I am sure speaks for us all. You can add your own tribute to Michael�s page on Facebook. Sidney Ross�s review of Michae l�s �Melancholia in Music� was written about a month ago and appears unchanged, and I should stress that although there is one review this month which should be taken with a pinch of salt, this is not it.

Thanks to all our contributors for making this such an interesting issue, and to Andrew Black whose review �Inspired by Tallis - a contemporary forty-part motet� appeared unattributed in the March Tamesis.

Philip Thorby�s recorder workshop could now be on a Friday. If so, this would be the first TVEMF event not to take place at the weekend, so please let me know if this could work for you, or not. TVEMF has over the years built up a small music library. Is there anyone who has space to keep it at their house? You would of course be able to make use of it yourself, and we might occasionally lend items to another forum.

Victoria Helby

Chairman�s Chat

I enjoyed the three TVEMF events that have taken place in the last couple of months. The Monteverdi Magnificat and other pieces with Julian Perkins seemed to go very well and we managed to attract the requisite instrumentalists and voices. Instrumental parts can often be problematical when getting material from the public domain Internet sites. I had used some technical jiggery-pokery on the original PDFs to move the note heads half a space up or down so as to convert the sackbut parts from C clefs to octave treble. To my relief this pretty much worked - I had taken precautions to avoid moving the rests, which would have converted semibreve rests into minim ones or vice-versa! The Dufay mass Ave Regina Celorum is a wonderfully complex piece and I was impressed that we managed to make a pretty good showing with it, thanks to Eamonn Dougan's excellent direction. I and a number of other people did find the length of the warm-up excessive, as we didn't start singing until 11.10 am but I know this view was not universal, so it would be interesting to hear other opinions. An extra half hour might have allowed us to tackle the Agnus Dei, the omission of which left a slightly unfinished feel, but nevertheless it was a good day.

The last of the three events was a Baroque Chamber Music Day run by Victoria Helby as a replacement for the one we usually have jointly with the Oxford Baroque Week. Inevitably the attendance was somewhat lower than we normally get at the joint events but enough for a good variety of sessions, and I had a very enjoyable day. Victoria was faced with a very late cancellation which necessitated much reworking of groups in all four sessions, which she completed extremely satisfactorily though it must have added to the already high stress of organising such an event, for which many thanks.

Sadly I can't get to the Biber workshop at Waltham Abbey but hope to see some of you at Gerald Place's "I can't believe it's not Gesualdo" workshop, at which a few more could be accommodated, especially tenors and viol players. Then I look forward to the Stoltzer workshop with Peter Syrus as I would like to know more of Stoltzer's music and Peter's workshops are always a joy.

David Fletcher

Michael Procter: in memoriam


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Neil Edington

PROMS

Monteverdi �Selva morale e spirituale�
A workshop for chorus and instruments directed by Julian Perkins

The day illustrated both the value and the limitations of public domain Internet music publishing. On the one hand, it was very useful to have access to the music beforehand (particularly for the singers) and David Fletcher had helpfully produced compact scores for use on the day. On the other hand, having bar numbers in the orchestral parts but not in the vocal scores was undoubtedly a distraction, and the lack of figuring in some of the continuo parts required a considerable amount of pre- work.

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David Rhodes

The Third Tutorial

I do wonder if there is going to be a learned tome coming out of all this: � Translations of plainsong into polyphony; 14th � 16th Centuries: comparisons and considerations�: presumably required reading for any undergraduate course in early music?

The third tutorial was a particular delight, not least because it was a rainy day and the modern chapel was a first floor vessel of light with a golden floor and furniture in a concrete frame, but also because the number of singers magically came out as 21 able singers, with three voices to each of the six parts [so there were 7 sopranos � but it was a lovely sound] [and perhaps four basses]. I did wonder if the fact that John had introduced the Richafort in the first tutorial had reduced numbers. If so it was to underestimate the interest of the full work.

As in the second, much reviewed, tutorial, there were two cantus firmus voices [let us call them A2 and T1 ] in the middle of the score - and often in canon. As in tutorial 2 they were apparently seated at the ends of the semicircle so that they could be heard almost antpihonally: but in the Fitzwilliam Chapel we experimented with swapping these two voices with the A1 and T2 who were sitting in the centre of the semicircle. John�s opinion was that he preferred this latter arrangement. It certainly did keep the inner voices on their toes as well as giving them insight into singing the different lines [sometimes both by the repeat of a section � when you had changed halfway!]. A small group also paid off here.

Those who remember the Richafort introit from tutorial 1 might remember that it was notably Josquinesque; which John again illustrated with facsimile reading of a similar piece by Josquin � with a strange text referring to nymphs and Sylphs. But this is where the Richafort Requiem then really began to take off � as we moved through Kyrie to the Gradual and Offertory, where the key changed from one to two sharps; but the two cantus firmus voices stayed firmly in G major, leading to milkable juxtapositions of c naturals and sharps: very aptly illustrated by singing a new section through with just the two cantus firmus voices and then adding extra layers: squidgy! So you can see that we had a good day under the kind auspices of EEMF and our organiser Ellen Sarewitz.

[As an addendum, if there were those who thought that the Fitzwilliam College is rather far out of town for the carless, the no 1 bus from the railway station stops just before Magdelene bridge. It is then a 10 minute walk up Castleton Rd and Huntingdon Rd, or you can catch a 5 or 6 bus: and you can usually see a student accessing the college from Huntingdon Rd.]

Neil Edington

Alma redemptoris mater
A workshop for singers directed by John Milsom

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We can always expect John Milsom to take us on a voyage into the unknown - Richafort, Loyset Compere and Philip van Wilder come to mind from previous occasions - but this time he provided an intriguing mixture of the familiar viewed in unfamiliar ways, and the totally unfamiliar. We began with the well-known plainchant Alma redemptoris mater, but we explored it in small sections which were put into the context of the polyphony of the setting by Constanzo Festa, the first of the three motets to be studied. It is perhaps surprising that a composer so famous in his time as Festa (�musicus eccelentissimus et cantor egregius� as he was described at his burial), and so prolific both as a composer of sacred music and a madrigalist, should be so little known, and to our lack of acquaintance with his music, John added another layer of separation - the process of �de-familiarisation�. This was achieved by presenting the music on the page in an unaccustomed format, which involved reading right across a double page, dispensing to a large extent with the underlay, and arranging the parts in an unexpected order, so that the two parts making up the canon (A1 and T1) were at the top of the system, with the others (S1, S2, T2 and B) below. As was also the case on Michael Procter�s Hassler day last December, it became clear that we are creatures of habit who expect the highest part to be at the top of the system and are particularly disconcerted by any part designated 1 lying lower in the voice than the corresponding 2.

Festa served as a focus for the question �For whom was the composer writing ?�. The answer, emphatically, is not the audience except, perhaps, to the extent that they wished their patrons to be satisfied with the music which they commissioned; it is other composers. In music, as in the visual arts, there was the desire to emulate, and to surpass their peers. Such was the route to recognition and prestigious appointments - in Festa�s case, the court of Louis XII and the Sistine Chapel. Commercial considerations were also prominent. In 1536, Festa wrote to his patron, Filippo Strozzi of the Florentine banking family, addressing him as �Magnificent Sir� and asking him to have one of his agents find a printer in Venice for his hymns and Magnificats �and if he wants them, I want not less than 150 scudi, and if he wants the basse, 200 in all� (Allan W Atlas, Renaissance Music, Norton, 1998, p.466). There are no such anecdotes about the composer of the second setting which we studied. Not even the years of the birth and death of Andreas de Silva are known, and although there are several references to him both in Reese, Music in the Renaissance (Dent, 1954) and Leeman Perkins, Music in the Age of the Renaissance (Norton, 1999), these writers do not place him in the front rank-for instance, his first two appearances in Reese are under the headings �Carpentras and some lesser figures� and �Corteccia and some lesser madrigalists�. However, it appears that his compositions were of sufficient interest to be drawn on by Palestrina and by Arcadelt, and the Te Deum setting which has been found in more sources of the period than any other is attributed to him (and also to Josquin and Mouton). Indeed, it appears that he enjoyed a high reputation among his contemporaries, being described in 1567 by Bartoli as one of the successors of Josquin �who taught the world how music should be written�. Kirsch, in the New Grove, describes his compositional style as having �a relatively simple technical structure, a straightforward, strongly expressive melody which tends towards declamation, an expressive harmonic sense and an overall formal design which is always clear�. These characteristics were all apparent in the five-part (SATBarB) setting and it is unsurprising that at the end of the day it topped the poll for the participants� favourite piece.

Finally we moved on to more familiar ground with the five-part (SATTB) setting by Victoria. Here, John drew our attention to a musical jest perpetrated by the composer. Both the Festa and the de Silva settings are based entirely on the Alma redemptoris mater chant and the setting of the words sumens illud Ave mirrors that section of the chant. In the Victoria, however, a setting from Ave maris stella (where the second verse opens with the line sumens illud Ave) is introduced, this being indicated by the insertion of the relevant section of both chants at the start of the corresponding text. After the florid, decorative five bars of sumens illud Ave based on Ave maris stella, the setting returns quietly and almost apologetically to peccatorum miserere as if, so John put it, Victoria was asking pardon for having strayed. Having done some detailed work on all three pieces and absorbed a variety of fascinating insights, we broke for tea (refreshed once again by Mary Reynor�s exceedingly good cakes, beside which Mr Kipling�s productions pale into insignificance) and sang through all three pieces. John was generous in his praise for our efforts and we, I am sure, felt privileged to act once again as a medium for his exploration into some previously uncharted territory. Warmest thanks are due not only to him but to Diana Porteous and Nicola Wilson-Smith for their contributions towards another successful day in Headington.

Sidney Ross

Dufay Missa Ave Regina Caelorum
A workshop for singers directed by Eamonn Dougan

Both motet and mass are in four parts, but originally, of course, the voices would not have been divided into our modern SATB. Michael Procter, co-editor of the Beauchamp Press, publishers of the edition we were using, points out that this is one of the few pieces of the period that �works� with a mixed choir, and in fact the soprano line was relatively low as was the alto (really a tenor part, in treble clef an octave down), with tenor line high � not a serious problem since three of the nine tenors were women.

Eamonn�s approach - musical rather than musicological - was that of the singer- musician he is, and he led us through a long sequence of exercises in which, among other things such as brain-twisting finger exercises, we tried, in search of blend, to produce different vowel sounds while maintaining the same amount of space within the mouth as the vowel changed - raised upper palate and active tongue being vital for this - and producing consonants without distorting the vowels. He also had us sing - or rather try to sing - through the fricative �V�, a difficult enterprise whose purpose I�ve forgotten but almost certainly failed to achieve. A couple of his phrases come to mind: �Basses, imagine that someone is behind you with a feather duster to shape your entry�, and �Keep the breath buoyant!�

With all that preparation, our voices were pretty much in shape when we came to actually singing the mass. There are rhythmic complexities, and we were encouraged to escape the �tyranny of the bar line� and use our heads to shape the phrasing, always an enjoyable challenge. (It would be nice if more modern editions of music of this period were to place bar lines between staves rather than on them!) Where triple rhythms appeared, sometimes at the same time as duple ones in other parts, Eamonn managed, I know not how, to keep us together.

It wasn�t until after lunch that we got to the motet, having sung much but not all of the mass in the morning. Here we came upon Dufay�s pleas for mercy, which add emotional depth to what is already a moving prayer to Mary mother of Jesus, beloved by all Christendom in those days.

Since time was limited, we didn�t worry about ficta but followed what was in the text; similarly, there was no fiddling with underlay. We sang Italian Latin, which also saved time - I noted that in my part, which I had sung under Michael Procter in Westphalia some years ago, I had pencilled in umlauts over u�s and deleted final s�s: it was helpful this time not to have to be too nice about authenticity!

Attendance had been limited to fifty singers, so some sopranos and even basses had to be on the waiting list and consequently missed out. Over thirty singers had ordered copies of the music in advance and some had heard a YouTube version, a sign that there was a good level of preparation. In the event, a good balance was achieved and, gratifyingly, Eamonn expressed satisfaction with our efforts, and noted our success in remaining on pitch. Hugh Rosenbaum (the day�s organiser) noted that one really good piano moment came in the motet, after �miserere supplicanti Dufay�.

Mention MUST be made of Mary Reynor�s wonderful cakes in the afternoon tea break: always a most welcome feature at these workshops! My only complaint is that I was tempted to eat more than one, which wasn�t very beneficial to vocal production... One TVEMF day really isn�t enough, for music of this stature and complexity - and yet, one singer, when applying, had expressed anxiety that there wouldn�t be enough music to fill a whole day! As it was, we had to omit much of the mass, which means that there will have to be another Dufay day some time. As one singer said, �Let�s do it again!�

Rowena Rosenbaum

Thanks very much to Hugh for an immaculately organised day, and to everyone who helped, particularly Rowena, Nicola and David F.

1st April 2012

I am grateful to Antony Dalton for pointing out that one of the pieces studied, Marche Fun�bre Compos�e pour les Fun�railles d'un Grand Homme Sourd, is uploaded on YouTube at www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCOMrTyorkc (though he complains about the intonation) but unfortunately the participants did not have this link soon enough for practice purposes. Finally, I feel that the application form should have encouraged the attendance of players who could keep time but were not very proficient on their chosen instrument.

A review was to have been written by Anne Scruby but unfortunately she lost her voice and was unable to attend. By the way, Anne, blank cheques are very acceptable as payment for events, but you do have to sign them.

Dave Arrowsmith

For those who missed the original form for this event, it is still available at www.tvemf.org/events/rests.pdf

The First Queen Elizabeth and England's Golden Age
A choral day in Challock with David Allinson, 19th Feb 2012

David marvelled at our concentration as he rehearsed separate parts. The Thames Valley tradition is to talk quietly through empty bars and SEMF members are by and large muggles who can't use computers, but Bristol University choir tweet, text and constantly update their Facebook status during rehearsals.

The idea of synaesthesia is familiar from Skrjabjn. But is it real? Indeed, are feelings real? - I "taste" sweet sherry when I listen to Kiri te Kanawa, but do other people have the same experience? With Erich Kunz I taste honey, but with Leo Brouwer and Kazimierz Serocki it's sweet and sour Chinese - are such perceptions consistent across the board? (While on the theme of Gesamtkunstwerk... I fit the peg in my ear when I tune my cello - it gives me Good Vibrations and no side-tone.) For David, a key signature of four flats makes the piece "feel like velvet" - think of the biblical Jacob's misuse of velvet - or was it suede - ("for my brother Esau is an hairy man but I am a smooth man") and aim for Anglican suavity in performance. The crunchy false- relations towards the end are "the vinegar on the chips" - the only culinary metaphor used today.

The next piece, Tallis' Candidi Facta Sunt is in Latin. (Provided there was no element of Mariolatry, the use of Latin was permitted in various centres.) In the original alternatim sequence, the soloist sang the chant and the choir the responses. Dunstable was the first to "push up" the chant, then in Tallis' Dum Transisset Sabbatum, the chant moves like an exoskeleton to different voices and a more interesting type of polyphony emerges.

The Tallis-Byrd Cantiones of 1755 are a thank-you to Elizabeth for the grant of a Patent to print music (23 pieces from each composer, one for each year of her reign). Their master-apprentice friendship led to Byrd quoting Tallis e.g. in the Sanctus of the Mass for 4 Voices and in other places. The business venture was not successful, as the following from Tallis' autobiography Mille Regretz reveals:

Tom (in doleful dumpes): Monopolie? I should have stucke to Trivyall Pursuite!
Wm: I thought you said the Queene had given us a licence to printe money.
Tom: I said To printe musick, Byrd-brayne.
Wm: How do we make �1 million then in (earlye) musicke publishing?
Tom (lachrimose): Start with �2 million!

When one participant asked of those square phrase marks "what are the brackets for?", David replied "I asked them in the shop but they weren't sure." Doubtless Baden-Powell explains the Use of Ligatures in his Scouting for Boys.

Now two performance tips: In sight-singing, think about the harmonic movement - does it lead to a plagal cadence for example. (Personally I always ask "What would Andr� Rieu do in these circumstances?") Also, it's not a luxury to know the meaning of the text.

The three-word title of Tallis's Honor, Virtus et Potestas suggests its use for Trinity Sunday. The overall structure is broadly canonic. The glorious music matched the sunny weather and inspired some piscine imagery - sopranos smoothly rippling at the surface, minnows flashing in the shallows - it would have taken Izaak Walton and several members of the Bernouli dynasty to capture the swishing interplay of the various layers of polyphony. Is it too facile to suggest that the top three voices represent the Trinity? For David, the tenors are like the stem of a stout Forsythia, the other voice being adornments. For the final sing-through we were spatially relocated. With the tenors centre-stage (centre of the universe) while the basses metamorphosed into flying buttresses.

This Sweet and Merry Month of May needs little comment. Try singing bars 29ff wordlessly as a bucolic landler. More agrarian metaphors - "these lines wiggle like worms on the page". Bar 24 has 6 beats, though this is not indicated in the time signature - one feels the music through the feet rather than by counting, and I found myself humming Harvest Home even this early in spring. The lightweight character in this piece is more Nursey in Blackadder than Elizabeth as a second Helen of Troy, though Elizabeth was not one to reject flattery by all accounts.

Byrd's Dileges Dominum is a canon for eight voices. The title is two-pronged. Canon (strict rule) can also be God's law. Only 4 voices are given in the printed version, voices 5-8 being filled out by the reader. This is considerably easier than Flemish killer-sudoku puzzle-canons, but the text is printed in retrograde as overlay. ("Backwards ran sentences till reeled the mind" - Tudor Times.) We experimented in performance by having Choir I sing mf with Choir II mp, and also by singing in an outward-facing circle formation, demonstrating our absolute trust in the conductor: semper fi strictum cum tactu. Note when singing an edition in C, make the B's as bright as possible - think Andr� Rieu squeezing a leading-note in the Caf� Sperl. Another tip - given a series of long notes try singing first while reduplicating the vowel within each syllable (echoes of hoquetus!) then the second time don't reduplicate but sing the vowels smoothly - bizarre but it works.

It was great fun to Sing Joyfully (Psalm 81). "Sound the trumpet in the new moon" could be (maybe is?) a West-Gallery tune. A final performance tip: a stop-consonant is literally unsingable, so instead of trum-pet try trum'et, with a kartvelian exolallic.

With only one food-related metaphor (one and a half if you count the vanilla pod flavouring of "splendorem in candidi"), no cream was poured, no honey drizzled, no sugar sprinkled, no chocolate added, showing that musical metaphors - which certainly enhance my understanding - can be expressed through alternative modalities.

Brian O'Hagan

Editor�s note. For those who haven�t seen him, David has been on a very successful diet. He probably doesn�t like to mention food these days!

Melancholia in Music by Michael Procter
(book review)

In the usual musicological tradition, Michael begins his work with a brisk and barbed exposure of the errors into which both Watson and his own precursors in the field of Holmesian musicology have fallen. He points to the confusion engendered by �strange and fanciful� definitions of the term motet and expresses the view that, strictly speaking, the term should be confined to the Propers in psalm + antiphon form which are sung at points in the service at which movement takes place. He observes that the monograph could never have encompassed the hundreds of polyphonic motets attributed to Lassus and announces his discovery that it is in fact dedicated to a specific set of posthumous motets which were first published as numbers 404-416 in the Magnum Opus Musicum of 1604 (MOM), ten years after Lassus� death.

The second section of Michael�s book briefly describes the origins of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, his examination of the six volumes of MOM, his discovery of a small number of sheets of paper inside one of the volumes which had caused it to fall open at just the point where he wished to examine it, and the process by which he concluded that those faded pencil jottings in some form of shorthand represented at least an early draft of the missing monograph. The section ends with an intriguing speculation that the monograph may have been composed in the aftermath of his successful escape from the clutches of Moriarty when they dramatically met at the Reichenbach Falls, but your reviewer is inclined to think it unfounded. When Holmes returned to London and revealed to Watson, in the narrative entitled The Empty House, how he had spent the intervening time, he mentioned his sojourn in Tibet, his adventures as the Norwegian, Sigerson, his visit to the Khalifa at Khartoum and his researches into the coal-tar derivatives at the laboratory in Montpelier. Would not the remarkable discovery in Munich have been mentioned, had it taken place during that period ?

We then come to the core of the book, which is the reconstruction of the lost monograph, with Michael�s annotations. It is difficult to decide, after studying this section, who is the most polymathic; Michael, Holmes or Lassus himself. Holmes pays generous tribute to the quality and variety of Lassus� achievements, while Michael displays his intimate knowledge of the Holmesian Canon as well as his profound musical scholarship. In his analysis of the thirteen motets which make up the cycle, Holmes pays particular attention to the fitting of the music to the text, a factor which Michael, in his role as musical director, regularly emphasises. But as well as the musical analysis (which also includes comment on modal organisation and harmonic structure), Holmes relates the texts which Lassus selected for the cycle to features of his family relationships and personal disposition. It is this that forms the connection with the two essays by Michael which follow.

�Great men�, Holmes begins, �are always of a nature originally melancholy�. Michael�s first annotation to the monograph corrects Holmes� misattribution of this aphorism to Aristotle. In the first essay he demonstrates, both from the Canon and secondary sources, Holmes� own susceptibility to bouts of black depression. In the second, he expands on the reference in the New Grove (1980) to Lassus� suffering, in his later years, from �hypochondria melancholica, for which he sought the help of a physician�, and presents the facts underlying that statement, which refers to an episode which occurred in 1590-91. Holmes, as Michael points out, would have had access only to the inaccurate versions of those facts which became current during the

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In summary, this long-lost monograph, with its scholarly annotations and accompanying essays, will be a welcome addition to the libraries of musical scholars and Sherlockians alike. It is at present obtainable from the author direct as a printable PDF (�3.00) and as a booklet (�8.50 plus postage), and from www.lulu.com, and will shortly be available from Amazon and other outlets.

Sidney Ross

Opportunities to Make Music

The Morley College summer school includes what they call an Advanced Recorder Consort (approx. grades 5/6) to be held from Monday 16 July to Thursday 19 July in the evenings from 6.30 to 9.30 pm. For further information see the college's website www.morleycollege.ac.uk or phone 020 7450 1889.

For Sale

Harpsichord tuition
available from teacher with over 18 years experience.
Whether you are looking to pass exams, diplomas,
improve your continuo playing, or just want to learn for fun,
lessons are designed to suit individual needs.


Please call Katharine May (GRSM Hons, ARCM) on 01628 783272 or email
kmkatharinemay.co.uk (www.katharinemay.co.uk)

Handel House

June 2012 Thursday 7 June, 6.30-7.30pm. French Music for the Harpsichord. Nathaniel Mander. Tuesday 12 June, 6.30-7.30pm. British Harpsichord Society Recital: Cosimo Prontera Keyboard composers from the Neapolitan Royal Chapel, including Giovanni Salvatore, Gaetano Greco, Bernardo Storace, Alessandro & Domenico Scarlatti, Leonardo Leo, Niccol� Piccinni.

Thursday 14 June, 6.30-7.30pm. English Recorder Music Through the Ages Greensleeves, Handel, the neo-Baroque sonata by Herbert Murrill, the Gordon Jacob Variations etc. James Risdon (recorder) and Trevor Hughes (harpsichord).

Thursday 21 June, 6.30-7.30pm. Brazilian Music. Ricardo Barros (harpsichord).

Sunday 24 June. Walking Tour: Handel�s Theatres, 11am-12.30pm (Martin Wyatt) Concert: Acis and Galatea, 3-4pm. Bridget Cunningham (harpsichord) and Handel House Harmonies.

Thursday 28 June, 6.30-7.30pm. �Play from the Soul� � Heeding the Composer�s Advice. The quotation is from CPE Bach�s Essay on the True Art of Performing on Keyboard Instruments (1752). This programme will focus on Bach�s works, his contemporary Jacques Duphly and Handel. Preethi de Silva (harpsichord).