The seventh annual meeting of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA) featured papers, lecture-recitals, mini-recitals and full evening concerts (some of which included the performance of new works for harpsichord), roundtable discussions, workshops led by instrument makers and the presentation of instrument collections both in private hands and belonging to the University of Michigan.

In ‘Music for All: Amateur Piano Making in Nineteenth-Century America’, Alexandra Cade (University of Delaware) detailed some instances of American piano making by non-professional instrument makers who often had little or no knowledge of standard piano action. The self-sufficiency, creativity and imagination of these instrument makers force us to redefine the craft of piano making. Jim March (Morningside College) then described his work reconstructing an English baroque spinet in a lecture-recital entitled ‘Hitchcock Spinet no. 1241: An Amateur's Adventure’. Another lecture-recital by Sarah Davies (Pocono Pines, PA), ‘From Liebhaber to Kenner: German Keyboard Notations and the Training of Organists with Reference to “The Michigan Organ Tablature”’, showed how organ tablature was used as the notation of choice in ‘teaching both music lovers and budding professionals’ until approximately the turn of the eighteenth century. A third lecture-recital, ‘For Music-Lovers and Connoisseurs: J. S. Bach's “Clavierübung III”’ by James Kibby (University of Michigan), identified a number of characteristics in Bach's collection that can be associated with either Kenner or Liebhaber (designations included in the title of Clavierübung III). The Liebhaber elements encompass the manualiter works, while the Kenner elements include more esoteric connections associated with numerology.

My paper (Julia Dokter, Georgia State University) presented discoveries concerning ‘Tempo Relationships in Bach's Fugue in E-flat major BWV552/2, from “Clavierübung III”’. Here, the relative tempos of the fugue's three sections (each with its own time signature) may be understood with reference to proportional theory, which reveals how Bach controlled every element of speed, affect and historicity through his use of seemingly odd time signatures. Sarah Simko (University of Michigan) outlined what we know about the liturgical function of Matthias Weckmann's sacred organ works. She noted the role of affect in moving the emotions (equivalent to a sermon in music), and that the verses composed by Weckmann were not used in true alternatim fashion, but functioned as interludes (that is, not as verse replacements) between sung verses.

Darrell Berg (St Louis, MO) called attention to both original and conventional aspects of C. P. E. Bach's six ‘Kenner und Liebhaber’ collections for solo keyboard. Andrew Willis (University of North Carolina) continued this theme in his lecture-recital ‘Accommodating Liebhaber: “Easy” Pieces by C. P. E. Bach’. He showed how Bach shifted from writing works for Kenner to focusing on more accessible, easier works in order to increase his income from publishing. The didactic elements of collections such as the Sechs Neue Clavierstücke, Wq63/7–12, can be seen in their relatively simple technical demands and use of fingering indications to guide the performer. In ‘Kenner, Liebhaber, Kenner und Liebhaber: Assessing Style Change in the Keyboard Sonatas of C. P. E. Bach’, Wayne Petty (University of Michigan) showed that while Bach concentrated in his early Berlin period on sophisticated works (for Kenner), and in his later Berlin period on simpler works (for Liebhaber), his Hamburg works were written ‘explicitly for both kinds of musicians’.

In a group of papers centred on pedagogy, Jeong-Suk Bae (University of St Thomas) discussed Bernardo Pasquini's fourteen solo harpsichord partimenti as tools for teaching composition and improvisation. Manuel Dahme (Stuttgart) showed how Philipp Jacob Böddecker constructed his 1701 teaching manual for basso continuo with a bass line, an upper voice, basso-continuo figures and fingerings to make realization easier for the more advanced student. The changes made by Böddecker to the music of Johann Albrecht Kress, used as examples in the manual, strikingly include modifications of the bass lines. Finally, Thérèse de Goede (Conservatorium van Amsterdam) showed how the filling-in of harmonies above a bass line was probably practised in England much earlier than previously thought. She noted that the improvisation of chords was taught from at least 1525, and probably reflected earlier notated practices. Later, Adriano Banchieri (1611) was the first musician to offer a method to learn this skill, and basso-continuo playing was the general practice in England by the mid-seventeenth century.

In his lecture-recital ‘Music for Amateurs? Reevaluating Andrea Antico's Frottole of 1517’, Alexander Meszler (Arizona State University) argued that even though publishing music for amateurs was unheard of during the early sixteenth century, Antico's volume of frottole (commercially an absolute failure) was intended for a handful of wealthy patrons. Marcos Krieger (Susquehanna University) continued this theme in his paper ‘The 1598 Intavolature d'Organo Facilissima: Early Practical Repertoire for Organists’, in which he noted that this published collection represents uncomplicated music that a less proficient organist could play on a Sunday morning. Maria Luisa Baldassari (Ensemble Les Nations) contrasted two volumes of music in a lecture-recital entitled ‘Music for Beginners and Music for Professionals: Keyboard Tablatures in Southern Italy in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’: Rocco Rodio's Libro primo di Ricercata (1575), published in open score and intended for high-level professional musicians, and Antonio Valente's Intavolatura di cembalo (1575), which offers easy-to-read number tablature for those wishing to learn the harpsichord.

Gregory Crowell (Grand Valley State University) detailed Victor Hammer's 1929 reconstruction of a clavichord from c1800, an instrument that eventually came into Crowell's possession. Had the Nazis not confiscated Hammer's possessions in Vienna and compelled him to emigrate to the United States during the Second World War, he might well have become a major figure in the early-instrument revival. In her lecture ‘The Clavichord and Cantabile in Fantasies by J. S. and C. P. E. Bach’, Carol lei Breckenridge (Central College) discussed what cantabile playing meant for the two Bachs: dynamic nuance, rubato, embellishment and even legato playing (which eventually became the norm in the nineteenth century). She argued that the special singing qualities of the clavichord make it the perfect instrument to realize eighteenth-century cantabile. Keyboard builder and technician Paul Irvin (Portland, OR) argued that modern clavichord builders make the performer's job much more difficult than it actually should be because they do not understand what sound was intended for these instruments. He suggested that a deeper, more lasting sustain than normally heard today is ideal.

In her lecture-recital ‘From Francesco Gasparini to Domenico Scarlatti: Exploring Harmonic Possibilities at the Harpsichord’ Natalie Khatibzadeh (University of North Carolina) showed the influence that Gasparini had on his student Scarlatti via such compositional elements as acciaccaturas and tied seconds or fourths above a syncopated bass line. Nina Campbell (formerly of Northern Kentucky University) presented a lecture-recital focusing on various left-hand techniques in Scarlatti's music. In a lecture-recital on late Italian baroque keyboard sonatas, keyboard builder David Sutherland (Ann Arbor) questioned why we appear to have no music for Cristofori's Florentine piano. Sutherland suggested that rather than understanding the word ‘cembalo’ to mean harpsichord, we should see it as an umbrella term for all keyboard instruments. Therefore ‘cembalo’ music by Benedetto Marcello and others might be considered suitable for piano.

In his paper ‘Reviving Historical Improvisation for Professionals and Amateurs’ John Mortensen (Cedarville University) described tools and patterns, such as partimenti and the ‘rule of the octave’, that an eighteenth-century musician would master in order to learn improvisation. Jonathan Salamon (Yale University) elucidated the programmatic elements in J. S. Bach's Capriccio, bwv992, and placed the work in the context of earlier programmatic keyboard music by Johann Jakob Froberger and Johann Kuhnau. A paper by Mario Aschauer (Sam Houston State University) entitled ‘“He Still Belonged to the Old School of Good Pianoforte Players”: Schubert and Tradition in Viennese Fortepiano Culture’ proposed that instead of interpreting Schubert's works with instruments and performing techniques contemporary with the composer, we should instead view the music in light of the late eighteenth-century instruments and techniques available to him. Finally, Thomas Green (Royal Conservatory of Music) detailed the life, career and compositions of the Chopin admirer Stephen Heller (1813–1888), who was considered by some of his contemporaries to be the Polish composer's equal.