Yale Collection of Musical Instruments presents
DAVITT MORONEY harpsichord
In Memoriam RICHARD REPHANN 1932-2014
a program of music by William Byrd, Louis Couperin, Georg Muffat, Franรงois Couperin, Antoine Forqueray and J. S. Bach
X 15 Hillhouse Avenue New Haven 4 October 2015 3:00 p.m.
cover: Attributes of Music, Paris, 1770, by Anne Vallayer-Coster (1744-1818)
This concert is made possible by the generous support of the following: Associate Members of the Collection The George P. O’Leary Fund The Edgard and Geraldine Feder Foundation The Lawrence Scripps Wilkinson Fund
Contributions in Richard Rephann’s memory may be sent to: Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments P.O. Box 208278, New Haven, CT 06520-8278 (collection.yale.edu) Alzheimer’s Disease Research Unit 1 Church Street, Suite 600 New Haven, CT 06510 (www.alzheimers.yale.edu)
This concert is being recorded and streamed live over the Internet; please turn off all cell phones and pagers.
Yale Collection of Musical Instruments presents
DAVITT MORONEY harpsichord
In Memoriam RICHARD REPHANN 1932-2014
William Byrd
Three pieces in F
(c.1540-1623) Prelude
Georg Muffat (1653-1704)
Pavan and Galliard
Passacaglia in G minor (1690)
Johann Sebastian Bach Three fugues from The Art of Fugue, (1685-1750) BWV 1080 (1745-50) Contrapunctus 1 Contrapunctus 3 Contrapunctus 8 INTERVAL Louis Couperin Pieces in F major (c.1626-1661) Prélude Allemande grave 2 Courantes Sarabande Gigue Tombeau de Monsieur de Blancrocher Antoine Forqueray (1671-1745)
La Sylva
François Couperin from the Dixhuitiéme Ordre (1722) (1668-1733) Allemande La Verneüil Sœur Monique Le Tic-Toc-Choc Harpsichords by Andreas Ruckers (Antwerp, 1640), François Etienne Blanchet the Elder (Paris ca. 1740), and Johann Adolph Hass (Hamburg, 1760)
About the Performer Davitt Moroney is Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley, where he is also University Organist and Director of the University Baroque Ensemble. He has made about 70 commercial CDs, especially of music by Bach, Byrd, and members of the Couperin family. His most recent project, finished earlier this year, is a 10-CD recording of François Couperin’s complete harpsichord works (over 250 pieces), performed on superb antiques from the Flint Collection. His recordings have been awarded the French “Grand Prix du Disque,” the German “Preis der Deutschen Schallplattenkritik,” and three British “Gramophone Awards.” He is also the author of the monograph “Bach: An Extraordinary Life,” which has been translated into five languages. In 1987 he was named Chevalier dans l’Ordre du mérite culturel by Prince Rainier of Monaco and, in 2000, Officier des arts et des lettres by the French government.
RICHARD REPHANN 1932-2014
The elder son of Clarence Franklin Rephann and Thelma Louise Hamill, Richard Thaddeous Rephann was born on February 9, 1932, in Frostburg, Maryland. As a teen, he attended the Johns Hopkins University Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore, where he studied piano under Mieczyslaw Munz and Alexander Sklarevsky. His long association with Yale University began in the fall of 1961, when he became a harpsichord pupil of Ralph Kirkpatrick. Following the completion of a master’s degree in 1964, he received faculty appointments as Instructor in Harpsichord Playing in the School of Music and Assistant Curator of the Collection of Musical Instruments. In 1968, he became Director of the Collection, a post he held for 37 years, while being ap5
pointed full Professor (Adjunct) of Organology and Harpsichord Playing in the Yale School of Music. During his tenure, the Collection’s home–a former fraternity building at 15 Hillhouse Avenue–was transformed into a facility for conserving, studying, and presenting to the public the rich holdings of a growing collection. Rephann raised funds to have architects and contractors transform the fraternity’s dining area, billiard room, and ballroom into effective gallery spaces for exhibitions. A climate control system, which is crucial to the preservation of old and highly sensitive objects, was installed and gradually updated as technology in this field evolved. In 1967, Rephann initiated an annual series of concerts presenting music from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Now the longest-running series of its kind in this country, it presents some of the most distinguished soloists and ensembles of the “early music” movement in concerts that often feature restored instruments from the Collection’s holdings. These concerts have been recorded since the early 1980s, initially by Yves A. Feder of Killingworth, Connecticut, and more recently by the recording studio of the Yale School of Music, making the museum’s series one of the most well-documented early music series in existence. Rephann’s career as a museum director was complimented by his career as harpsichordist. He appeared annually in performances at Yale and at other colleges and universities. His fascination with and daily proximity to historical instruments allowed him to experiment with repertoire suited to harpsichords of different national schools—Italian, Flemish, French, German, and English. In his later years, he identified with the music of Johann Jakob Froberger, Louis Couperin, Jean-Henri D’Anglebert, François Couperin, and Jean-Philippe Rameau. Although he never recorded for commercial release, many of his live performances are now part of the museum’s archive. A devoted teacher, Rephann maintained a studio of Yale pupils who now hold positions as organists and harpsichordists in churches, universities, and colleges around the world in New York, Boston, Providence, Washington, DC, Buffalo, Chicago, San Francisco, Tacoma, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Kobe City, Seoul, and Montreal; Birmingham, AL; Fort Collins, 6
CO; DeLand, FL; Mount Prospect, IL; Pittsburg, KS; South Hadley, MA; Gladstone, NJ; and Arlington, TX . * * * During the 1960s and 1970s, while riding the crest of the early-instrument-revival wave, Rephann came into contact with performers and builders from all parts of the globe, including Fernando Valenti, Gustav Leonhardt, Luigi Tagliavini, Albert Fuller, Douglas Allanbrook, Igor Kipnis, Edward Smith, Blandine Verlet, Egbert Ennulat, Idar Karevold, Lola Odiaga, Preethi da Silva, William Christie, Mark Kroll, Alan Curtis, Christopher Hogwood, Trevor Pinnock, William Porter, Davitt Moroney, Andrew Appel, Scott Ross, Boyd Jones, Frank Hubbard, William Dowd, Friedrich von Huene, Carl Fudge, Eric Herz, Sheridan Germann, Martin Skowroneck, John Brombaugh, Noel Mander, Frank Rutkowski, Robert Robinette, William Hyman, Walter Burr, Keith Hill, Wally Zuckermann, David Way, Malcolm Rose, Allan Winkler, Don Angle, John Phillips, John Bennett, Thomas McCobb, and Rodney Regier. In the late 1970s, the Collection received an endowment from George P. O’Leary (Yale, BS, 1964; PhD Physics, 1969) that enabled Rephann to launch an extensive program of conservation and restoration which continues to the present. Consulting with some of the foremost experts in the field of musical instruments–Lloyd Adams, Laurence Witten, Andrew Petryn, Jacques Francais, Hugh Gough, Frank Hubbard, René Morel and Andrew Dipper, he established guidelines for the restoration of string and keyboard instruments in particular. In 1982, Frank Rutkowski and Robert Robinette were appointed as Conservators to the museum. They subsequently initiated an ambitious project of “de-restoration” aimed at correcting the many mistakes made in previous clumsy and misguided efforts to repair keyboard instruments and make them playable. Their removal of unnecessary accretions, consolidation of all existing original elements, and reapplication of historically appropriate materials have brought the instruments into a state of conservation that maximizes their integrity as artifacts and allows them to sound today as closely as possible to the way they were originally intended to sound. * * * The Collection became a valuable resource for the various music curricula of the University under Rephann’s direction. He regularly taught courses 7
in the history of musical instruments, in which the Collection was used as a laboratory for students investigating the structure, morphology, and development of musical instruments in relation to their historical context. He encouraged colleagues in The School of Music, the Department of Music, and the College of Arts and Sciences to bring their classes to the museum for special presentations pertinent to the subject matter of a course, often involving demonstrations and performances on museum instruments. Scholars, performing musicians, and instrument makers from all over the world were accommodated in their requests to closely examine instruments in the Collection. During Rephann’s tenure, the Collection tripled in size. Its growth and many of its activities as a museum were funded through outside sources (chiefly individuals identified by the Director) as well as by the generous support of his Board of Advisors and of the Associates of the Collection, a museum membership organization that he established in 1977. Rephann’s publications include checklists and catalogues of the Yale Collection, the Pedro Traversari Collection (Quito), the Robyna Neilson Ketchum Collection of Bells, and The Schambach-Kaston Collection of Rare Strings and Bows (now at the Osaka College of Music). His last published periodical article, “A Fable Deconstructed,” deals with the design, construction, and decoration of the two-manual harpsichord by Pascal Taskin, Paris, 1770, in the Yale Collection. In 1984, Luther Noss, Dean of the School of Music from 1954 to 1970, noted that the Collection had made “phenomenal progress…under Rephann’s direction. The University recognized this in 1976 by granting the Collection ranking as a separate deparment, with control over its own fiscal and managerial operations. This greatly increased its possibilities for further development, and Rephann has succeeded in building a strong body of outside support from among individuals throughout the country who have a special interest in this field.” In recognition of his outstanding contribution to the development of the Collection, its role in the University, and its presentation to the New Haven community for over forty years, Rephann was presented with the Morris Steinert Award, the museum’s highest honor, upon his retirement in 2006. 8
William Purvis, the current director of the Collection, said, “During his 42-year tenure, Richard’s staunch advocacy and powerful vision transformed the Collection into one of the finest collections of historical instruments in the world. All who knew him valued his incisive intellect and refined taste. He not only transformed and enriched the Collection, but also the lives of everyone who knew him.” *** Richard Rephann died peacefully at Arden Courts Memory Care Community in Hamden, Connecticut, on 29 December 2014. A victim of Alzheimer’s disease, he was 82. He is survived by his wife, Susan E. Thompson; daughter, Lola Voysest Rephann of Jersey City, NJ; brother, Oliver Rephann of Simpsonville, South Carolina; brother-in-law, Rev. Kirk E. Thompson (Katherine) of Saint Johnsbury, VT; sisters-in-law, Claudia R. Thompson (George Exner) of Wooster, OH, and Lewisburg, PA, Julia A. Thompson (Michael Young) of Friday Harbor, WA, and Cheryl Keefe (Van Kelly) of Bernardsville, NJ; nephews, James Thaddeous Rephann and Evan Thompson Keefe; nieces, Anne Marie Rephann Moore, Cameron Thompson Exner, and Laurel Thompson Exner; his first wife of seventeen years, Lola Odiaga of New Haven; and his colleague of thirty-five years, Nicholas Renouf of Guilford.
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Colleagues’ Remembrances Elias N. Kulukundis Today we have come together in New Haven to remember Richard Rephann, who for nearly forty years was the Director of the Collection of Musical Instruments at Yale. Richard was a friend, a mentor, an associate, a teacher for most people here. No one who met him went away without realizing that he was a unique individual, and always his own man. I first met Richard here in New Haven over forty years ago. We had both been students at Yale earlier—myself as an undergraduate and in the Graduate School, Richard in the Music School—but at different times so that our paths did not cross. We only met formally in 1970 when I became Chairman of the Friends of Music at Yale and the organization was in need of a Corresponding Secretary. Richard volunteered, or was volunteered, for the job, but it was a good fit since the Collection was one of the principal beneficiaries of the Friends’ largesse in those years. We quickly discovered that in many ways we thought alike, and became friends; it was a friendship that lasted until the end of Richard’s life. Richard was not always an easy person to get along with. There was a sign on his desk which read ‘Boss heureux’ on one side, and ‘Boss facheux’ on the other. Whenever we met, I am glad to say that the sign always read ‘heureux.’ And with me, he was always ‘heureux,’ no matter what problems he may have been facing. Richard was always faithful to his friends and ready to help in any way. And, as Director of the Collection, he was an exemplary, if demanding leader, who retained the loyalty and affection of his associates and inspired them with the desire to excel. For Richard, there was only one way to do things—his way—but his way was inevitably the right way. He had little tolerance for half-way measures or the petty side of university politics. Things had to be done properly or not at all. He demanded that first and foremost of himself. He carried that philosophy over into his operation of the Collection as well as into his teaching. The textbooks he used as a teacher were not modern compilations but original treatises such as François Couperin’s L’Art de toucher le clavecin, C. P. E. Bach’s Versuch, or Rameau’s Traité de l’harmonie. He encouraged his students to become intimately familiar with them in order to understand how to play eighteenth-century keyboard music properly or 10
realize a thoroughbass at sight. He asked no more of them than he did of himself as he prepared to perform such music publicly. He believed this was the only way to reach an understanding of a composer’s intentions, and further, that it was the right way to do it. When Richard took over the Collection in the late 1960s, it was already located at 15 Hillhouse Avenue. But, it was disorganized. The Skinner Collection had only recently been acquired and then brought together with the Steinert Collection that had been rescued from its long hibernation on the top floor of Woolsey Hall. Richard brought order to the Collection, setting up new display cases, rearranging the displays into groups of like instruments, managing the installation of a state-of-theart climate control system, training his associates, and investigating the history and provenance of important items in the Collection. He arranged for displays at Yale of outstanding private collections, and he enlarged the scope of the collection with acquisitions and gifts of unusual instruments, old and new. Among the treasures in the Collection are a piano used for ten years by Richard Wagner, Ferruccio Busoni’s harpsichord, and the harpsichord Paul Jacobs used for the premiere of Elliot Carter’s double concerto for piano and harpsichord. Richard’s impact on the Collection was not limited to these accomplishments. He also undertook the restoration of as many instruments, particularly keyboard instruments, as were restorable and for which he was able to raise the necessary funds. Among these projects was the restoration of three important harpsichords which had been improperly restored in the years before Richard’s arrival. True to his character, he went back to whatever original source material was available and, with the help of the firm of Rutkowski and Robinette, put the instruments right so that they sounded the way their makers intended. He convinced his friends to lend important instruments to the Collection for study, use and display. He also sought to make the Collection a vital part of the University’s life, creating the Collection Associates to provide non-budgetary financing for important projects, as well as an Advisory Board of experts on whom he could call for advice. Finallhy, he inaugurated the very successful annual Collection concert series. He made the Collection what it is today: not the largest collection of musical instruments in the world, but one where most of the instruments are of the highest quality, and one where the best instruments are not sitting mute, but very much alive and actively used in performance. 11
Among my many recollections of Richard, three stand out vividly. The first relates to the restoration of the big two-manual harpsichord by Johann Adolf Hass. The instrument lay only partly restored in Frank Rutkowski’s workshop for some time because Richard and he could not determine precisely what medium Hass had used to pluck the 16-foot strings. It was only after much research that Mr. Rutkowski conjectured that Hass probably had used a material tougher than the customarily used crow quill. I remember well how pleased Richard was with Frank’s hypothesis and with his successful employment of South African porcupine quills obatained during a visit to the Bronx zoo. The second involves the Epinette by Pascal Taskin that came to Yale with the Skinner Collection. Richard learned that it had a sister, and that both could have been created for and used by Queen Marie Antoinette. Richard secured the placement of the second one on loan to the Collection and, in one of the more memorable Collection concerts, included it in a duet played on the two instruments. The third recollection is of a more personal nature. In the late 1970s, Richard decided to include a keyboard sonata by Joseph Haydn in his annual concert. I thought this was a bit of an unusual repertoire choice for Richard. The work he chose to play was the B minor Sonata, with which I was reasonably familiar as I had at one time attempted to play it. I queried Richard’s choice, arguing that the work was written for piano, not harpsichord. Richard disagreed, pointing to various segments of passage work typical of writing for the harpsichord. I was skeptical. I came to the concert and listened intently when he launched into the Haydn. The proof of the pudding was in the eating. When the concert was over, I went to Richard and acknowledged that he was right, that the work sounded so good on the harpsichord that it seemed as if there was little doubt that Haydn had crafted it with that instrument in mind. I should have known better than to question Richard! Richard never advocated a position without having first investigated, questioned, and thought through all aspects of the matter. This applied both in his dealings with people as well as in his approach to performance. His way may have been the only way, but not just because it was his way; always because it was the right way to do things. Richard was always true to himself and uncompromising in his adherence to his ideals. Look around the Collection and you will see Richard’s touch everywhere. This Collection itself is his legacy and most fitting memorial. 12
Yves. A. Feder An amused smile appeared on Richard's face that day in the early 1970s when I brought my first clavichord to the Collection to have it critiqued. I had just begun making harpsichords, and was anxious to accelerate my neophyte “learning curve” in the world of historical instruments. I thought Richard found my effort passable, but it was my first contact with his marvelous and infinitely subtle form of Socratic discourse. Instead of saying “What an amateurish first effort!” he took another tack, questioning: “Why did you do that?” or “Have you ever seen an action do this?” I soon learned what a formidable scholar he was, and his prodding and illuminating conversations set me on what was to become an extraordinary and ongoing traversal of that magnificent 17th and 18th century musical universe. Shortly after that day, Richard engaged me in a totally diffrent capacity—that of recording the performances on the Collection concert series. This project lasted for over thirty years. At one of the earliest of these recorded concerts, Richard performed a Louis Couperin Suite. That exposure to the delicious possibilities of unmeasured preludes was beyond belief. Richard's ability to extract Couperin's harmonies, and all their variable implications from the simplest horizontal lines, was amazing, and he brought out the lilt and flow of those phrases in a unique and poetic manner. Responsible for the restoration of the incomparable harpsichords in the Collection, Richard simply knew and understood not only how they should sound, but how they should feel under the player's hands. He understood the meaning of the most exquisite details in the old masters' execution of their art—details which I noticed often escaped other professionals. I saw Richard in action not only as a scholar and performer, but also as a teacher; his methods were, once again, heuristic; his guidance on a superior level indeed. Whether it was music, organology, philosophy, history, or any other field, the depth of his knowledge and interest always opened doors in a really fun way. It was “Étonnez-moi” on a marvelous scale. 13
Over the many years of my acquaintance with Richard Rephann, I am honored to say he became a close and valued friend. We exchanged worlds of knowledge, fun and experience from our respective lives, and it was a joy to see how much he enjoyed studying and continuing to learn new things. Incidentally, he was a master modeler, and consequently, we often talked about ships, sailing, details of rigging masts, particularities of exotic engines—all sorts of things from sealing wax to kings! Richard also showed a care and concern for trials and tribulations in the lives of those close to him—a real warmth that grew over time. And let us not forget his prodigious and devilish sense of humor, which was an ongoing delight. To say I cherish his memory most fondly is an understatement.
Dean Robert Blocker Today we celebrate the life and legacy of Richard Rephann. A man possessed of keen intellect and remarkable musical talent, Richard was a visionary leader for the Yale Collection of Musical Instruments. Those fortunate enough to be in this room today are surrounded by evidence of his vision and the work that transformed dreams into realities. Imagine the Steinert and Skinner collections stored and brought together in a Yale fraternity house! To look into the future, to understand that Yale could and should be a worthy custodian of instruments that reveal centuries of humanity, and then to pursue that task with courage and devotion, is precisely what Richard did when he entered the doors of 15 Hillhouse as Assistant Curator in 1964, then Director in 1968. And now we are the beneficiaries of his life’s work, which for him was a noble calling. It must be said that music emanating from this Collection belongs to the world, a birthright of humanity that Richard believed was essential to our lives. The task of preserving, acquiring, organizing, and managing a burgeoning Collection of this type is daunting, even overwhelming. Richard’s scholarship, pursuit of excellence and historical accuracy, and his ability to persuade, educate, and cajole both colleagues and administrators in support of the Collection was extraordinary. 14
Today, the Collection of Musical Instruments at Yale is widely considered to be one of the world’s finest. It is a place where people come to hear music on these instruments, it is a place where students learn how to perform music written for these instruments, and it is a place where the history of music is illumined and preserved for humankind. Richard seemed to know we needed this and sometimes struggled to make us understand why we must have the Collection. And now we thank him, and we are profoundly grateful. What kept his passion burning in the face of constant challenges? I suggest several things that also reveal Richard’s character traits: - he studied and performed music of these periods - he taught harpsichord - he brought to the Collection people from whom he could learn. Scholarship and performance, teaching, and inspiring artists—all of these along with his wife, Susan, and his close friends and colleagues fed his musical soul. And through the music and instruments, his students, and the great artists who come here for inspiration, Richard’s spirit and legacy will endure.
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