we're really very excited to have what I call
Nelly's new harpsichord at Mount Vernon
we've had installed in the new room which is the grand room the first room
that people enter when they come into the mansion and most of the time people
are just seeing it and it's really a beautiful instrument for Sunday's in
July and August we've had a very special treat in the afternoons for people when
they've been able to experience it actually playing and so I think that's
been just a really special moment.
it was a fantastic moment the day we finally put
the harpsichord down on the stand in my workshop for the first time I was seeing
the instrument with the proportions that was supposed to have from the right
angle until then the stand had been separate the case had been separate the
lid separates and when it all came together and sat down on the floor for
the first time that was a great moment the completed instrument showed up at
Mount Vernon on January 2nd and that was the day I started my library fellowship
here so I greeted it at the door basically watched it get unwrapped got
watched it get set up and really had a chance to live with it for one solid
month getting to know it it was just a rare privilege to be able to play this
instrument right after it was built get to know it get to know what it can
do musically and also then of course imagine what it must have been like in
the Washington's parlor and hearing nelly play it i think sound just
enriches diversifies the experience at being at a historic site like this
but to have the harpsichord playing to think these are the kinds of sounds that
George Washington heard that his guests heard it really sets the imagination a fire
and it helps you imaginatively figuratively step back into another
world and that's just incomparable
when I had my fellowship here I had the privilege of going into the vault and
looking at Nellie's exact music books and in those books she has put a lot of
fingering so I was able to see not only what she was doing in her studies and
how she was playing these pieces and also learned from her from her fingering
and try them out also we could see which pieces were her favorites which ones had
the most markings maybe which ones her teacher had assigned to her we're pretty
lucky that she was a marker not everybody marks their music and she
really did and so it's it's almost like getting to know her by looking at her
music books I feel like I know a little bit about her one of the interesting and
exciting moments in the whole process was figuring out what the original
leather plectra the little things that pluck the strings what they sounded like
we have these leather plectra and that allows my fingers to be very sensitive
on the keys a little bit different from the other harpsichords that I've had a
chance to play which are mostly quilled in bird quill as soon as I had one set
of jacks sounding I told Joyce Lindorff and she drove right down from
Philadelphia to try it out and it was okay it was viable but she brought some
other kind of leather that I didn't have and I was a little skeptical at first
but I tried it out and it had a combination of characteristics that none
of my leathers had and it actually worked spectacularly well after voicing
this new leather it actually physically looked the plectra physically looked
like the ones in the old harpsichord so it really gave me a sense that we were
on the right track this instrument has a lot to teach us about what was going on
with keyboard music making at the end of the 18th century we tend to think in
black and white that there was a harpsichord era and
a piano era but actually it was so much more pluralistic than that because at
the end of the 18th century we had this amazingly ornate and elaborate
harpsichord at the same time that pianos were becoming very popular in homes we
know what two hundred and fifty year old harpsichord sound like we don't know
what they sounded like when they were new we don't necessarily know for sure
that this one sounded like the one here at Mount Vernon did in the period we've
done a lot of research we've done a lot of experimentation we've examined the
original instrument and the clues there we've done the best we could and my hope
is that if the original maker of this harpsichord would come back from 1793 he
wouldn't be surprised at anything it would seem about right I'm so grateful
to John Watson for all his work because through his knowledge and his
scholarship and his skill he has managed to bring the sound of an instrument that
was just waiting to be reproduced he has actually been able to create the real
thing and now we can hear it Nelly's original harpsichord which the
Washington's acquired in 1793 was the very first original artifact to come
back to Mount Vernon in 1859 but it has been silent ever since so to have now
the playable reproduction that can make it come alive and it's silent no more we
hope this will be a launching pad to continuing to explore music at Mount
Vernon in the Washington's lives in the 18th century and connecting to today
you