Interview, Giulia Nuti on The Fall of the Leaf

Taking its title from an evocative short piece by Martin Peerson, Italian harpsichordist Giulia Nuti's new recital of English keyboard music on Arcana showcases not only the astonishing variety of the genre in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, but also the unique qualities of the 'Rucellai Virginal' - thought to date from around 1575, and rediscovered around four decades ago at an auction in Florence.

Giulia spoke to me via video-call earlier in the summer about the mysterious history of the instrument which she plays on the recording, how her love for the music of the English virginalists began early in her studies, and her fascinating theories as to how and why the vogue for keyboard music migrated around Europe between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries...

Tell me a little about the history of the harpsichord you've chosen for this project…

It’s an extraordinarily expressive instrument, but because it’s unsigned we don’t know who made it or where. At first it was thought to have been built in Venice (possibly by Giovanni Baffo), because that was the main harpsichord-building centre in Italy at that time. Then it appeared that it didn’t really have the characteristics of Venetian instruments, so one of the other hypotheses is that it was made in Florence: it has certain features in common with the instruments that were built by the Florentine maker Francesco Poggi.

But there’s recently been a third hypothesis - some of the decorations are similar to those found on Neapolitan instruments, so there’s now a theory that it came from the south of Italy. But there are other characteristics which aren’t compatible with how instruments were built in the south, so the debate continues…

The amazing thing is that it’s almost entirely in original condition, which is incredibly rare. Most instruments from that period have either been modified or are no longer in playing condition, because if you put strings on the soundboard then the tension is too much and it cracks. So to have an instrument from the end of the sixteenth century which still plays and has all its original parts is extraordinary!

Had it been played regularly over the past five centuries, or languished untouched?

We aren’t entirely sure, but it would be very unusual if it had been played solidly throughout the centuries. It was found in the attics of the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence about forty years ago – they had a big auction in the 1980s, and amongst the objects that they found was a big box containing this instrument. It’s perfectly preserved, but we don’t know whether that’s because they were particularly careful or simply because nobody opened the box for a long time!

Fortunately it was found at a time when historians, harpsichord-builders and collectors were very much aware of how precious it was - if it had been found fifty years earlier, perhaps it might not have been so successfully and lovingly restored. It’s not decorated to the extent that it was obviously meant to be a piece of art, as some instruments were: rich people who wanted to display their wealth would really go to town on how they had their harpsichords decorated, and a lot of the more modest-looking instruments from the period didn’t survive because in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries they weren’t considered to be particularly valuable.

What’s special about the instrument in terms of how it sounds and feels?

I always find that these old instruments will inspire you to play in a certain way if you listen to them - once you spend time really getting to know them, they will tell you what works and what doesn’t. The thing that really blew me away with this one was the fact that it was so light: when I was working on the fast passages and runs, I realised it could be taken to a whole new level that simply wouldn’t be possible with other harpsichords. It’s the entire instrument which is light, not just one specific feature – the plectrum, the weight of material used for the jacks, the plucking point (which is the balance at which the keys actually move) and the weight of the keys themselves…All of these things contribute to make it possible to play extremely fast.

At the same time I found that a lot of things could be much more lyrical, because the resonance of the instrument allows for slower tempi than usual – on other instruments the sound dies more quickly, so in order for the line to flow you can’t really dwell too much on certain points. But this one sings so beautifully, partly because of the soundboard: I’ve never known anything like it in terms of both the sustaining power and the facility in fast passages.

Each instrument has its own unique resonance, and even if you build an exact replica it’s not going to sound the same. People say the same thing about Stradivariuses - there’s no way of knowing how much the quality of the original instrument is down to the fact that the wood has been in that position for three hundred years and has aged like that, so maybe when it was new it wasn’t quite as amazing!

What were your sources for this programme?

I’ve always loved the music of the English virginalists. It’s part of the repertoire that you study when you go through music college, and it’s incredibly beautiful but also very hard: you can’t just sit down and play some Farnaby and that’s that! You have to really get into the sound-world to appreciate the intricacy – it’s like sixteenth-century poetry or embroidery or paintings, where the true beauty lies in the detail. Certain pieces like The Bells have a more immediate appeal, but some pavane and gailliards are slightly more difficult to get into.

Of course one of the most important sources is the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, because it contains fantastic pieces and it’s very easily available. But the project coincided with the publication of two volumes of Musica Britannica, edited by Alan Brown and the late Christopher Hogwood; they included new editions of pieces from the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book where some things had been corrected and some ornaments had been put into clearer light.

There was another volume by Alan Brown of pieces which hadn’t made it into any other volume of Musica Britannica because they were either anonymous or attributed, so they were slightly homeless! They’re from various manuscripts which are all over the place: some in Oxford, Cambridge and London, others in New York, Paris, Krakow… It was Gerald Gifford, my former professor at the Royal College of Music, who suggested I should go digging into those two new volumes; I thought it was quite fun to make it a personal anthology rather than focusing on a single composer or collection.

Did the instrument itself help you choose the repertoire, or did you have a programme nailed down before you started working closely together?

I’ve included some pieces that are very well known like ‘Amarilli mia bella’ and The Bells, and there’s a lot of Dowland just because he’s fantastic! The anonymous transcriptions of his lute pieces sounded particularly well on this instrument because it’s so incredibly sensitive that it’s like actually playing a lute.

I was especially interested in the Campion/Ladlawe pieces, because they’re the only two examples of a madrigal-setting being reduced for keyboard just two voices without any divisions – in the manuscript they have the sung texts written underneath. Elsewhere we see much more elaborate arrangements of songs for keyboard, as in the case of ‘Amarilli’ and ‘Can she excuse my wrongs?’, where the tune and accompaniment are incredibly highly ornamented: that’s an example of a piece that would be very difficult to execute on an instrument that isn't as quick and light and responsive as this one!

Why do you think keyboard music dried up so suddenly in England in the seventeenth century?

It’s such an interesting question, and I honestly don’t know! It just disappeared in the 1630s with the death of the last virginalists…obviously there are later composers like Purcell, but I wouldn’t describe him as a direct descendent.

I always see harpsichord repertoire in general as developing in waves. One of the first waves of interest in keyboard writing is in England at this time, and then in the first half of the seventeenth century it moves to Italy, with people like Frescobaldi. After that it starts to gain traction in France, and in the early eighteenth century it becomes the most developed instrument there, by which time it’s all died down in England and Italy: the English have no interest whatsoever in keyboard music, and the Italians are focused on writing violin music and opera and no-one’s even building harpsichords there anymore! Then of course Germany gets going…

I think it’s partly to do with monarchs setting trends – Louis XIV loved the harpsichord, so the whole of France loved the harpsichord! We see the same thing happening earlier in England: Henry VIII and Elizabeth I were keyboard-players so they had composers who wrote for them, but once they weren’t around that all finished.

It’s a similar story with other instruments: the violin wasn’t initially very popular in England, then when Italian violinists started arriving in London they introduced a different type of virtuosity and suddenly it stopped being a dance-instrument and became a solo instrument in its own right…It’s a huge topic, and would make a wonderful PhD for somebody!