DURANGO, Colo.—If Dan Morgenstern’s wife, Polly, hadn’t ceded money earmarked for her piano so he could buy a kit to build a harpsichord, he might not have become involved in a 40-year love affair with the medieval instrument.
“She was gracious about it,” Morgenstern, 63, said while showing off harpsichords he has built at his home in the Ticolote area east of Durango. “But she never lets me forget it,” he added with the resignation of a man married 42 years.
The strings of the harpsichord are plucked, not struck such as in a piano, by means of a keyboard. The sounding boards of Morgenstern’s instruments are decorated with scenes of cherubs painted by his aunt, Esther Morgenstern Gilman, a painter in New York.
In all, Morgenstern has built 12 harpsichords.
“The harpsichord is the grandfather of the piano,” Morgenstern said. “The first written mention of the harpsichord dates to 1397. The piano wasn’t invented by Bartolomeo Cristoferi until 1700.”
Morgenstern’s last two harpsichords languished in his garage—85 percent complete—for 20 years while he stayed busy as CEO of a company that made wiring connectors for residential, commercial and industrial customers.
“All they need are the musical action pieces – the jacks and the strings,” Morgenstern said. “I hope to get them done this winter.”
Countless hours are required to build a harpsichord, Morgenstern said.
“You sand and paint, sand and paint, and let it sit to dry,” he said. “The harpsichord doesn’t lend itself to mass production.”
Instruments such as the harpsichord, the earlier psaltery—a portable sound board with strings that were plucked—and others were an integral part of family entertainment in medieval times. Morgenstern said.
“The only music people knew—and it wasn’t just elite society—was music played live by them or for them,” Morgenstern said. “It’s what they did after dinner. Home music was a part of daily life.”
Harpsichords enjoyed popularity for several centuries until they were eclipsed by the piano, Morgenstern said. But the 20th century brought renewed interest in harpsichords, particularly after World War II.
“I come from a musical family,” said Morgenstern, who took up the flute in third grade. “My father, Elliott, was a composer and a superb French horn player who performed with The Cleveland Orchestra.”
Morgenstern himself became accomplished enough on the flute to be named the principal flutist with the Jerusalem Symphony when he and his wife lived in Israel in 1974 and 1975. He also plays the harpsichord.
The Morgensterns met at Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., and they married while undergraduates. He also received a master’s degree at the Boston Conservatory.
When his father offered to buy his daughter-in-law a piano for graduation, Morgenstern persuaded them the money would be better spent on constructing a harpsichord.
“A piano wouldn’t have been practical,” he said. “We lived in eight apartments in eight years.”
Morgenstern built his first harpsichord in 1972 from a kit ordered from the Whole Earth Catalog. Since then, experience allows him to collect materials, among them woods such as mahogany, walnut and boxwood, and build from scratch.
Harpsichords come in several shapes and sizes. Muselaar, virginal, spinet or single or double manual identify the type, each of which has its own construction and sound.
The muselaar, which has its keyboard on the right and strings plucked in the middle, produces a warmer sound than the virginal, in which the keyboard is on the left and the strings, plucked near the nut (the keyboard end of the instrument), produces a brighter, more metallic sound.
