This Jause is an excerpt from Classical Cake, op. 10. In this excerpt, we’re talking with Dr. Alfons Huber, leader of the restoration workshop at the Kunsthistoriches Museum’s Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, about how playing the clavichord is crucial to understanding Mozart and Haydn…

TRANSCRIPT

ALFONS HUBER: One of my philosophies was if you want to understand a certain period, you must begin to study two or, better, three generations before. And you must forget everything which came afterwards. And I have observed that only few persons follow this rule.

DANIEL ADAM MALTZ: I also think of the extreme importance of understanding the era around… it can't just be ‘I love Beethoven,’ it has to be what era shaped Beethoven. In the type of thought around him, and the time, and everything that is shaped around it… it is crucially important to understanding.

HUBER: I think that every student who is studying the classical era must play — for one year — the clavichord. Because without the clavichord you never will understand Mozart and especially Haydn.

Haydn, for example… I played Haydn as a student on the modern piano and I didn't like it. For me it was very boring. In the meantime, I've built around 20 clavichords from 1400 to 1800. And, when I started to play Haydn on the clavichord, I immediately understood… one single tone on the clavichord is different than a single tone on the fortepiano. On a good clavichord, you can influence the tone after the touch.

For example, the suspensions in Haydn's minuets in the slower movements. You can't describe it.

MALTZ: Everything was conceived on the clavichord.

HUBER: Yeah, and I have read it in his biography. That as an old man he started early in the morning and he improvised every day, three to four hours before lunch and when he had a good idea he wrote it down. He was inspired by the clavichord.

Also, some orchestral music smells for me sometimes… Oh, that's a pretty clavichord passage.