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A History of the Harpsichord.

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A History of the Harpsichord. By Edward L. Kottick. Bloomington: Indiana University Press 2003. [557 p. ISBN 0-253-34166-3. $75.] Illustrations, color plates, bibliography, index, compact disc.

Despite the revival of interest in the harpsichord during the last thirty years, there have been few books describing the general history of the instrument. Such pioneering works as those by Raymond Russell (The Harpsichord and Clavichord [London: Faber and Faber, 1959; New York: W. W. Norton, 1973]), and Frank Hubbard (Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1974]) have both been superseded in many respects by the recent work of specialist authors. The amount and depth of specialization we have seen during the last thirty years in this area of study makes it a daunting task for any single author to attempt a general history of the harpsichord. In recognition of this situation, Edward L. Kottick makes clear his large debt to specialist authors (myself among them) at the beginning of his acknowledgements. Through extensive citation in endnotes he enables the reader to understand the source of most of the material presented. What Kottick is perhaps too modest to have stated more clearly is that he has also traveled widely to study instruments, and his breadth of understanding of the subject has not been achieved simply by reading other author's works.

Having himself been part of a research team in the acoustics of the harpsichord (connected with Zuckermann Harpsichords International), and having built many instruments over the years, he might well have produced a technical treatise on instrument making. But this history is devoted to presenting a description of seven centuries of harpsichord making, four centuries more than Hubbard and in a...

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