Small Circus
Artwork by Gail Bradshaw
This is Small Circus, the first piece from the harpsichord suite I recorded and released on vinyl in 1985. The suite was released in 2007 on CD, and I have just remastered it in January of 2023. There are also piano recordings of the suite, more or less intact, on the live albums Out Of My Hands and November. The piece entitled They Walk Like This was left out of those live performances because it is too scary to play on piano.
I recorded the harpsichord pieces in 1985 played on a double manual slack strung harpsichord made by Matthew James Redsell of Toronto, who moved on from building harpsichords to hang gliders, renewable energy machines, and who is now a farmer and producer of fine vegetable oils near Lake Erie, Ontario.
I had always loved the harpsichord, having first heard a recording of the great Wanda Landowska playing JS Bach when I was a boy of about 10 or 12. A shoutout here to the singer and poet Daniel Pociernicki, who lived with us while he was studying at the Royal Conservatory in Toronto. Daniel introduced me to many wonderful recordings, including the Landowska Bach.
I was just learning the piano, and while I loved the piano, the huge phasey silvery sound of the harpsichord with the characteristic bite of the quill on the string captured my imagination.
The instrument seemed so very ancient to me, a wooden time machine, and I dreamed of one day having a harpsichord.
The first decent instrument I had, many years later, was a 9 foot long Sabathil double manual with pedals loaned to me by Matthew. It had a 16 foot stop, 2 8's and a 4 foot stop, switchable by the pedals, which was great for odd textural experimentation. I recorded Ancient Ships and For Gail (on the CD Ancient Ships) with this instrument in 1979.
The Sabathil was a fine instrument and fun to play, but it was a bit of a compromise between a piano and a harpsichord in that it had a steel frame which provided some tuning stability but which made for a less interesting sound than I wanted.
Eventually Matthew provided me with one of his own hand built instruments which I used to write and record the Small Circus suite.
The Small Circus suite starts with Small Circus which is in three parts, the first a somewhat French sounding melody in 5/4, the second a brief quasi atonal interlude for the short strings. and the third a strident accompaniment for a high wire act, again in 5/4, at least some of the time.
The remastered versions are somewhat “softer” in sound than the original recordings and I hope you enjoy them.
Patrick