This page contains complete, unedited copies of two communications (an email and a letter sent by surface post) from Keith Hill.   Our reply to both appears below them.

 

 

> From: PICTAGORAS@aol.com [mailto:PICTAGORAS@aol.com]

> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 8:01 PM

> To: hubharp@aol.com

> Subject: About your pedal harpsichord at hubharp.com

>  

> Dear Mr. Broekman,

>

>   I was astonished to read on your webpage for the pedal harpsichord

> which your company has made that you are taking credit for a design,

> of which I am sure you are fully aware, which I invented.   Until now,

> it has been a point of common decency and courtesy that anyone who

> borrows my design, both ask me for the use of that design and to

> credit me with the origination of that design.   I have never ever

> refused to allow anyone who asked to use the design as long as I

> received credit for the design.   I know full well that it is the best

> design and can not be surpassed and it was my love of music that

> brought me to my decision to allow others to use the design without

> being paid for that priviledge.   But I expect to get credit for the

> design and will not allow anyone to use the design who fails to credit

> me properly for it.   For you to assume that my design was lifted from

> antique originals, which as you know full well do not exist, such that

> you could use it, lock, stock and barrel, without first asking me,

> violates my spoken agreements with all my colleagues in the instrument

> making business.

>

>   Therefore, I trust, now that you know my position, you will make

> amends and ask my permission and give me the prominent credit I

> rightfully deserve for the design you clearly adopted for the pedal

> harpsichord you made recently which so prominently appears on your

> webpage for that instrument.   I also expect that you will contact the

> person who bought the instrument and make them aware of this need to

> correct your information regarding the design, as well as anyone else

> to whom you may have misrepresented the origin of that design.

>

>   If you do what I require, I will happily allow you to use my design

> without further adieu.   I leave it to your good will and judgment to

> do the right thing without further prompting.   I plan to follow up on

> this matter two weeks from now, which should give you enough time to

> make any corrections in your various websites and brochures in which

> the pedal harpsichord is mentioned.

>

>   Sincerely,

>

>   Keith Hill, Instrument Maker

>

 

The following is the text of a letter dated November 10, 2005 sent under Mr. Hill's letterhead and over his signature.   It has been transcribed verbatim so that it may be rendered in HTML

 

Dear Mr. Broekman and Mrs. Hubbard,

 

I was astonished to read on your webpage, for the pedal harpsichord which your company has made, that you are taking credit for a design as borrowed from Hass, which, I am sure you are fully aware, does not exist.   I know because I invented that design back in 1983 after enduring the misery of building the full-width-of-the-pedal-board design for Harald Vogel.   Please visit the Harpsichord Clearing House website at harpsichord.com and look at the Hill and Tyre pedal harpsichord pictured under #2316NY from 1985.   That instrument was the fourth in a series of pedal harpsichord ensembles made during the years 1983-1986.

Until now, it has been a point of common decency and courtesy that anyone who borrows my design, both to ask me for the use of that design and to credit me with the origination of that design.   I know full well that it is the best design for a pedal harpsichord and that it can not be surpassed.   And it was my love of music that brought me to my decision to allow others to use the design without being paid for that permission.   But I expect to get credit for the design and will not permit anyone to use the design who fails to credit me properly for it.   For you to assume that my design was lifted from antique originals, such that you could use it, lock, stock and barrel, without first asking me, violates my agreements with all my colleagues in the instrument making business who have asked me and have built instruments on that design.

Therefore, I trust, now that you know my position, you will make amends and ask my permission and give me the prominent credit I rightfully deserve for the design you clearly adopted for the pedal harpsichord you made recently which so prominently appears on your webpage for that instrument.   I also expect that you will correct your information regarding the design, as well as anyone else to whom you may have misrepresented the origin of that design.

If you do this, I will happily allow you to use my design without further word.   I leave it to your good will and judgment to do the right thing without further prompting.   I plan to follow up on this matter two weeks from now, which should give you enough time to make any corrections in your various websites and brochures in which the pedal harpsichord is mentioned.

I hope that I am not forced to publish such a correction myself to set the record straight.

 

Keith Hill, Instrument Maker

Nov 10 th 2005

 

The following is our reply to the points raised in the preceding communications.

 

Dear Mr. Hill,

 

Thank you for your letters.   I apologize if you feel slighted in this matter of pedal harpsichords.   You seem to feel that the design of our pedal harpsichord could not have come into being without reference to yours.   I am afraid you are mistaken in this belief.   Our instrument was designed on a clean sheet of Mylar with only the research resources of the Hubbard shop available to me and without prior knowledge of your instruments.   Thank you, in fact, for pointing me to images that helped me understand your concern and the scope of your claim.

 

You attribute your innovation greatly to insights gained while building a pedal instrument in the early '80s for Harald Vogel.   While you and I have never before communicated on this subject, I can certainly imagine the thoughts you had then; they are likely to be much the same thoughts I had while I was involved in the production of a batch of three 'typical' pedal harpsichords in 1968 or so, while working full-time for Eric Herz - my responsibility was to make them play!   For a picture of one of the instruments made at that time, please see Wolfgang Zuckermann's book, The Modern Harpsichord, 1969, page 128.   These instruments, some of which I have encountered from time to time, struck me then as eminently inconvenient in several ways.   Since, like most of their modern ilk, they are designed to support the harpsichord and its stand, they must be wide, the lid must be robust and they must be at floor level.   This makes most normal maintenance needlessly difficult and, in some instances, nearly impossible without dismounting the manual instrument, especially given the presence of the then-ubiquitous English-style trestle stand.   Tuning was no fun, either and, aside from the sheer awkwardness of having to deal somehow with the pedalboard, could be quite undignified, as well.   Also, given the varied designs of harpsichord stands, the likelihood that any given manual instrument will be able to be held securely and positioned properly by another pedal instrument is low and cannot be taken for granted.

 

But, I am sure you would agree, such inconveniences would be nearly supportable if the sound were exemplary.   Unfortunately, as I am sure you are aware, the large soundboard, wide string spacing and their sequellae conspire to sap the strings of their energy, the sound of its focus and to efficiently amplify the hubbub of the action.   I was particularly struck that Eric did not tumble to this problem in view of the fact that one of his dicta (expressed to me contemporaneously) was that it was entirely possible to have too much soundboard.   There also seems to be, due to their proximity, a particularly efficient coupling between the bottom of the instrument and the floor, thus transmitting and amplifying the action thud.   Further, whether the lid is arranged with louvres or a flap, even when open there is still insufficient venting and, consequently, a muffling effect.   Consequently, I took away from this early (and intense) experience the conviction that these instruments were splendid exemplars of the way not to design pedal harpsichords either for convenience or quality of sound.

 

By 1979, the year I rejoined Hubbard Harpsichords in my current position, further experience with different antique-derived designs had confirmed for me the belief that string spacing is indeed a significant determinant of the sound to be expected from any given design and that this should drive the layout of the keyboard, not vice-versa.   Thus it seemed to me that the simple answer to many of these sonic problems would be to design an instrument with normal string spacing, possessing enough soundboard area to be easily driven and sound well, but not so much that the board would become heavy, flaccid and unresponsive.   I found consensual validation for this belief among the plans entrusted to me then that, in fact, this was the central feature of a design left by Frank Hubbard as part of a project to develop a pedal harpsichord kit, a project that was terminated with his untimely death in 1976.

 

The pedal instrument can be made to accommodate any reasonable upper instrument that has its registers actuated by handstops (a possibility that Eric Herz, like most other earlier makers, was forced at the time not to take for granted) by not requiring it to support the manual harpsichord's usual stand but, instead, providing as part of the package an integral, all-purpose support for the upper instrument.   If, at the same time it is made narrower, it will be possible for the pedal instrument to possess a full-length lid, which can then be opened further for easier maintenance and far better sound dispersion.   Rather than having the provided stand simply straddle the floor instrument, it becomes possible to use the stand to support both the upper and lower instrument.   By thus using the weight of the pedal instrument as ballast the security of the whole assembly is greatly increased.

 

The most important drawback to such a scheme is the complexity added by the necessity of transferring the motion of the pedals to the jacks.   The Herz instruments, taking ‘advantage' of the width necessary to support the manual instrument stand, directly transfer the pedal motion to the jack lifting levers, which run straight back (or nearly so) to the jacks, thus dictating a very wide string spacing – ca. 30mm as opposed to the manualiter norm of 12~14mm.   But, by introducing a set of intermediate levers (known in the organ trade as a frame) converging towards a ‘normalized' jack gamut, it becomes possible to lift a gang of jacks by simply arranging a set of slave levers directly over the distal ends of the transfer frame levers.   Again, this is all part and parcel of Frank Hubbard's early '70's design.   One can either deepen the case of the pedal instrument to accommodate the added layer of action or raise it off the floor.  

 

As you may have noted, I did indeed choose to raise the instrument off the floor for the reasons given above and, further, in much the same manner as the 1760 Gerstenberg pedal clavichord in the Leipzig collection (illustrated in many books starting with the 1910 Heyer Collection catalog but the most complete documentation can be found in Clavichorde, Hubert Henkel, 1981 pp.52-5, pl.26-7, 29, 47).   Taken alone, this last instrument (with its relatively normal string spacing, easy maintenance and raised position) would put into the gravest doubt your assertion that there are no valid pre-existing instruments that one could have used to devise the scheme that we adopted.   In fact the same may be said for the pedal clavichord by J. G. Marckert, Ostheim, at the Bachhaus in Eisenach (pp. 138-41 in Historiche Musikinstrumente im Bachhaus Eisenach, Herbert Heyde, 1967).   Although both display a very moderate toe-in to the striking levers, the only part of the formula missing from these examples is the heavily-angled radial converging transfer frame action (not necessary due to the octave halving of the string lengths) but that feature may be seen in a pedal clavichord by Glueck in the Deutsches Museum, Munich (pictured in The Harpsichord and Clavichord, Raymond Russell, 2 nd ed., 1973, pl. 90).   An example of this sort of lever map (but symmetrical) was explicitly included in a full-size ink-and-Mylar drawing of a pedalboard and its instrument drafted by Frank Hubbard about ten years before you devised a similar solution.  

 

As for the concept of a converging (or diverging) action, there is further and ample precedent (whether by the agency of radial stickers, frames or rollers) in organ building practice.   Converging actions may be observed in the pedal pianos by Stein (in the Keyboard Instrument catalog of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1961, pp. 40-1), and the un-named example in the Ruck collection (pictured in Meisterwerke des Klavierbaus, Hirt, 1955, p. 356) - both by rollers.  

The sole floor-level pedalier of which I am aware (Brodmann, ca. 1815, cat. Nr. 31 in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum) very nicely skirts many of the issues associated with modern attempts at pedal harpsichords by supporting the manual piano's legs on outboard brackets thus freeing the lid for easy raising.   Thus, in fact, while the string spacing would seem to be dictated by the pedal positions, what we have here is an historical pedal instrument that lies WITHIN the stand of the manual instrument (the single tail leg excepted).   It seems to me that, contrary to your assertion, there is in fact a very rich historical record to mine for various approaches to designing a pedal instrument, whether harpsichord, clavichord or piano.  

 

With all due respect, your statement that we ‘are fully aware' that you were the inventor of such a scheme, implying that therefore your design must be regarded as a necessary precursor or a sine qua non to our own, is both off the mark and not pertinent.   First, as previously mentioned, we quite simply were not aware of your work.   I have never had the opportunity to examine one of your pedal instruments (other than in the photos posted recently on the internet by Harpsichord Clearing House – which I subsequently found in a search had been posted somewhat earlier by Claviers Baroque).   Second, I hope I have demonstrated that, by the time you produced your first such instrument, Hubbard Harpsichords was in possession of the insight, historical materials and preparatory design work necessary to have produced our own pedal instrument conforming to our finished product and had no need of recourse to your work.   Thus it is that I know we have no need to ask your permission to produce instruments from our own design.

 

On the other hand it appears from your letter to be quite clear that you utilized the general scheme we both have adopted in a finished instrument approximately seven years before Hubbard Harpsichords was finally fortunate enough to secure a commission and I have absolutely no problem in admitting this.   That laurel should go to you.   Whether this is entirely true for the greater harpsichord world remains for future historians to determine.   But for the vicissitudes of orders, it might well have been different.  

 

Best regards,

 

Hendrik Broekman

Technical Director

Hubbard Harpsichords, Inc.

 

 

P.S.   In a further letter you suggest that we advertise the ‘design' (which in the context of this sentence I take you to mean the general physical scheme) to be derived from an instrument of Hass.   I think if you will carefully and dispassionately parse the wording of the article (which, in the form to which you have objected, has been posted since 2000 or before) you will find that we explicitly acknowledge that 1., there are no extant pedal HARPSICHORDS (separate or otherwise, by Hass or any other) and state that 2., we have derived the TONAL design largely from ‘instruments by H. A. Hass'.   The intent of the sentence containing the second statement, I hope you will agree, is to suggest the sort of sound that might be expected from the pedal harpsichord.   Indeed, the outline and jigging needed to produce the pedal instrument is that of our large Hass-inspired 4-choir double-manual harpsichord.

 

P.P.S.   I have posted pages containing both forms of your letter as well as this reply and linked it prominently to our pedal harpsichord page.