Donald C. Angle, harpsichord, released 1982 by Afka records SK-278
Music arranged for harpsichord by Donald Angle
Recorded and Produced by Scott Kent
Cover Design – Leonard Darwin
Backliner Photo – James Pipkin
Graphics by Jan Burne
From the 1977 release: The harpsichord used for this recording was made by William Dowd in the 18th Century French tradition. The instrument has three sets of strings – two tuned at 8′ pitch and one at 4′ pitch – and two keyboards which can be coupled. In general, the two 8′ registers are used coupled. Occasionally the 4′ is also used, to add brightness.

Thanks to Daniël, who let me browse the famous Daniël Beuman harpsichord collection

SIDE ONE (21’11)
00:00 1. Limehouse Blues – Philip Braham (T.B. Harms Co.) ASCAP (1’12)
01:17 2. Frogs Legs Rag – James Scott P.D. (3’53)
05:16 3. Summertime – George Gershwin (Chappell & Co.) ASCAP (4’54)
10:06 4. Zerky’s Eye Opener ‘— Bob Zerky (1’51)
12:01 5. A Hard Day’s Night – John Lennon, Paul McCartney (Maclen Music) BMI (3’06)
15:13 6. Smile – Charles Chaplin (Bourne Co.) ASCAP (4’00)
19:17 7. Coquette – John Greene and Carmen Lombardo (Leo Feist, Inc.) ASCAP (1’46)

SIDE TWO (22’10)
21:05 1. Kaw-Liga – Hank Williams (Milene Music Inc.) ASCAP (1’40)
22:53 2. Old Man River – Jerome Kern (T.B. Harms Co.) ASCAP (3’46)
26:40 3. Norwegian Wood – John Lennon, Paul McCartney (Maclen Music) BMI (3’22)
30:10 4. Dungaree Doll – Sherman Edwards (Marks Music) ASCAP (2’05)
32:25 5. Grandfather’s Clock – Henry Clay Work P.D. (3’31)-
36:01 6. The Easy Winners – Scott Joplin P.D. (4’04)
40:07 7. Fidgety Feet – Nick LaRocca, Larry Shields (Leo Feist, Inc.) ASCAP (3’01)

Don Angle’s concerts and recordings have delighted
music lovers of all ages and musical persuasions.
His personal blend of traditional and popular
music, Country and Western and jazz, presented on
the harpsichord in a style both original and idiomatic,
has fascinated audiences by its fresh approach to
long-familiar music.
Don’s choice of the harpsichord as his perfonning
medium has seemed to some a remarkable innovation,
to others merely an impertinence. In fact, viewed in
tenns of the long history of the instrument, it is
neither. As the principal secular keyboard instrument
from the sixteenth to the eighteenth
century, the harpsichord was used in a much wider
range of musical and social settings than it enjoys in
present-day usage. The modern revival of the harpsichord
for the authentic practice of art music, pioneered
by serious musicians and scholars of great
energy and determination, inevitably was limited in
its attitude toward the possibilities of which the
ins~ument was capable.
This situation would have been unimaginable to
the players of previous ages. Already in the sixteenth
‘century, the Spaniard Antonio de Cabezon achieved
in a number of keyboard settings of traditional tunes
a remarkable blending of popular and art traditions.
This mode was passed on to the great English virginalist
school of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Major composers such as William Byrd , and
Thomas Tomkins, as well as minor figures like Giles
Farnaby, produced a vast number of sets of harpsichord
variations, works un;urpassed in their perfect
stylistic fusion of common material and sophisticated
treatment, and their wonderfully idiomatic exploration
of harpsichord effects.
Though the products of Angle’s own eclectic .
music-making are .quite distinctive, the guiding spirit
of his craft thus has ancient roots: Respect, for the
validity of diverse musical material ,and … $ensitive and
judicious writing for the harpsichord: .
Paul Guglietti

Other recordings on AFKA include :
SK-274 “New Angle on Harpsichord”
SK-276 “Don Angle, Harpsichord”
SK-277 “The Symphonic Organ” – Overture to William Tell, Grand March from Tannhauser, The Stars and Stripes Forever, and other transcriptions performed by Thomas Murray at Trinity Church, Boston.

#WilliamDowd #DonAngle