Chances are, you’ve never heard of Wanda Landowska, not unless you’re either a harpsichordist or an afficianado of early music. Wanda Landowska happens to be the woman who (almost) single-handedly revived the harpsichord as a performing instrument. You see, once the piano was invented and perfected, around 1711, (in Italy by Bartolomeo Cristifori) the harpsichord disappeared because the piano was so much easier to maintain with it’s steel sounding board and steel pins.
Anyway, this amazing woman was the topic of my Ph.D. dissertation in musicology and that research took me to the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris where I found much of the information that made up my dissertation. Let me know if you want to know more about this amazing woman. A women’s film company in PA made an hour-long documentary based on my dissertation and the link below is to an excerpt from that documentary! Enjoy!
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