A B O U T   T H E    M A K E R

I am a musician by training: I play both the modern and Baroque flute, although I do not perform professionally any longer. My colleagues and clients often ask me how I ended up becoming a harpsichord builder and what flute playing had to do with it. The following is a (relatively) short answer to these questions.

I have been learning about harpsichord making since 1980. At that time I was a student at the University of Cape Town, South Africa; my principal instrument was the modern flute. When I graduated I became interested in baroque music, began learning to play the Baroque flute, and later co-founded with friends and former class-mates the Cape Town Early Music Ensemble, in order to promote the performance of Renaissance and Baroque music on instruments appropriate to the period. This was the first and, at the time, the only group of its kind in South Africa.

Of course there were no harpsichords to be found in Cape Town in those days, and therefore, having had an interest and a certain affinity for woodworking since a young age, I undertook to build one from a kit. Then my piano teacher gave me Frank Hubbard's seminal book, Three Centuries of Harpsichord Making, and I decided to build another instrument from the ground up, with the help of the book. And then another, and another.

My deepening interest in the field of Early Music brought me to Boston, to study Baroque flute at the New England Conservatory. The harpsichords at NEC had been built by the late Eric Herz, who used to come in once a week to tune and do maintenance work on his instruments. He knew about my interest and limited experience in harpsichord making and, as luck would have it, he was looking to hire a new apprentice just as I graduated from the Conservatory. And so my fate was sealed, as it were.

I spent three years at Eric's workshop and then three additional years at Hubbard Harpsichords. I never met Frank Hubbard; he had died several years before. However, the firm continued in his tradition, nurtured by his widow Diane and by Hendrik Broekman, the workshop's master craftsman and himself a former apprentice of Frank's.

Eventually I decided I was ready to set up my own workshop. My first commissions were the fruits of a partnership with another ex-Hubbard employee. Finally, in 1997, with the help of my wife Marina I established my own business as David Werbeloff Harpsichords.

I have learned my craft the old-fashioned way: by apprenticing in established workshops and by soaking up the knowledge, wisdom, and experience of my teachers. I like to think of myself as a third generation representative of the Boston School of harpsichord making.

A craft tradition is not static; each craftsperson contributes a new understanding and fresh ideas to the field. In the case of harpsichord making, the practices were lost at the end of the 18th century and innovators such as Dolmetsch, Chickering and Hubbard helped bring them to life again. Now it is the task of workshops like mine to build on their pioneering work and take the harpsichord building tradition another step forward (or rather, backward) toward its golden age.

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