Music: Harpsichord and Jazz

To ears that like it, the music of the 18th-Century harpsichord rustles sweetly, subtly, with a wealth of tonal color. To ears that don’t, its clucks and scratches sound like a hen yard. The strings of the harpsichord, controlled by a full keyboard and pedals, are plucked by quills, instead of being struck by hammers like the piano’s. For an oldtimer, the harpsichord is still stepping lively. Last week Vienna-born Yella Pessl, who has given 70-odd harpsichord programs on the radio (CBS) since last June, returned to the air after a brief vacation. While she was away, her place had been taken by comely Harpsichordist Sylvia Marlowe, who plink-a-plunked not only 18th-Century tunes but rolling, rocking-rhythmed U. S. boogie-woogie.

Classically trained. Harpsichordist Marlowe learned about jazz from Purist John Henry Hammond Jr., became so good that she played an engagement last spring at Manhattan’s Rainbow Room. When “Jelly Roll” Morton, famed Negro pianist, heard one of her records, he argued: “That couldn’t be a white man playing, and it certainly couldn’t be a woman.” Boogie-woogie, with its classic repeated bass figures, its percussive attack, seemed to Miss Marlowe just right for the harpsichord. Radio listeners agreed.