Albert Fuller Remembrance, by violinist Stanley Ritchie, June 12, 2009

Mr. Ritchie, a pioneer in the early music field in America, has been a professor at Indiana University since 1982. 

It can often happen that an innocent question is the cause of a significant turning point in one’s life. In the 1970-71 season, after escaping from the Metropolitan Opera, I joined The New York Chamber Soloists, a modern-instrument ensemble, whose harpsichordist was Albert Fuller. One day I mentioned to Albert that I’d like to learn more about Baroque music, and asked him if we could get together sometime and read some sonatas. No New York freelance violinist had ever said such a thing to Albert and he grabbed me and said, “When?” During our first reading session he said, “You know what they’re doing in Europe now?” I said, “What are they doing?” He said, “They’re tuning their instruments down a half-step and using gut strings and old bows.” I said, “Why on earth would they want to do a thing like that?” And he said, “Well, why don’t you try tuning down and find out?” Naturally, tuning a modern, steel-strung violin down half a tone does not produce the most convincing result, but neither did a recording of Leonhardt and the Kuijken brothers playing Rameau! Mine was a typical modern violinist’s reaction: I said, “That doesn’t sound like a violin! It’s like some sort of viol!” However, Albert was a very persuasive man, and soon I had had an old Tyrolean violin reconverted to Baroque specifications and a copy made of an old bow and was on my way to becoming a Baroque fiddler.

Albert Fuller was a remarkable man: an excellent keyboard player, a dedicated humanist, a fascinating raconteur and a gifted teacher. One of the aspects of his teaching that inspires me is something he frequently alluded to – he would refer to his teaching as “sharing”. For those of us who were privileged to work with him there was never a sense of being talked down to, or criticized for one’s shortcomings, but that he was sharing his ideas and experience and that he was encouraging us to be ourselves. I try to emulate him in these respects, and he remains my mentor. 

The late cellist and gambist, Fortunato (Freddy) Arico, and I teamed up with Albert and started playing concerts in the New York area. Once in the summer of 1972 we played for an elite audience in western Massachusetts on a property named Aston Magna. That evening the idea of having a Baroque music workshop on the property was proposed, and the following summer Aston Magna, the workshop, festival and, subsequently, academy was launched. 

In a very real sense, we, together with other members of the original Aston Magna family such as Ray Ericson, Steve Hammer, Bernie Krainis, Judy Linsenberg, Anthony Martin, David Miller, Loretta O’Sullivan, Ed Parmentier, Linda Quan, Jim Richman, Marc Schachman, John Solum, Mike Willens and Nancy Wilson, and others across the country such as the Caldwells and their colleagues in Oberlin, Malcolm Bilson, Sonya Monosoff and John Hsu at Cornell, Jim Weaver at the Smithsonian, Alan Curtis and Laurette Goldberg in California, were “pioneers” in the new field of Early Music in this country. The OED definition of pioneers is “foot soldiers”, specifically those whose job it is to go ahead of the main body of troops to dig trenches and erect fortifications, etc. We - pioneers all - motivated solely by curiosity about early versions of our instruments and by dissatisfaction with traditional approaches to Baroque music (since there was at the time no money to be made in this country playing the way we did!) following in the footsteps of an earlier generation, broke new ground and paved the way for the army that has followed.

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