Harpsichord maker
Paul Downie makes beautiful instruments in his small Auckland shed
There is such a thing as serendipity. When Paul Downie was 11 years old a chance meeting at his grandmother’s house was to eventually set him on a course that would define his career.
“I was learning the piano at the time and her friend had a harpsichord that he invited me over to see. I thought it was marvellous,” he recalls. “He told me I should build one, and although it sounded like a ridiculous idea, it never went away.”
When he was 22, Paul embarked on the project, researching how to build a harpsichord, scouring junk shops for old tools, sawing bits of wood, and gluing them up until he had constructed the instrument.
“I enjoyed the whole process so much that when I was 23 I decided to build another one. I discovered that overseas museums had very detailed technical drawings of old instruments which you could buy — when they are restored everything about the instrument and the mechanisms is recorded.
“I went on to build two more harpsichords. The first one did work but it wasn’t up to the same standard so I ended up pulling it apart and my sister burnt it as firewood,” he says laughing. “The others have survived and are owned by very good musicians.”
Pre-industrial techniques
Then in another serendipitous moment he was contacted by a German woman who was holidaying in New Zealand. Her husband built instruments using pre-industrial techniques and she asked if she could visit.
“She said I should go and stay with them in Germany and we became fine friends. We went to museums to see instruments, visited harpsichord builders, I made contacts with suppliers of materials, and helped her husband in his workshop. I made some very interesting connections in the six months I was there.”
He even met Martin Skowroneck, a German harpsichord builder who is credited with being one of the modern pioneers of building harpsichords using historical principles.
“In the early 19th century they stopped building harpsichords using a wooden frame and construction was heavily influenced by the piano and used iron frames. After World War II there was a movement that recognized the antique instruments had a much lighter
action and different sound so they started researching the old methods and building instruments using traditional materials and techniques.”
Customers are worldwide
Paul came back to New Zealand armed with drawings of an early harpsichord he had seen in Hamburg Museum. “Once I’d built it I took it to Germany for a big instrument exhibition. It cost a lot of money to air freight it but luckily a woman bought it, which was just as well as I had nearly run out of money by that stage,” he says laughing. “She still owns it and uses it for teaching at the University of Hamburg and is familiar with the original.”
Paul’s passion has since morphed into a demanding career — he has built 30 harpsichords and three fortepianos over the years with overseas commissions from music lovers in London, Tenerife, and the Canary Islands, among other places. He also restores and refurbishes instruments, and tunes them.
He has just completed a commission by Auckland University’s Music Department for a fortepiano.
“It’s been one of my pet projects recently and I’m very pleased with it. It has a wooden frame — I’m not interested in iron-frame instruments. I use preIndustrial Revolution techniques. It’s a very bright, responsive instrument with a light key action that allows you to play incredibly fast. A lot of pieces by composers like Mozart and Haydn are hard to play on modern instruments because they have a much slower action. They were written for the instruments of their time.”
Workshop
Paul lives above his workshop in an inner-city suburb of Auckland. The workshop has a lot of specialist tools that Paul has made himself over the years and also a huge array of things such as clamps, drawers full of chisels, and lots of different planes.
“When I first started making the harpsichords I had never seen the original tools that were used so I designed and made my own for particular jobs. It was problem solving and not based on anything else. Now I’ve seen what was originally used and some are quite cumbersome — I still use a lot of the tools I made years ago to this day.”
Kings of the workshop are his Myford and Colchester lathes. “They’re very useful pieces of equipment and great for all sorts of specialist stuff. I also use them for restoring motorbikes and making parts for old bikes,” he says laughing.
“A lot of my machinery is quite basic. The bandsaw is the mainstay of the workshop. It can saw wood into any dimension and it’s also very economical on wood. I use the buzzer for flattening off wood and I’ve got a thicknesser, saw bench, and drill press. And of course the two engineering lathes.”
“Paul goes to great lengths to use authentic materials rather than the modern equivalent”
Hand finishing
However, most of the wood components, finishing and fine fitting are done by hand.
“Just to make the jacks that pluck the strings on the harpsichord involves a lot of very fine work, but I’ve got practised at it now. You need 180 of them and it takes me about six minutes to turn out each one.”
As well as the very fine woodwork required to make each instrument, a lot of the materials used are very specialized,
and Paul goes to great lengths to use authentic materials rather than the modern equivalent where possible.
“The jack on a harpsichord holds a plectrum that plucks the string. This was traditionally made from raven’s quill. I’ve salvaged gannet feathers from Muriwai to make mine. The spring on the jack was made from hog’s bristle. I got a huge bundle from a paint brush manufacturer years ago, and 30 years later I’m still working my way through the supply. I can get three to four springs from each bristle. You could use monofilament but it is very sluggish compared to hair, which is slick and returns very quickly.”
The networks for sourcing materials that Paul has built up over the years are especially valuable.
Original formula
“I get the wire strings from England. They are manufactured by a specialist who analysed the strings used in the original instruments and makes them to the same formula. It makes quite a difference to the sound — a lot of the instruments were built using technology from the late 1400s, which was actually very sophisticated.”
Paul is always on the lookout for different kinds of wood that have particular qualities needed for different parts of the instruments. He imports the wood for the sound boards from a specialist manufacturer in southern Germany but a lot of what he uses has been accumulated from being at the right place at the right time.
“I got some holly from a tree that had been cut down in Mt Eden. They were huge logs and I’m only using very small amounts at a time. I use it to make the tongue on the jacks. I also got some pear wood from an old orchard in St Heliers that had been planted by Bishop Selwyn. It fell over and I got the wood. It’s been
“I use the pear wood to make the jacks. It’s very tough so you can punch through an extremely small hole without it bursting”
air drying for 30 years so it’s very stable. I use the pear wood to make the jacks. It’s very tough so you can punch through an extremely small hole without it bursting.”
Animal glues
He uses linseed oil and shellac to polish the wood and mostly gelatin-based animal glues. “There are some parts where you want a permanent bond so you could use epoxy but for the most part you want glues that are reversible so you can take the instruments apart to do repairs. Animal glues are nice to work with because there’s no solvents.”
Paul says one thing he does have a lot of use for in the workshop is drop sheets. “You have to be very careful when you’re working to protect the instruments, especially when you’re doing metal and woodwork in the same space. You need to be extremely disciplined to keep surfaces clean and not do something like pick up a piece of wood with oily hands. It sounds silly but it’s incredibly easy to do.”