‘Piano ou Clavecin?’ Joaquín Nin’s Feud with Wanda Landowska’s Harpsichord

Abstract Wanda Landowska and Joaquín Nin were, in the context of the Parisian Schola Cantorum during the first decade of the twentieth century, two of the leading artists performing the harpsichord repertoire. This established them as pioneers of its concert practice, but their irreconcilable attitudes to performance – Landowska’s supposedly historical/reconstructive (employing the harpsichord) and Nin’s updated (employing the modern piano) – embroiled them in a fierce controversy conducted in French and Spanish journals between November 1911 and October 1912. This article examines a large quantity of unedited correspondence together with the relevant press articles in the context of the two performers’ agendas. The results suggest that this controversy was an unprecedented marketing strategy orchestrated by Nin against, but reliant upon, Landowska’s success at the time when he was about to make his début in Spain. However, the unforeseen and long-lasting consequences of this controversy brought priceless publicity for Landowska’s cause: the revival of the harpsichord.

featured the harpsichord as a concert instrument to suit her own vision of the music of the past. 2 Nin (see Figure 2) employed the concert-lecture as his favoured format to promote his ambition as a scholar-performer. Appointed an honorary professor at the Schola Cantorum in 1906 and at the Université Nouvelle de Bruxelles in 1909, he contributed greatly to the uncovering of eighteenth-century Spanish music during the 1920s through his pioneering keyboard music editions and concert programmes (always played on the piano), as well as his own compositions. 3 Furthermore, their Back in 1909, and within the context of the historical concert understood as a programming strategy that crystallized in the late nineteenth century, 6 Landowska advocated the revival of the harpsichord as the instrument leading to what is now called historically informed performance practice; Nin, rejecting Landowska's supposed historicism, supported an 'updated' performance on the piano. This difference resulted in a fierce controversy conducted between November 1911 and October 1912 simultaneously in French and Spanish journals, specifically the Revue musicale S.I.M. of Paris (hereafter RMSIM ), the Revista musical of Bilbao (RM ) and the Revista musical catalana (RMC ), the journal of the Orfeó Català in Barcelona. 7 This personal feud between the two competing artists is essential to the understanding of their different approaches to performance and the irreconcilable attitudes towards the appreciation of early keyboard repertoires that was to extend beyond French and Spanish boundaries. 8 For this purpose, a large quantity of unedited correspondence preserved in the Biblioteca de Catalunya (Barcelona) and in Landowska's papers at the Library of Congress (Washington DC) has been studied and compared with the relevant press articles in the context of the performers' agendas. Orchestrated by Nin against Landowska, the controversy was used as an aggressive marketing strategy initiated at precisely the time Nin was about to make his début in his former home country, Spain. The unforeseen consequences lasted for decades.

'La voilà bien la polémique des Revues!'
Nin's soirée dedicated to the music of J. S. Bach at the Parisian Salle Aeolian on 21 March 1906 was reviewed in Le courrier musical. 9 This concert was the second in comienzos del siglo XX' at the international congress Performing Eighteenth-Century Early Iberian Music, Barcelona, 14 -16 July 2014, and in María Cáceres-Piñuel, 'El revival de música del siglo XVIII en España durante el periodo de entreguerras: Cuatro casos de estudio relacionados con la red social de José Subirá', Revista de musicología, 39 (2016), 143-72; Liz Mary Díaz Pérez de Alejo, 'Estudio del epistolario inédito de Joaquín Nin Castellanos conservado en el Centre de Documentació de l'Orfeó Català', Nin's ambitious series 'Étude des formes musicales au piano depuis le XVIe siècle jusqu'à nos jours', originally programmed as a 12-concert series, though only five of the concerts actually took place. 10 This review echoed Nin's artistic choice to play Bach on the modern piano, as explained in the introduction to his concert, in direct opposition to Landowska's preference for the harpsichord, as advocated in her article 'Bach et ses interprètes ': 11 In addition, the very interesting preface, in which Mr Nin introduces us to his ideas and his artistic intentions ahead of his programme, shows that this is not a random choice. It is necessary that we pay particular attention to this manifesto, since it will, undoubtedly, meet some opponents. It claims that the piano has an absolute right to appropriate the music written for the different keyboard instruments in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. We believe we remember that a booklet published under the signature of Mrs Wanda Landowska last year in the Mercure du France expressed a completely opposite opinion. Such is the controversy in journals! Only Mrs Landowska is a harpsichordist: she too opposes the 'propaganda of the deed'. 12 Nin, like many others, regarded the harpsichord as a 'sonically weak and mechanically imperfect instrument, poorly suited for the works of the master', in the words Edward L. Kottick used to describe the early twentieth-century general view of the harpsichord. 13 Nin justified his use of the piano in the performance of sixteenth-to eighteenth-century keyboard literature on the basis of the commonplace, 'Had Bach only known of the modern piano …'.
In addition to his unfinished series 'Étude des formes musicales au piano' (1904-7), Nin was involved between 1906 and 1910 in concert-lectures across Europe alongside Michel-Dimitri Calvocoressi (1877-1944) and Jean-Aubry (1882-1950) promoting French, Italian and German eighteenth-century music played on the piano. 14 He also 10  clavichord'), 19 and secondly, to solve the dilemma 'harpsichord or piano' by posing the question, 'For which instrument did Bach write his keyboard works, for the harpsichord or for the clavichord?' 20 To further her argument, Landowska carried out a practical 'tournament' at the 'kleine' Eisenach Bach Festival in September 1911. She played some works by Bach on the harpsichord, after which the pianists Bruno Hinze-Reinhold (1877-1964) and Friz von Bose (1865-1945) repeated them on the piano. According to the RMSIM, she succeeded in converting the sceptics. 21 The German press offered a more neutral judgment. Alfred Heuß wrote in the German journal of the International Musical Society that both harpsichord and clavichord were instruments used by Bach and noted that Landowska's success was due to the irrelevance of her opponents. 22 Max Schneider stated in Die Musik that if audiences had the chance to hear and compare, nobody would reject the modern piano in favour of the harpsichord. 23 However, as Harry Haskell rightly stated years later, Landowska had successfully made her point: 'No longer could the harpsichord be regarded as a mere antiquarian curio.' 24 Not only was it established as an appropriate set dressing when early music was the subject, but its new sonority attracted avant-garde composers who helped to establish the instrument as a valid means of expression in its own right in the years to come. 19 'Today's concert piano can also be regarded as a perfected clavichord' ('Der heutige Flügel kann also eher als ein vervollkommnetes Klavichord gelten'). [Landowska], 'Bericht über die Mitgliederversammlung der Neuen Bachgesellschaft', 182. She had previously stated that, 'We should refrain from [considering the piano] as a perfected harpsichord; plucked strings and struck strings are such different things. The piano is just a clavichord, improved if you will, with a slightly more powerful sound' ('Il faut se garder de [considérer le piano] comme un clavecin perfectionnécordes pincées et cordes frappées sont choses trop différentes. Le pianoforte n'est qu'un clavicorde, amélioré si l'on veut, d'une sonorité un peu plus puissante'). Wanda Landowska, Musique ancienne (Paris: Mercure de France, 1909), 203. 20 'Ms Wanda Landowska takes the floor and states the following: Before answering the question "Harpsichord or piano, to play the works by Bach", it seems necessary to me to sort the problem that has already brought in many discussions, that is to say: for which instrument did Bach write his keyboard works, for the harpsichord or for the clavichord?' ( He then makes clear that his intention is to 'fight the wandalism' ('combatre el wandalisme'), to which end he is writing a book that will bury the harpsichord once and for all. These and many other scornful references to Landowska in the correspondence between Nin and Manén make it possible to assert that Nin was interested not only in debating an aesthetic and performance approach but also, and more importantly, in establishing a personal controversy based on anti-Semitic and misogynist prejudices and on his jealousy of Landowska's success, achieved through years of careful programming across Europe in a profitable association with the Maison Pleyel and the impresario Gabriel Astruc. 26 In July 1911, Nin began to compile documents to oppose the harpsichord affair, as 'it had done very well in disappearing once … only snobbism could have resurrected it … I do not say Judaism I do not know why, but this is it in the end'. 27 And, as he confessed to Manén in September, the two essays on the topic 'Clavecin ou piano?' that he added as footnotes to two of the articles compiled in his promotional brochure Huit années d'action musicale, released in October 1911 in Brussels, 28 were a clear provocation to Landowska, and were calculated to start a controversy. 29 25 'M'indigna que l'Orfeó haigi trovat manera de contractar de nou á la L… y qu'aquesta parli ja de tornarhi l'any que vé. Provincians al fí. La "gabía de moscas" (com diu del clavicimbal en Gauthier-Villars) y tota la ruse d'aquell parell de jueus els ha embaucat com xinos. approach to the performance of early repertoires by questioning 'N'est-ce pas une erreur de jouer, au piano, toutes ces délicates pieces du XVIII e siècle, si bien écrites pour le clavecin?' 29 'I will send you all this; you will see that taking advantage of the comments that I make to two critical reviews, I take my side on the "Clavecin ou piano?" affair … At the same time, I am getting ready for the controversy that will come, for sure, and for the book with this title that I intend to write' ('Ja t'enviaré tot aixó; veurás qu'aprofitant los comentaris que faig a dos críticas, prenc posició en la questió "Clavecin ou piano?" … Y al mateix temps ja 'm preparo per la polémica que vindrá, These two essays are indeed his statement of intent and a summary of the arguments he displayed in the forthcoming 'beating' of those 'wandals who thought that the faked resurrection of this infected cage of flies that we call the harpsichord would be useful for the Art'. 30 At that time, October 1911, Nin was about to publish his book Idées et commentaires, 31 and to tour southern France and Spain alongside the Spanish violinist Joaquín Blanco-Recio . This tour, on which he performed eighteenthcentury repertoire on the piano, took place between January and March 1912 and involved his débuts at several Spanish philharmonic societies: Bilbao, Vitoria, Oviedo, Santander and Madrid. 32 Nin thus devised the controversy, the arguments of which would inevitably connect his name with that of Landowska, in a desperate attempt to find a niche for himself among her followers. Nin's propaganda strategy, carefully wrapped as an aesthetic discussion supported on the authority of musical criticism, is not alien to the eyes of the contemporary reader familiar with twenty-first-century social media stirring.

Piano versus harpsichord: from Paris to Bilbao
In November 1911, Carlos Gortázar issued, under his pen name Ignazio Zubialde, an article entitled '¿Piano o clave?' in the RM. 33 He translated into Spanish Nin's first essay from Huit années d'action musicale and quoted fragments from Landowska's 'Bach et ses interprètes'. 34 Gortázar believed that the question at issue -'Should the works of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries be played on the piano or on the harpsichord?'was 'insoluble', 35 and that it positioned Landowska and Nin as the leaders of two different interpretative approaches.
Huit années d'action musicale and Gortázar's article mark the public opening round of the controversy between the pianist and the harpsichordist. As Nin himself admitted to Manén on 25 November 1911: 'The battle has started between W. C. and me on this matter.' 36 His several references to Landowska as 'vandal' and 'W.C.' represent not so much a play on her name as the fact that Nin regarded not just the harpsichord but the segurament, y lo llibre que baix aquest titol penso escriure are, desseguida' The controversy took off following Nin's 'À propos du Festival Bach' and reached its climax in July 1912. Landowska maintained, in a letter sent to Nin from Kharkov (Ukraine) on 22 February 1912, that 'a controversy on the subject of the harpsichord is always excellent to support my cause', 40 but in a reply to Nin published in March 1912 in the RMSIM, she complained that it was a bad moment to start a controversy since she was 'touring and overworking'. 41 Several retorts from one to the other, spiced with some more sour private correspondence, followed until they concluded their contributions in Paris in July 1912. 42 Landowska took the opportunity to challenge Nin to a pianoharpsichord 'match' to prove the arguments that Nin was intending to compile in a book.
Simultaneously, from February 1912, Nin was in discussion with his friend Eduardo López-Chávarri in the RM following the latter's support for Landowska  conclusion, 'We certainly can play Bach on the piano, but we should play it on the harpsichord,' 44 taken from 'Le clavecin chez Bach', was in clear opposition to Nin's approach. In visual terms, it was as if Landowska preferred 'to contemplate an eighteenthcentury etching in its modest frame of the period rather than in the most splendid modern frame'. 45 In other words, eighteenth-century music should be played on a 'harpsichord-frame' in order to contextualize the repertoire. Whereas Nin, following his idea that 'music is above all an art of expression', 'put musical truth over historical truth by playing these works on a simple piano, that is to say, on the most expressive and perfect of all keyboard instruments', as he claimed in the programme notes for his concert in Brussels on 31 January 1912. 46 To Nin, the piano was 'an aesthetic successor to the clavichord and a historical successor to the harpsichord'. 47 Accordingly, Díaz Pérez de Alejo concludes in her analysis of the controversy that, whereas Nin based his approach 'on the idea that music is expressive in itself, taking advantage of the progress in instrument manufacturing, Landowska established a correspondence between repertoires and the historical instrument upon which they should be played, so that her interpretations correspond to the periods in which works were written'. 48 This last statement is not completely accurate, since Landowska benefited from the progress in piano manufacturing as applied to modern Pleyel harpsichords. And this was Nin's second argument against the harpsichord, and against Landowska too. 49 Nin pointed out that 'concert harpsichords are larger than concert grand pianos', especially instrumento para interpretarla, Landowska establece una correspondencia entre los repertorios musicales y su adecuación al instrumento histórico, de manera que su interpretación responda a la época en que las obras fueron escritas.' Díaz Pérez de Alejo, 'El "duelo"', 233. 49 In any case, the history of the revival has proved that one could achieve a historically informed performance when playing on the most modern of keyboard instruments and merely evoke the illusion of a distant musical past when playing on a harpsichord. those of the Maison Pleyel. 50 Pleyel harpsichords were, indeed, a wonder of piano manufacture, as Jean-Claude Battault claimed when he compared Pleyel, Érard and Gaveau instruments, 51 and as Martin Elste recently stated, 'Their harpsichords combined nostalgia with mechanical progress.' 52 Nin continued that it was the 'new' sonority of the harpsichord and not its pretended historicism that accounted for its success: 'Only the curiosity attached to every new means of expression, to every unknown or unfamiliar sonorous subject, could thus make the current resurrection of the harpsichord seem attractive.' 53 Regardless of his real intention, Nin was something of a visionary. As Richard Taruskin judged in the 1980s, after several decades of revival, 'The historical hardware has won its wide acceptance and above all its commercial viability precisely by virtue of its novelty, not its antiquity.' 54 And it all began with Landowska. The issue 'piano ou clavecin?' was, by summer 1912, a 'matter of taste' and, as Écorcheville, echoing Gortázar, claimed, both 'insoluble and badly formulated'. 55 It was at this point that Nin developed his propaganda strategy, disguised as an aesthetic discussion, into a vicious attack against the 'snob' Polish harpsichordist and all her flatterers. Landowska through the Orfeó Català's journal. Nin emphasized the idea that the harpsichord was condemned 'by the harpsichordists themselves' 58 and underlined that, 'Bach's praises for Silbermann's pianos in 1747 could be considered the greatest victory of the piano in all ages.' 59 These arguments, displayed among a handful of (sometimes distorted) historical quotations led to the conclusion that, Those who, eager for new sensations, for fake historical reconstructions, for snobbism à outrance, reject the piano and accuse it of deforming Bach's ideal, ignore the fact that geniuses such as that inaccessible sovereign write neither for a period nor for an instrument: they write with their soul, for the soul and eternity […] The voice of the harpsichord does not transcend our ears, because it is voice without soul. 60

Nin versus Landowska: Barcelona and the Pleyel prototypes
In other words, the harpsichord was a superficial apparatus. This is indeed a wellfounded aesthetic opinion: not only Landowska when playing Bach on the piano, but several performers or connoisseurs had to agree with the fact that Bach's and other eighteenth-century composers' music could be played on the piano, thus siding with the 'traditional' mode in performanceas defined by Hermann Danuser 61and according, nonetheless, with historical evidence, as Nin himself pointed out. However, Nin's most controversial contribution was addressed specifically to the alleged authenticity of Landowska's so-called harpsichord, the Pleyel Grand Modèle de Concert, a few weeks after she premièred it at the Breslau Bach Festival in June 1912. This instrument was a technically improved Pleyel harpsichord which included a 16-foot stop operated by a seventh pedal. 62 Nin stated in the RM that, 'There is an abyss between the harpsichord that Ms Landowska plays and Bach's instrument because, in the latter, strings were plucked by quill plectra and in that [of Landowska] they are plucked by leather plectra, which completely modifies the sonority, removes a great part of its sharpness and provides it with apocryphal colour and timbre,' and moreover, 'Bach's harpsichord had manual registers'hence, the pedal registers in Landowska's were anachronistic. 63 In reality, 58 'El clavicembal, doncs, havia sigut condemnat no pels pianists, sinó pels clavicembalistes mateixos' , 19-46. 62 According to Elste, this was the unique feature of a few historical German harpsichords and also of the alleged 'Bach harpsichord'. Elste, 'From Landowska to Leonhardt, from Pleyel to Skowroneck', 16. 63 'Entre el clave que toca la señora Landowska y el clave de Bach hay un abismo, puesto que en este las cuerdas estaban pulsadas por puntas de pluma, y en aquél lo están por puntas de cuero, lo que as Battault remarked, during the early twentieth century, harpsichord manufacturers other than Pleyel (with the collaboration of Landowska) -Gaveau, for instanceincorporated leather plectra based on some late eighteenth-century French models. 64 It was the French harpsichord manufacturer Pascal Taskin (1723-93) who adapted, in the 1760s, a fourth-register peau de buffle. Kottick maintains that this registerthe 'quietest' on the instrument because of its plucking deep into the string and because the plectra were wider and softerallowed 'small dynamic changes through finger velocity' and was usually found together with a mechanism of knee levers or pommels to operate the registers. 65 Needless to say, Bach would not have used these prototypes, but Pleyel and other manufacturers took their inspiration from the restored 1769 Taskin prototype. Their harpsichords appeared as a marvel of piano manufacturing inserted into Watteau-inspired external cases. The ephemeral birdquill plectra were replaced by thicker leather plectra that would last longer in these modern instruments, which were intended for use in a different environment: the public concert. 66 Nin's second argument published in the RMC ran as follows: I do not deny this spell, in the same way that I do not deny that of the pianola, because I have for a long time known that it is very easy to seduce the human ear with new impressions […] It is, however, curious that, despite Ms Landowska's pro-harpsichord propaganda, spread over the last 10 or 12 years [and] supported by the tireless generosity of the Maison Pleyel of Paris (who spare no expense on advertising), and despite her undeniable talent, the movement has caught on very little. The piano, on the other hand, has established itself in less than 50 years. 67 Nin persisted in the idea that the harpsichord success was a fad and focused his attack on Landowska as a mere commercial tool of Pleyel. As Elste recently wrote, 'Hearing Wanda Landowska meant hearing a Pleyel harpsichord with two keyboards and a variety of different sounds,' because she had entered into a contract with Gustave Lyon, then managing director of the Pleyel firm, according to which she would perform only on a Pleyel harpsichord, loaned to her free of charge. 68 But Nin had also intended to champion early repertoires on the harpsichord, as Landowska pointed out in a letter addressed to Nin himself. It was only when Pleyel refused to provide him with a harpsichord and Steinway provided him with the instrument for his recitals that he became a harpsichord antagonist. 69 These two articles of July 1912 mark the turning point of the controversy. Well aware of Nin's interest in maintaining 'a controversy with me at any price […] to promote himself at the expense of another's success', 70 as Landowska told her student and López-Chávarri's protégé, the Spanish pianist José Iturbi (1895-1980), she and her husband, Henri Lew, decided to break into the Spanish side of the controversy. Landowska never signed a contribution to the RM, but she published an article in the August-September 1912 issue of the RMC supported by two members of its editorial board. 71 The correspondence between López-Chávarri and Lew, dated between August and September 1912, reveals a series of arguments that Lew provided and López-Chávarri published, 72 these eventually leading to the termination of the latter's friendship with Nin. 73 With regard to refuting Nin's arguments about the harpsichord's lack of expression (a matter which exposed López-Chávarri's ignorance concerning technical aspects of the instrument), López-Chávarri was particularly interested in knowing whether or not it was possible to obtain crescendos and diminuendos on the harpsichord. Lew informed him that the harpsichord could obtain some dynamics either by 'sophistication in the touch' or by adding and decreasing the registers, 74 and, as expected, Nin responded: I indicated to him [López-Chávarri], through data, dates and arguments a thousand times proved, the historical, aesthetic and musical reasons that opposed the revival of the harpsichord as proposed by Ms Landowska and as sanctioned and even praised by Chávarri. It was preferable, especially with regard to [López-Chávarri's] honour, to assume that he either ignored or neglected the information I presented; if he knew or remembered it otherwise, it would be foolish to insist on the supposed advantages of the revival of the harpsichord as being the only instrument capable of providing us with a clear and exact impression of the sixteenth-, seventeenth-and eighteenth-century keyboard literature. 75 The 'to be continued' stamped at the end of the article and Nin's persistence in considering Landowska's harpsichord 'a mystification' made López-Chávarri suggest bringing the Pleyel engineer and director Lyon into the controversy. Lew, of course, considered this disproportionate, 76 and lectured him about historical harpsichords featuring either manual or pedal mechanisms to operate registers, 77 hoping for this to be published. Three days later, on 27 August, Lew confirmed that the instrument played by Landowska in Valencia in May 1912 was 'an exact copy of Silbermann's instruments': With regard to the registers, it possesses two made of quill and two of leather […] Ms Landowska has given a recital, in the Musical Instruments Museum in Berlin, in which she played successively on historical harpsichords, among them a prototype that belonged to Bach, and on her modern harpsichord, in order to prove the differences of sonority. 78 López-Chávarri did not mention any of these arguments in the October issue of the RM, but following Lew's indications, in a clear attempt to jeopardize the publication of the Spanish translation of Idées et commentaires in the same journal, he accused Nin of 75 'Indicábale con datos, fechas y argumentos mil veces comprobados, las razones históricas, estéticas y musicales que se oponían a la restauración del clave tal como realizaba la señora Landowska y que aprobaba y aún preconizaba Chávarri. Era preferible en su honor, sobre todo, suponer que él ignoraba o descuidaba datos que yo le exponía porque de saberlos, de recordarlos, era insensato insistir sobre las pretendidas ventajas de la restauración del clave como único instrumento capaz de darnos una idea clara exacta de la literatura para tecla y cuerda de los siglos XVI, XVII y XVIII. When López-Chávarri's article was released, Lew suggested to Lyon that he should not meet the request to take part in the controversy: 'It is not necessary that the Maison Pleyel take Joaquín Nin seriously and give him the honour of an answer […] He is going to receive in the next issue of the Revista catalana of Barcelona a beating from Wanda that will keep him quiet for a while.' 81 In her contribution to the Catalan journal, Landowska once more challenged Nin to compete with her in a practical match and persisted with the idea that Bach's works were not intended to be played on the clavichord. She referred to her demonstration in the 1910 Duisburg Bach Festival and to her article 'Für welches Instrument hat Bach sein "Wohltemperiertes Klavier" geschrieben?' 82 to conclude that: Clavichords in Johann Sebastian Bach's era were gebunden, that is to say, one string was assigned to two or three keys and was hit in two or three different places. It seems that Daniel Faber started building unfretted clavichords in the first half of the eighteenth century, but they were very rare, and all unfretted clavichords found in collections date from the end of the eighteenth century. 83 Landowska's student Juana Barceló stated in 1969 that she 'carefully specified [to her students] which pieces belonged to each instrument', 84 whichconsidering that the inventory of Landowska's possessions made by the Nazis when they entered St Leu-la-Forêt in February 1941 listed three clavichordsmay support her arguments. 85 Nevertheless, Dolmetsch and Ralph Kirkpatrick (1911-84) pointed out Landowska's biased 'opposition' to the clavichord, both of them referring to the controversial article 'Für welches Instrument hat Bach sein "Wohltemperiertes Klavier" geschrieben?' Dolmetsch, a clavichord and harpsichord maker, commented to Gordon-Woodhouse in 1911 that Landowska 'has written many articles in French and German, misquoting texts, giving out wild statements, drawing illogical conclusions with such apparent authority, persuasive eloquence and cleverness that many people believe it'. 86 It is also worth mentioning here the meeting between Landowska and Dolmetsch in 1927, when she visited Haslemere with some of her students. She addressed him as 'Le Maître' and expressed admiration of his instruments. Dolmetsch nonetheless refused to give her one of them, saying that she knew nothing about harpsichord playing. 87 In 1981, Kirkpatrick remembered: On arriving in Paris in the autumn of 1931 to study with Landowska, I encountered an attitude towards the clavichord that ranged from considerable opposition on her part to total ignorance on the part of most of her students. She even made some attempt to counteract my leanings towards the clavichord by causing me to read a translation of her polemical article of 1911 'Für welches Instrument hat Bach sein "Wohltemperiertes Klavier" geschrieben?' 88 These facts clearly suggest how Landowska's many articles and writings in defence of the harpsichord responded not only to the dissemination of her aesthetic credo but also to the promotional campaign that she started in 1904, when entering the contract with Pleyel, to become the 'high priestess of the harpsichord'. Nin's claim that Landowska was the commercial face of the Maison Pleyel was not completely unfounded.
1913, to apologize for the 'acute controversy between you and Mr Nin on the topic Piano or Harpsichord' in the RM. 91 She describes how, having received some lessons with Landowska in Vienna and Munich, she met Nin and they engaged in a conversation about the harpsichord: Mr Nin told me that he was about to write a book on this topic. He asked me, as he did not know the German language at all, to work with himin an impartial way, of course!and share my research, done (in order to save him time and money) on German books that contain information regarding the harpsichord. 92 The original handwritten letter was sent by López-Chávarri to Lew and Landowska. It is preserved, together with a set of three copies of a typewritten edited version (presumably made by Lew), in the folder entitled 'Contre le clavecin -Histoire Nin' in Landowska's papers. The edited version of the letter is very relevant because some fragments included in the original were consciously deleted, including the following: 'The more I advanced in this research that I had begun in order to enlighten myself about the harpsichord, the more I reached different results from those Ms. Landowska had obtained from her research on German sources.' 93 Nonetheless, the edited version retained the following: 'I sent these comments, these arguments, with the translations to Mr Nin, who, in turn, has been very careful to have them verified, sometimes polished, by musicologists in Brussels.' 94 According to the correspondence between Lew and López-Chávarri, these three copies were intended to be sent to Écorcheville (at the RMSIM ), to Pujol and Lliurat (at the RMC ) and to Gortázar (at the RM ), 95 although it seems that Lew did not in the end send them. 96 A year later, in early summer 1914, Nin confessed to Lew that he had launched the controversy in order to gain publicity but that it had also benefited Landowska, as Lew reported in a letter to López-Chávarri: The impact of the controversy was such that the correspondent in Brussels for the RMC, A. M., summarized in September 1912 that, It is evident (and also understandable!) that we cannot go back to early art, to early music, without thinking, at the same time, about the instruments upon which that music was played […] How could we not dream of […] listening again, not only to early music, but also to early sonorities? 101

Conclusion
The controversy between Nin and Landowska should therefore be regarded as a milestone in the revival of early music. It showcases a public confrontation between two performers who supported antagonistic performance approaches with regard to their organological choices for the same eighteenth-century keyboard repertoire, rooted in Bach and the French harpsichordists. Both employed a biased interpretation of historical sources in the media to champion their unique interpretative truth and to gain their audiences' support.
More than anything else, the controversy was a marketing strategy orchestrated by Nin in order to take advantage of Landowska's success by discrediting her favoured instrument, the harpsichord. However, the outcome of nearly a year of incendiary penmanship was quite the opposite: Landowska secured her position, while Nin was obliged to reformulate his agenda, championing from the late 1910s eighteenthcentury Spanish keyboard literature in order to secure his niche in the growing early music market. This led to the publication of the first two anthologies of eighteenthcentury Spanish keyboard music, the Classiques espagnols du piano.
In the end, the controversy represents two contemporary and valid interpretative proposals, both of which improved the understanding and appreciation of the music of the past and contributed to the further development of the early music revival in Spain and beyond. The arguments and concerns that sustained this feud still persist in the early music market, leading to a great variety of performance approaches, from the choice of instrument to the application of historically informed performative criteria. As has been argued, Landowska emerged as the winner, and the harpsichord was to become the standard instrument for the performance of early keyboard music by virtue of its exotic uniqueness and its ability to connect the present with a distant past. The harpsichord played an incontestable role in the various steps of the historically informed performance movement and, paradoxically, assumed the role Nin had once given to the piano: it became established as the instrument able to encompass all keyboard literature prior to the nineteenth century. Perhaps Landowska might in the end have thanked Nin for bringing this unexpected media interest to her cause and for engineering her elevation to the status of 'high priestess of the harpsichord'.