Martin Skowroneck

He completed his secondary education in 1947,[2] then embarked on musical training at the Musikschule in Bremen, from which he received his diploma in 1950 as a teacher of flute and recorder.

[8] Harpsichord scholar Edward Kottick describes Skowroneck's work as follows: [His instruments] were built uncompromisingly in the mode of the antiques, with practically no concessions to modernity.

Every concert hall and radio station had acquired or had ready access to a modern instrument, invariably a large two-manual harpsichord with the ‘Bach’ disposition.

Performers and public alike had grown used to it.Skowroneck also argued for his approach to harpsichord building in print, for instance in Skowroneck (1974), cited below.

"[13] However, Schott (n.d.) notes at least some degree of success for Skowroneck's approach in his native country: "it is partly due to [Skowroneck's] influence and those of like-minded German harpsichord makers as Klaus Ahrend and Rainer Schütze, that German harpsichordists have turned increasingly to reproductions of historical instruments for the performance of early keyboard music.

Skowroneck described his philosophy like this: "More successful [than making a literal copy], and authentic in a higher meaning, would be a new instrument in which the maker expresses himself, fulfilling his task with all his knowledge, and supported by his judgment instead of given measurements.

"[18] Skowroneck built harpsichords, clavichords, spinets and virginals after English, Italian, early (Ruckers) and late Flemish (Dulcken), 17th- and 18th-century French, and German models.

In 2003 he published his book Cembalobau ("Harpsichord Construction"; text bilingual in German and English), a compendium of the knowledge he gained during his many years as a builder.