In the course of the year, the Collection has been given the Baton presented to Professor Sir Herbert Oakeley in 1872 by the University Musical Society, (given by his great-grandson Rowland Oakeley). The Collection was also given other items by Mr L. Cooley, Mr & Mrs K. Mobbs and Mr J. Nussbaum.
The cataloguing programme continued to advance: two further fascicles of descriptive text were published. These cover (1) Harps, Dulcimers and Zithers and (2) Horns and Bugles (second edition). In addition to the printed editions, they have also been published electronically. Further pictures of collection instruments have been added to the Collection's website
bringing the total number of images freely available to 72.
One further technical drawing has been published, of the tenor trombone by François Riedlocker of Paris (circa 1810), prepared for the Collection by Raymond Parks. This is the first of the Collection's workshop drawings to have been produced using computer-aided drafting (CAD) techniques. It brings the total number of workshop drawings on sale to 36.
The Collection has benefited from a programme of work undertaken by Darryl Martin with grant-aid funding from the Scottish Museums Council. This has resulted in improved display for most of the stringed instruments and improved storage facilities for many of the instruments not on display.
The Director/Curator represented the University at the meeting of CIMCIM (the International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections) in Washington D.C.
The International Symposium on Musical Acoustics, held for the first time in Edinburgh, was organised with a significant contribution from the Collection and the technical sessions took place in the Reid Concert Hall. The Symposium was followed by a Colloquium on Historic Musical Instrument Acoustics and Technology, organised by the Collection in conjunction with the Galpin Society, and by a Conference on the Instrumentalischer Bettlermantl manuscript in the Edinburgh University Library which was organised by the Department of Fine Art.
To coincide with these events, the Collection mounted a temporary exhibition Donaldson's Apparatus, showing some of the acoustical equipment and historic instruments purchased by Professor John Donaldson for the Music Classroom in the 1840s and 1850s. The instruments formed the nucleus of the present Collection, still housed in the room built by Donaldson as his `Museum of Instruments'. A catalogue of this exhibition by Dr Christopher Field, Honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Music, has been published on the Collection's website.
As a public event held during the International Symposium on Musical Acoustics, a concert was organised by the Faculty of Music using the instruments of the new violin octet. This was preceded by a talk by Carleen Hutchins, who was responsible for much of the development of the new violin family in general and the Collection's set in particular.
A one-day oboe reed-making course was held at the Reid Concert Hall, organised by St Andrews University in conjunction with the Collection; this included a lecture on oboe history by Simon Milton with examples drawn from the Collection.
The Collection has been used for teaching purposes by University Staff, in particular for courses in the Faculty of Music on the History of Instruments, Ethnomusicology and Musical Acoustics. Several parties including school and college groups have made organised visits, and various scholars and instrument makers have visited to study particular instruments.
Arnold Myers, Director and Curator, 31st December 1997
[ Report for 1998 ] [ Report for 1996 ]
© Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, 1997.
This article was re-published on 23 December 2022