In the course of the year, the Collection was given a number of instruments by Nicholas Benn, including woodwinds by Thomas Stanesby Junior, Oberlender, Willems and Rottenburgh. The Collection has been given other items by Mike Byer, Mrs E. Fowler, Craig Kridel and Mrs A. Steven.
Two important German oboes, by Floth (1807) and Meyer (c 1860), were purchased with assistance from the National Fund for Acquisitions (administered with Government funds by the National Museums of Scotland), the Pilgrim Trust and the Hope Scott Trust.
The cataloguing programme continued to advance: one further fascicle of descriptive text was published, covering Xylophones, Cymbals and Bells. In addition to the printed edition, it was 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 117 (of 121 instruments). The number of visitors to the Collection's website now exceeds 25,000 annually.
A portfolio of scale drawings of 44 mouthpieces for brass instruments prepared by Raymond Parks, together with photographs and technical information was published.
The Collection has been a partner in an international consortium with the Musée des Instruments de Musique, Brussels (Belgium), the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, Paris (France), and the Musikinstrumentenmuseum der Universität Leipzig, which, with a European Community grant under the Raphael Programme, has created for each of the partners' museums a "Laboratoire du Son" consisting of interactive demonstrations of the basic acoustics of musical instruments. The four partners developied the units in close co-operation to meet each other's requirements. In Edinburgh the development work was undertaken in the acoustics laboratories in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. The research assistants for this project were Howard Wright and Maarten van Walstijn.
The Director/Curator co-organised and represented the University at the conference of CIMCIM (the International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections) in Paris.
A conference on musical instruments was held in conjunction with the Galpin Society. In addition to participants from the University, the conference was attended by 72 delegates from Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, the U.S.A., and the United Kingdom: an audience not only of researchers but also of instrument makers, performers, and collectors. Several delegates, especially those from overseas, took the opportunity to study instruments in the two Edinburgh University collections in detail, and the the day before the conference proper was devoted to such study visits. The programme also included visits to the musical acoustics laboratories in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, the Barnes Collection, the National Museum of Piping, and the Hunterian Museum. Included within the period of the conference was a very successful technical research forum, Making Good Musical Instruments: Can Acoustics Help ?, at which instrument makers and scientific researchers exchanged experiences and made contacts.
A number of instruments showing the development of brass band instrumentation were lent to create a special exhibition organised by West Lothian Arts at Livingston.
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. An increasing number of enquiries were answered, many by e-mail.
A new heating system in the Collection galleries has been installed which will give better control of environmental conditions.
Arnold Myers, Director and Curator, 31st December 1999
[ Report for 2000 ] [ Report for 1998 ]
© Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments, 1999.
This article was re-published on 23 December 2022