In the course of the year, the Collection was given instruments by Sheila Grant, Margaret Jackson and former Curator of the Collection, Graham Melville-Mason, who also donated his organological library to the University.
A tenor recorder from the Renaissance period, possibly by the Bassano family, was purchased with assistance from the Heritage Lottery Fund, the National Art Collections Fund, the National Fund for Acquisitions, administered with Government funds by the National Museums of Scotland, the Binks Trust, and other local charitable trusts.
The cataloguing programme continued to advance: six further fascicles of descriptive text were published, these cover (1) Beaters for Percussion Instruments, (2) Recorders and Flageolets, (3) Transverse Flutes (second edition), (4) Post-horns, Cornets and Ballad horns, (5) Althorns, Tenor horns and Baritones, and (6) Euphoniums and Tubas. In addition to the printed edition, they were also published electronically. Further pictures of Collection instruments have been added to the Collection's website
bringing the total number of images freely available to 157 (of 158 instruments). In October the 100,000th visitor came to the EUCHMI welcome page; the number of visitors to the Collection's website now exceeds 25,000 annually.
Four further technical drawings have been published, of the oboe by Floth, prepared by Dick Earle, and of the three natural trumpets in the Shaw-Hellier Collection, prepared by Raymond Parks. These bring the total number of instrument workshop drawings on sale to 42.
| The Sound Laboratory was formally opened
on March 17th, developed in co-operation with museums in Brussels, Paris
and Leipzig, and funded by a European Commission grant under the Raphael
Programme. The Sound Laboratory offers interactive demonstrations of
the basic acoustics of musical instruments, providing an exciting
`hands-on' approach to how musical instruments work, with live sounds,
physical models, computer displays and visible effects. The balance of
the costs of providing these units for the Edinburgh installation was
met by the University's Development Trust.
The Collection received the Scottish Museum of the Year Special Award for Cooperative Venture for The Sound Laboratory. This was presented by H.R.H. The Princess Royal at St Cecilia's Hall on November 6th. Devices from the Sound Laboratory were made available for the University's Technopolis venue at the Edinburgh Science Festival in April, and for a reception for Friends of the University at St Cecilia's Hall in June. A paper, Devices for Musical Acoustics Learning in a Museum Environment, was presented by the Director/Curator at the 5th French Congress on Acoustics at Lausanne in September. A paper, Interactive Exhibits Illustrating Wind Instrument Acoustics, was presented by Professor Murray Campbell at the 140th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at Newport Beach, California in December. The Director/Curator represented the University at the conference of CIMCIM (the International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections) in Markneukirchen. The Director/Curator presented two research papers, Wind the Horn: Investigations into the Bore and Response of Coiled Trompes de Chasse at theInstitute of Physics Congress at Brighton in March, and Did Sax Invent the Saxhorn ? at the International Musical Intersections conference at Toronto in November. A paper, An Acoustical Comparison of the Serpent and the Ophicleide, was presented by Professor Murray Campbell at the 140th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America at Newport Beach, California in December. The Director/Curator was invited to join the Editorial Board of Chelys, the journal of the Viola da Gamba Society. A Symposium on Bowed String Musical Instruments was held in conjunction with the Early Music Forum of Scotland and the Viola da Gamba Society of Great Britain. In addition to participants from the University, the conference was attended by 62 delegates from Austria, Azerbaijan, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the U.S.A., and the United Kingdom: an audience not only of researchers but also of instrument makers and performers. Several delegates, especially those from overseas, took the opportunity to study instruments in the two Edinburgh University collections in detail. Presentations on the Collection were given for the West Linton Arts Festival in March and for Fiddle 2000 in November. An instrument from the New Violin Octet was lent to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, for exhibition as part of Creating Sparks, a festival of science and art held in South Kensington. Two guitars were lent to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, U.S.A., for the exhibition Dangerous Curves: the Art of the Guitar. The Collection has been used for teaching purposes by University Staff, in particular for courses in the Faculty of Music on Organology, 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. The Education Policy for EUCHMI and the Russell Collection was formulated, approved by the Faculty of Music, and made available on the Web. New signage has been installed giving guidance to visitors. Arnold Myers, Director and Curator, 31st December 2000 [ Report for 2001 ] [ Report for 1999 ]
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