A review of the collection of rare musical instruments, 1500-1900, exhibited at the Vancouver Centennial Museum, Vancouver, British Columbia, from November 1980 to April 1981.
If organologists awarded medals for meritorious service, I am sure they would give their most prodigious one to Dr. Phillip T. Young, faculty member of the School of Music, University of Victoria, BC, an active member of the American Musical Instrument Society, and the guiding force behind the mounting of this milestone exhibition. For five years Dr. Young has pursued an innovative idea -- to bring together under one roof an exhibition of carefully selected historical musical instruments from many of the great collections all over the world that would at once characterize the basic development of these instruments from 1500 to the present. Although there have frequently been such historical exhibitions of painting and sculpture, those of musical instruments have been few in number, these occurring only in England and France. As Phillip Young himself said concerning the unique character of the Vancouver exhibition in the introduction to his excellent catalog:
. . . it brings together for the first time a selection of the most important instruments from two dozen of the world 's principal collections. Many of the instruments have never before left their home museums; for the two-thirds that come from Europe, this is the first appearance in North America. [1]
To mount this exhibition, Young has had to travel extensively, to select appropriate instruments for the exhibition, to talk the curators into temporarily parting with them (!), to arrange for their careful shipment, and to display them so handsomely in the Vancouver Centennial Museum. This, along with such unforeseen difficulties as a civil servants' strike in municipal Vancouver during the final months of the exhibition, has combined to make the execution of this event a unique accomplishment in the history of organology. One cannot applaud enough both his efforts and those of all the other people connected with this historic event.
The exhibition proper consisted of about 300 items encompassing the evolution of Western musical instruments from 1500 to 1900. They were displayed chronologically and subdivided into sections corresponding to the traditional historical periods such as Renaissance, Baroque, Classic, etc. This enabled the observer to perceive the general development of musical instruments initially and then to subsequently trace the evolution of particular instruments in more detail upon further observation. Thus the exhibition had appeal to both the layman and the musical instrument specialist. The instruments were also sometimes divided into further subcategories such as the Denner instruments, Hotteterre, etc. Accompanying the instruments were brief descriptions which when combined with the notations and the photographs in the catalog, provided excellent background information. Also available for rent were cassette tapes providing verbal descriptions and, in some cases, musical examples performed on the instruments in the exhibition. Overall, the effect was in turn dramatic, dynamic, and decidedly informative.
The only problem that a devoted organologist might have encountered with the exhibition was the lighting, which was basically subdued for dramatic effect. This made careful observation of the instruments for significant marks and detailed elements of workmanship, such as the undercutting of tone holes, very difficult to observe.
The exhibition was, by Young's own admission, "wind heavy" simply because museums were much more willing to loan wind instruments than the more fragile stringed and keyboard instruments. (It was a special delight for oboists.) Some of the instruments, such as the seven bell cornet (a separate bell for each pitch) by Adolph Sax that graces the cover of the catalog are truly unique, and they provided a nice flair to the general historical character of the exhibition. In all, the exhibition was a remarkable achievement in the history of organology and it is hoped that Dr. Young has paved the way for subsequent exhibitions of this scope and stature in the not-too-distant future.
1 Young, Phillip T. The Look of Music; Rare Musical Instruments. 1500-1900. University of Washington Press, Seattle; Douglas and McIntyre, Vancouver. [return]