Organ Restoration Reconsidered; Proceedings of a Colloquium (review)

Performers who regard musical instruments as fundamentally, even exclusively, useful for facilitating performances-and come by their ideas regarding the repair and restoration of them accordingly-are apt to be surprised to see what shapes these issues take from other perspectives. The museum conservator, for example, may well regard an instrument more as a repository of information about the past-materials used and technologies employed-than a vehicle for present-day gratification. The scholars represented in Organ Restoration Reconsidered repeatedly examine the tensions between these positions, carefully turning them around like diamond cutters looking for every possible angle. Though no gem emerges, this book will nonetheless sharpen the perception of anyone for whom the 'restoration' of a musical instrument is an unambiguous undertaking with obvious methods and goals.

Performers on all types of instruments, instrument builders and restorers, and museum curators all have reasons to find this volume intriguing: despite its title, this project is by no means exclusively devoted to the organ. Yet organists and organ builders are likely to gain the most from it (and not only because organs have seen more than their share of careless repairs, invasive restorations, and rebuildings so sweeping that the original is no longer even recognizable). A most exceptional early seventeenth-century English chamber organ, located at Historic St Luke's church, Smithfield, Virginia, USA, provided the impetus for this book, which originated as a colloquium about it: 'Historic Organs Reconsidered: Restoration and Conservation for a New Century', held at Smithfield in 1999. Of the thirty-four specialists from both sides of the Atlantic (and even Australia) who attended the symposium, the book brings together again fourteen scholars in thirteen essays that focus attention on the past and future of that chamber organ, on the theory and practice of instrument restoration and conservation, and on other instruments, not all of them organs, that raise similar questions. Collegial discussion, rather than ideological debate, defines the tone of these proceedings.

The first part of the book, 'Conservation and Restoration in Context', begins with a particularly insightful article by Laurence Libin, 'Considerations for the Future of Historic Organs'. He underlines a main theme of the volume, that 'Musical instruments serve many functions in addition to their use in performance' (p. 3). Sounding a note others will repeat, he acknowledges that there are few easy answers in the quest to reconcile preservation and use; he sheds light on this problem by examining the fates of two early American organs in the collection of his own institution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art. John R. Watson, the volume's editor, distinguishes between the 'musical voice' and the 'historical voice' of instruments such as the Historic St Luke's chamber organ in his essay, 'Beyond Sound: Preserving the Other Voice of Historic Organs'. Focusing on the historical voice as a primary document, he turns towards material culture studies with an approach likely to seem familiar to others who study antiques of various types. From his vantage point as a scholar at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (a co-sponsor of both the colloquium and the book) he argues persuasively for what these instruments can teach us about the 'historical workshop' and its 'technological archeology'. Along with other scholars in the volume, he calls for making a copy of the Smithfield organ for use in performance and for 'retirement' for the original.

If the first two essays evidence both an elegant tone and a gingerly approach, the third, R. L. Barclay's 'The Restorer and the Conservator: Deconstructing Stereotypes', offers a more black-and-white juxtaposition between making old instruments playable on the one hand and regarding them as silent documents on the other. His contribution is most valuable for its provocative discussion of two of Glenn Gould's pianos. (One, from 1934, in the residence of the Governor General of Canada, has been extensively refurbished; though there it may still be a...