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p Quarterly No. 74, January 1994- FoMRHI Quarterly BULLETIN 74 2 BULLETIN Supplement 7 Membership List Supplement 95 ANN OXJNCEIV* Eisr-i-s A Source of Boxwood and Ebony coivdiivcTLJisric^^Tioisrs 1206 Reviews: The Accounts of Thomas Oreen 1742-1790 ed. by G. Sheldrick, A Musical to Directory for the Year 1794 by J. Doane; Four and Twenty Fiddlers; The Violin 1211 at the English Court 1540-1690 by P. Holman; The New Langwill Index by W. Waterhouse; Larigot, Edinburgh TJnrv Coll of Hist Mus Inst, Catalogue, Vol.2; Eii & HJii by W. Waterhouse, A. Meyers A R. Parks J. Montagu 10 1212 What can we reasonably expect museums to provide or allow? J. Montagu 16 1213 Measuring instruments in museums & conservation M. Ransley 17 1214 Suppliers of materials D. S. GUI 18 1215 A reply to comments from various members on Comm 1174 P. Bavington 19 1216 Some observations on the 'natural' trumpet B. Barclay 20 1217 On musicologists and early music E. Segerman 21 1218 Scholarship, statistics and the minimum amount of evidence needed E. Segerman 23 1219 Well under a thousand words for the ivory ban A. Powell 24 1220 Praetorius's keyless curtals G. Lyndon-Jones 26 1221 A wizard lizard G. Lyndon-Jones 30 1222 Checklist of some of the instruments at the Stadtmuseum, Munich G. Lyndon-Jones 35 1223 On the difference between early and modem baroque reeds E. Segerman 37 1224 Augsburg revisited G. Lyndon-Jones 38 1225 C.N.C. experiment - July 1992 B. Jefferies 45 1226 Some historical notes on acid staining D. E. Owen 53 1227 Expanding boxwood and playing in M. Kirkpatrick 55 1228 The good oil - what really happens when you oil your recorder? T. Simmons 60 1229 Restoration report, 17th century Italian harpsichord at MusicSources R. Greenberg 64 1230 Harpsichord voicing M. Cole 73 1231 Milanese keyboard makers - 16th century C. Chiesa 79 1232 An alphabetical string gauge system J. Downing 81 1233 A c. 1900 string gauge and an unwound viola C string E. Segerman 82 1234 Historical violin stringings up to 1900 E. Segerman 83 1235 On catlines and Pistoy Basses E. Segerman 87 1236 Bogwood again J. Downing 88 1237 Below bridge bars in lutes - a missing link? J. Downing 89 FELLOWSHIP OF MAKERS AND RESEARCHERS OF HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS Hon. Sec: J. Montagu, c/o Faculty of Music, St. Aldate's Oxford OX1 1DB, U. K. Bull. 74, p. 2 FELLOWSHIP of MAKERS and RESEARCHERS of HISTORICAL INSTRUMENTS Bulletin 74 January, 1994 A HAPPY NEW YEAR to more of you than usual, and our thanks for renewing on time - it does make it much easier for us to have renewals in before the January Q goes off. Maybe another year even more of you will help us in this way - please do! As always, it was a pleasure to see many of you at the Early Instrument Exhibition. One of the slight frustrations of an organisation like this is that we all know each other by post and by reading each others' Comms. It's nice to have the opportunity to meet as well. LOST MEMBER: Has anyone seen Jim Downie, last heard of in Turriff, Aberdeen? Another member's Q came back, too, but he sent us a belated change of address, so I've been able to send him his Q a second time, but this does cost us (ie it costs you) money. Postage is a major expense, and letting us know before you move rather than a month or two afterwards (I got his note in January saying that he was moving in November!) does help. If anyone can give me Jim Downie's new address, I'll send him his Q, too. FURTHER TO: Older members will remember a barney, way back in the early days of Early Music, between Michael Zadro and me about oiling bores and what oils were safe to use. It's a subject that's cropped up here, too; Cary Karp had a good article on it back in 1982 (Comm. 406) and there've been others since. I was recently sent a copy of The Recorder horn Australia because of quite another matter, and there was a good article in it on oils by Terry Simmons which I thought might interest you. He, and the editor of The Recorder have kindly allowed us to reprint it and you'll find it here. Comm. 1188: Donald S GUI wrote to me: I think I can offer some support for your contention in FoMHRI Comm. 1188 that in the painting of the portative organ in the Memling triptych he went wrong in the painting of the keys. I have a poster for the 199E Bruges Festival which has a large colour reproduction of the small black and white picture in the Grove DOMI under the entry for Portative organ. It is described as a detail from 'The mystic marriage of St. Catherine' by Memling.lt shows a marriage ceremony with a musician (who looks remarkably like Emma Kirkby!) playing a portative organ with, I think, 30 pipes. In this painting the keyboard is towards the viewer and has two rows of T shaped buttons. The lower row is continuous but the upper row is definitely split into groups of two and three. It looks as if Memling took more care in painting the keyboard when the viewpoint made it an important part of the instrument but didn't bother when it wasn't. However, Memling may still have not got it quite right because the buttons look as if their shanks are stickers acting directly on the pallets in the wind chest. In this case the lower row of buttons should have a bigger gap between C and D and D and E than between E and F because C, D and E would be acting on alternate pallets whereas E and F would be on consecutive pallets. Another thought; were the buttons on square shanks? If they were it would be more difficult to make an airtight seal where they enter the wind chest. On the other hand if they were not square wouldn't the buttons pivot round and catch on each other? Bull. 74, p. 3 He has permitted me to reply straight away. The Bruges portative is clearly not the same instru ment as the Antwerp one. But looking through my own files to see whether I had a better rep roduction of the Bruges picture than the one in NGDoMI, I found another Memlinc that I'd quite forgotten, the Mary in a Rose Bower which is now in the Alte Pinakotek in Munich. The instruments in that picture are clearly the same ones as in Antwerp. I want to do a longer study of these pictures (and find the time to check whether there are any other Memlinc paintings with instruments), perhaps for Early Music because they like to have pictures. The problem is that all that the Alte Pinakotek can send me is a black and white not much clearer than the Christ mas card from Edgar Hunt that I had in my files, which was published by the Medici Society. If I can get something better, preferably slides that I can then project, or if I had the time and the money to go to Munich, I might be able to publish something useful because in the Munich painting we see the organ from the keyboard side, the lute obliquely from the bottom end, and the harp from the player's right, as well as a directly full-face view of the fiddle. Anyway, of what I can see at present of the organ keyboard, the upper rank of keys has, from the treble, two, then apparently a gap about one key wide, then a continuous run of five keys without any gaps, and then the player's hand. There are fifteen pairs of pipes, each pair apparently the same length, the height difference between each pair diminishing in what looks to be a smooth curve. What I had thought to be a malformation in the treble end of the base of the case is there again, so it was not a matter of repainting as I'd first thought; it's there on the organ. Further comment will have to await better pictures. FoMRHI Editing: John Downing says: If the aim of FoMRHI is primarily to promote the speedy and free exchange of ideas and information relating to the making and restoring of historical instruments then I think that it has suceeded pretty well in this goal over the past 18 years. I think that the editorial policy is the right one - providing the Comms submitted conform to the basic rules concerning layout, clarity of print etc are relevant to the interests of FoMRHI readers and are not libellous then they should be printed. While perfect script and grammar would be the'ideal it would be bad policy to reject Comms because of typographical errors, poor grammar, bad judgment in expressing one's views or whatever as this would result in a decline in the number of articles submitted. Above all, I feel that it important that the editorial objectives should continue to protect freedom of expression and not get involved with 'poli- -tical correctness' in choice of words or other such insidious forms of censorship. Charles Stroom writes: Concerning the "to be scrutinised or not" question (in reply to your comments on the remark made by Paul Hailperin), of course not. Leaving aside the question who will be the scrutiniser there should be sufficient self-discipline among the authors not to be too insulting and enough common sense amongst the readers to weed out what seems to be, let me say, of no interest for him/her.