Word: dolmetsches
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Cosmopolite Dolmetsch, son of a piano maker, was born at Le Mans, France, of Bohemian, German, Swiss and French ancestry, started out to be a violinist, studied with famed Violinist Vieuxtemps at the Brussels Conservatoire. But in 1889, while poking about the musical archives of London's British Museum, he happened to come across manuscripts of a 17th-Century English music for viols. Violinist Dolmetsch had heard 17th-Century scores revived by modern musicians on modern instruments, and, like many, had found the results flat as saltless soup. But as he studied the old scores, he began...
...lived quietly in Haslemere, making his own instruments just as the 16th and 17th-Century craftsmen made theirs, piecing together bits of historical information on how they should be played, playing the old music, teaching others how to play it. The idea of artistic progress rouses Dolmetsch's fiery disdain. Says he in his time-resisting French accent: "There has been no improvement in any art, at any time, anywhere! There have been little changes-like in fashions-but you usually find that where you've gained something you've at the same time lost something else...
...people in Harvard know that the music department possesses a fine Dolmetsch Harpsichord. Of these people, a very few know that it now lies in a miserable state of disrepair, dried out by years of steam heat, so that the ivory inlay has half fallen out of its rosewood case. A very few know that quill tongues are broken and bolstered with felt, that its leather is rotten, that its legs are tied up with string, that its pedals are falling to pieces...
Lotta Van Buren's capable players include a medieval-looking brother and sister, but otherwise the group lacks the main characteristic of old instrumentalists -family solidarity. Bearded, bad-tempered, 77-year-old Arnold Dolmetsch of England, a famed researcher and maker of fine instruments, plays, somewhat badly, in ensemble with his wife, his two daughters, his two sons, his in-laws. Better known for their records (Victor) than for concerts are Ben Stad, Dutch-born Philadelphian who began as a violinist, and his American Society of the Ancient Instruments. This is also a family affair, composed of Mrs. Stad...
...greatest feat was the translation of an ancient Welsh manuscript of Bardic music, written approximately 1,000 years ago and the subject for 200 years of fruitless inspection. This, says Arnold Dolmetsch, reveals "a flow of melody and a poignance that proclaim a most inspired and emotional period of music." Compositions of 934 A.D., he found, were "amazingly near akin to the most modern music...