The Manual of Musical Instrument Conservation - Hardcover

Pollens, Stewart

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 110707780X ISBN 13: 9781107077805

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2015

Synopsis

This is the first book to combine museum-based conservation techniques with practical instructions on the maintenance, repair, adjustment, and tuning of virtually every type of historical musical instrument. As one of the world's leading conservators of musical instruments, Stewart Pollens gives practical advice on the handling, storage, display and use of historic musical instruments in museums and other settings, and provides technical information on such wide-ranging subjects as acoustics, cleaning, climate control, corrosion, disinfestation, conservation ethics, historic stringing practice, measurement and historic metrology, retouching, tuning historic temperaments, varnish and writing reports. There are informative essays on the conservation of each of the major musical instrument groups, the treatment of paper, textiles, wood and metal, as well as historic techniques of wood and metalworking as they apply to musical instrument making and repair. This is a practical guide that includes equations, formulas, tables and step-by-step instructions.

About this title

Book Description

This book is intended for museum administrators, curators, and conservators, private collectors, as well as musical instrument makers, repairmen, technicians, and musicians. It is the first book to combine museum-based conservation techniques with practical instructions on the maintenance, repair, adjustment, and tuning of virtually every type of historical musical instrument.

About the Author

Stewart Pollens served between 1976 and 2006 as the conservator of musical instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he restored and maintained a collection of over five thousand instruments. He is the author of over eighty scholarly articles and four books, including Forgotten Instruments (1980), The Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari (1992), The Early Pianoforte (1995; reprinted 2009), Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesù (1998), François-Xavier Tourte: Bow Maker (2001), and Stradivari (2010), which won a 2011 Choice award for 'Outstanding Academic Title'. In 1997 he was the recipient of the American Musical Instrument Society's Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize for The Early Pianoforte, a study of the invention and early history of the pianoforte. He is also a contributor to The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians and writes frequently for The Strad.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 110707780X
• ISBN 13: 9781107077805
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 456