Quiz: #1 I don’t know the answer… do you..?
Here’s a cello that remains alive in my imagination, even though its a few years since I saw it last. The arching is extremely low, but it has the pinching that we chiefly associate with Jacob Stainer’s work – although I firmly believe that this is a Füssen trait far more established in Germanic making […]
Lydia Child: The 18th-century bowmaker’s daughter
We know next to nothing about bow makers in England before the Dodd family emerged in the late eighteenth century, so every possible clue is valuable. Violin bows exist from the middle of the eighteenth century. England was amongst the the earliest country where bows were consistently stamped with a name – bows stamped for […]
Some English instruments made or sold upon the Strand.
Working in central London, it’s always a pleasure to see instruments that were made and sold within meters of your shop. In restoration I have a Robert Cuthbert, made in 1685 on Russell Street in Covent Garden, almost in sight of the studio and approximately on the site of the Royal Opera House. One day it […]
Roller Skates and Mechanical Swans: John Joseph Merlin’s Cremona Emulus.
John Joseph Merlin was one of London’s most significant inventors and entrepreneurs of the late eighteenth century. Amongst automatons, clocks and a bewildering variety of inventions he may well have paved the way for Charles Babbage‘s invention of the computer. He produced musical instruments of unparalleled ingenuity. He also held the secret to Cremonese tone – or did […]
Hard cases aren’t flight cases: Tips on flying with your instrument.
Musical instruments get damaged in flight with depressing frequency. As another instrument bites the dust with heartbreaking consequences for the owner, Benjamin Hebbert shares some experiences for the musician putting their instrument in the hands of the airlines. On average 8 million people fly every day, with more than 3 billion people flying every year. Musicians […]
A Grand Experiment: Childe Harolde’s Tenore and a 170th Anniversary Concert
On 27 January 2018, the Royal Orchestral Society celebrate the 170th anniversary of the London premiere of Harold in Italy, performed at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane under the Baton of Berlioz himself. Memoirs recalling the performance praised Henry Hill, one of the foremost viola players in Europe and brought attention to his Barak Norman viola which […]
Messiah Complex: The Riddle of the Most Perfect Stradivarius Violin
Antonio Stradivari’s “Messiah” made in 1716 is simultaneously the best preserved of all his instruments in existence, and an example from the height of his “Golden Period”. Owing to it’s new-like condition, it was donated to the Ashmolean Museum in 1940 by the firm of W.E. Hill & Sons to become a benchmark for future makers. […]
The Forensic Challenges of a Renaissance Cittern
One of the highlights of British instrument making of the Renaissance is a small “Shakespearean-period” cittern that turned up unexpectedly on my desk in 2007. At the time, despite an enviable repertoire and historical record, no English examples were known. As a result, the business of authenticating what turned out to be the only known […]
Baroque Bass Bars
In a series of blogs, Benjamin Hebbert looks at the ideas behind the “baroque violin” and questions the assumptions that are brought into play in defining a historically informed sound. At some time, I will get around to writing a fuller criticism of David Boyden’s A History of Violin Playing from it’s Origins to 1761, which […]
Stradivari’s Messiah 301: BVMA Oxford Conference 2017
In September 2017 I was delighted to be chairman of an international conference held at Oxford University to celebrate 301 years since the “Messiah” Stradivari was made. The conference unashamedly benefitted from the 300th anniversary events of the year before when the Messiah came back to Cremona, but with the passing of a year we […]
