The Keyboard Institute Instrument Collection
Introduction to the Collection
In October 2004, the Australian National University established its
Keyboard Institute. The Institute was
officially launched in March 2005 with an already-growing collection
of keyboard instruments.
Instruments comprising the Institute’s keyboard collection reveal
the quality, variety and innovative thinking
demonstrated throughout the history of the evolution of keyboard instruments;
more than a few instruments
in the collection represent monuments in the history of music.
Keyboard instruments of the past differ radically from their 21st century
counterparts in design, construction,
sound, and touch. During the period between the second half of the 18th
century and the early-20th century,
the rapidity of development in keyboard instrument design was such that
the sound and touch of instruments
made five years apart is markedly different. Composer-performers such
as Frescobaldi, Froberger, Louis and
François Couperin, Jean-Philippe Rameau, JS Bach, CPE Bach, Haydn,
Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin,
Liszt, Brahms, Debussy and Rachmaninov were aware of the latest developments
in keyboard instrument
design, and wrote specifically for the unique qualities of sound and
touch inherent in the instruments of their
preferred makers. Historical keyboard instruments not only provide a
‘voice’ from the past for the
‘pronunciation’ and ‘inflection’ of earlier
music, but are also the most appropriate research tools through
which issues arising from historically-informed performance practice
can best be investigated (the term
‘historically-informed performance practice’ refers to the
conventions of performance and characteristics of
notation that appear to have been prevalent among knowledgeable performers
prior to our time, in different
countries, and for different composers, including those customs that
were so commonly understood that they
were not notated, as well as aspects of performance that were too subtle
to notate). Historical instruments,
when given life through historically-informed performance, provide a
vital key to our understanding and
interpreting the incomplete record represented by musical notation,
and enables a musical score to be read,
understood and interpreted in a richly-contextualised way.
The cultural phenomenon of the ‘early music’ movement has
enabled music lovers to prize earlier keyboard
instruments as more than just historical curiosities; as a result, not
only is the future of clavichords and
harpsichords as the instruments of choice for the performance of Renaissance
and Baroque keyboard
repertoire secure, but the piano of the Classic era and mid-to-late-19th
century has escaped from a long
silence.
The ANU Keyboard Institute continues to expand its collection of keyboard
instruments. The ANU School
of Music thus provides a nationally unique context within which virtuoso
scholar-musicians, musicologists,
instrument makers and audiences may develop informed insights in relation
to repertoire and sound sources
Dr.
Geoffrey Lancaster AM
Professor of Fortepiano
Curator, ANU Keyboard Institute collection
(May 2007)
A draft version of the catalogue can be found here.
