Documenting antique musical instruments in 19th-century Parisian worskhops
Résumé
What are the relations between the mental representation of a musical instrument (type) in the mind of an instrument maker and his recording of selected features observed on specific instruments (artefacts) ? These features largely depend on how much they stand out from the general concept of that instrument, on the conventions in use for that instrument, and on the skill, methods and dedication of the maker observing and documenting the instrument (artefact). The study of two sets of documents created in two of the most prominent violin-making workshops in Paris in the 19th century, and previously unpublished (coll. musée de la Musique, Paris), will allow approaching these aspects from an historical angle. The first set of documents are hundreds of drawn or cut-out outlines and templates (sounding boxes, sound-holes, scrolls, archings, etc.) from the workshop of Georges Chanot and Joseph Chardon (from ca.1819 on). Many of them bear inscriptions indicating maker's name, date and the owner's name of the documented instrument. This set is, to our knowledge, among the most ancient geometrical records of many individual instruments of one type. We will attempt interpreting their function in a workshop of this time: Under which criteria and process were the information selected for preservation? What does it say of the unselected ones? The cumulative process of recording technico-stylistic features from various makers or schools constituted a growing store of knowledge that was possibly useful, not only as inspiration when making their own instruments, but also as an aide-mémoire to attribute violins. The second set of documents are handwritten ledgers documenting the trade of used instruments by Charles-François Gand and successors, between ca.1841 and ca.1920 . These internal documents are the records of the purchase and selling of more than 3,000 violins by the workshop, each of them being described. Our study of the changes in these descriptions show that they became longer, more and more features being recorded, as time went on: whereas this field contained little more than the maker's name, in the 1840s, it later indicated visual appearance of the woods, remarks on the varnish, distinguishing marks, and remarks on conservation state and authenticity. These documents indicates that the workshop consolidated his documentation method in a system, over several decades. A consequence of the increase in the detail level of individual violins is the increase of the granularity of this family in terms of heritage values.