Organology

(Leslie )

(b Kingston-on-Thames, May 30, 1938). English maker of fortepianos, clavichords, and harpsichords. He was educated at the Guildhall School of Music, London, where he specialized in keyboard instruments, studying the piano with Frank Laffitte, the harpsichord with Celia Bizony, and the organ with Harold Dexter. After some years as a music teacher, during which he also undertook some restorations of early keyboard instruments, he became curator of the Colt Clavier Collection, Bethersden, Kent (1963–73). While continuing to teach and perform, Adlam studied the craft of instrument building at the Feldberg workshop in Sevenoaks. After further years of restoration experience he began producing new instruments in 1971, and in November of that year formed a partnership with the pianist and collector Richard Burnett. The Adlam–Burnett restoration and production workshops were in the grounds of Finchcocks, a large 18th-century house in Goudhurst, Kent (GB.GO.f), which now contains an extensive collection of antique keyboard instruments. Adlam–Burnett’s production was modelled closely on historical prototypes. While it included reproductions of Flemish and French harpsichords, emphasis was placed on the 18th-century piano and clavichord, instruments that had not enjoyed so extensive a revival as the harpsichord. Adlam has contributed on the subject of harpsichord restoration to ...

(b London, UK, July 17, 1946). Conservator of musical instruments and maker of brasses, based in Ottawa, Canada. After studying fine arts and English at the University of Toronto, he joined the Canadian Conservation Institute, Ottawa, in 1975 as a conservator of furniture and wooden objects. He was trained in instrument conservation at the Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg, and received a PhD from the Open University in 1999. He has undertaken wide-ranging projects in the conservation, display, and use of historical instruments in European and North American museums. He has received awards from the American Musical Instrument Society, the Galpin Society, and the Historic Brass Society for his numerous writings. He was named senior conservator at the Canadian Conservation Institute in 1991 and retired in 2007.

Barclay began in 1976 to make reproduction trumpets after models by Johann Carl Kodisch, Johann Leonhard Ehe (iii), and Hanns Hainlein. His book ...

French sound sculptors and instrument inventors. Bernard (b Paris, France, 24 Aug 1917) and his brother François (b Paris, France, 30 March 1920) developed a variety of sound sculptures and new instruments under the generic name Structures sonores. Bernard Baschet trained and originally worked as an engineer, and then (1962–5) directed a research team at the Groupe de Recherches Musicales of French Radio (ORTF), whose work resulted in Pierre Schaeffer’s Traité des objets musicaux (1966). François Baschet studied sculpture and worked as a furniture designer.

François Baschet began to concentrate on sound in 1952, when transportation problems urged him to rethink the concept of a guitar and to create an inflatable guitar using a plastic balloon as a sound box. (The first patent concerning string instruments that utilize as a resonance chamber a balloon, a bladder, or the like, inflated with air or any inert gas, was filed in France on ...

(b Ely, England, June 2, 1941). English clavichord and harpsichord maker. Educated in London and Exeter, he worked for many years as a civil servant in London. After building his first instrument, based on an Italian polygonal spinet, he studied early keyboard instrument making at the London College of Furniture under Lewis Jones from 1981 to 1984. After two years working with the harpsichord builder John Rawson, he started his own workshop and produced instruments based on a Goermans–Taskin harpsichord (now in GB.E.u). Since 1996 he has concentrated on restoring, researching and making clavichords. Bavington has produced instruments based on those of C.G. Hoffman, J.H. Silbermann, J.J. Bodechtel, and anonymous German, Portuguese, and Latin American examples, as well as a travelling clavichord more freely based on historical models. He has also made a hypothetical reconstruction of the clavichord described and depicted by Marin Mersenne (Harmonie universelle...

Interactive laser music controller made by Human Beams, Inc., also known as Beamz Interactive, Inc., based in Scottsdale, Arizona. The firm was cofounded in 2001 by the rock musician Paul Riopelle and the Beamz’s inventor, Jerry [Gerald Henry] Riopelle, also a rock musician and record producer. Todor Fay and Melissa Jordan Grey developed the controlling software. The Beamz system was first released in late 2010. Eight patents, for the controller, interactive music creation methods, and applications, had been filed by 2010.

The performer triggers preloaded music sequences, optionally running over a background rhythm track, by interrupting laser beams using the hands or any object. The user need not be able to read music; the system ensures that combinations are always ‘harmonically pleasing’. The model C6 has six laser beams, the C4 has four. The W-shaped Beamz tabletop controller is linked via a USB connection to a host computer running the controller’s software. An easy-to-use computer interface allows the performer to select or store new sequences. Different types of sequences, notes, and sounds can be assigned to each laser. Sound is produced using the computer’s audio hardware and played back through any connected loudspeaker system. The system comes with preloaded songs and settings, with more available for download over the Internet from the firm’s website. In addition the user can save personal music files and improvisations. Particularly intended for the DJ market, the system enables dynamic remixing of songs, and the lasers create a dramatic appearance. The performer can trigger melodies and rhythms that loop on top of each other, incrementally layering the sequences. A sequence can be a melodic or rhythmic pattern that starts, ends, or changes to a different pattern when triggered. A single note of a synthesized instrument can change pitch when triggered, and the player can then trigger different beams to layer in other sounds....

(b Heidenheim, Germany, March 16, 1944). German maker of early wind instruments. He played the flute from age 11. In 1961 he passed the journeyman’s examination as a precision mechanic and worked until 1965 in industry (for Carl Zeiss, Telefunken/AEG, and ELDATA). He passed the Abitur in 1971 and from 1973 to 1980 studied systematic musicology and Germanic linguistics at the Technische Universität Berlin under Carl Dahlhaus and Fritz Winckel. In 1973 he met Günther Körber, who had a workshop making early woodwinds in Berlin-Steglitz. Beck made tools for Körber, for whom he worked intermittently, and ran Körber’s workshop for a six-month period before establishing his own workshop in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1977. He began by making Baroque flutes and later made a wide range of wind instruments from the Renaissance (serpents, shawms, rackets, crumhorns, cornamuses, recorders, mirlitons, and transverse flutes) and Baroque eras (oboes, oboes d’amore, oboes da caccia, recorders, chalumeaux, clarinets, clarinets d’amour, and cornettos)....

(b Alliance, NE, Aug 23, 1944). American organ builder. After graduating from the University of Nebraska, he was apprenticed to Charles McManis of Kansas City and in 1969 established his own firm in Lincoln, Nebraska. In 1971 he received the master’s degree from the same university; one of his first organs was built for the Wesley Foundation there in 1975. Bedient’s earlier organs were strongly influenced by historic north German models and were usually tuned in non-equal temperaments. By the 1980s Bedient was also building organs in the French classic style (St Mark’s Church, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 1985) and the French romantic style (Idlewild Presbyterian Church, Memphis, Tennessee, 1989) as well as more ecletic organs. Other notable organs include those at Ripon College, Ripon, Wisconsin (1982) and Queen’s College, New York (1991). The firm also builds a line of pre-designed one- and two-manual organs for small churches....

(b Apeldoorn, Netherlands, Oct 8, 1945). Dutch maker of bagpipes and other historical woodwind instruments. Largely self-taught as a maker, he fashioned instruments from household objects (cigar-box lutes, flutes from electrical conduit, etc.) from the age of six. His parents sent him at the age of ten to a course of the Dutch Pipers Guild, whose members made simple flutes of natural cane (Arundo donax). Beekhuizen worked as a printer for six years and trained to be a social worker. At the age of 30 he decided to become a professional woodwind maker and in 1977 established a workshop in The Hague. Here he makes a wide variety of bagpipes, including a Baroque musette and petite cornemuse after extant historical models, a Hümmelchen and early musette after Praetorius, and other pipes after Brueghel and medieval illustrations. He also makes shawms, pommers, rackets, bassanelli, kortholts, and cornamuses. He credits the stability and light response of his bagpipes to his skill as a reed maker. From ...

(b Monte Azul Paulista, São Paulo State, Brazil, Nov 25, 1935; d June 4, 2015). Violin maker of Brazilian birth. He moved to São Paulo City with his family at age five. There, in 1950, he began his training in woodcarving at the Escola Tecnica Getulio Vargas, studying under Vicente Policene. After completing his studies in 1954, his teacher showed him a violin, which he found highly interesting, and so early in 1955 he commenced studies in violin making, working under Guido Pascoli. He studied under Pascoli for five years, after which time it was suggested that he pursue wider horizons. Geraldo Modern, a friend of Pascoli’s, contacted Rembert Wurlitzer in New York on his behalf, and he was invited to join their workshop. He arrived there on November 21, 1960 and began working in restoration; he soon worked directly under Fernando Sacconi’s supervision, and Sacconi continued his instruction in both violin restoration and making. During this time he performed a restoration on the “Lord Wilton” Guarneri, a violin that he studied intently and which subsequently became his preferred model, although until ...

(b Hagerstown, IN, Jan 2, 1927). American fortepiano maker. In 1959 he discovered and later copied an original German square piano by Christian Ernst Frederici (c1758) in Cambridge City, Indiana. In 1965 his copy of this instrument attracted the attention of Scott Odell, conservator of musical instruments at the Smithsonian Institution, who invited Belt to examine and make drawings of the Smithsonian’s fortepiano built by Johann Lodewijk Dulcken (1795, formerly attributed to Johann Andreas Stein). That same year, after a short apprenticeship with william Dowd, he became an apprentice of frank Hubbard. Soon Belt started receiving commissions and relocated to New Hampshire, where he began making fortepianos based on the instrument at the Smithsonian. Harvard University professor Luise Vosgerchian purchased Belt’s first fortepiano in 1967 and used it in a concert with violinist Robert Koff, including works by C.P.E. Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Ludwig van Beethoven. This performance on a replica was unprecedented in the United States; Belt had broken ground in what would become a new era in historical keyboard performance. In ...

(b Bay Shore, NY, April 7, 1946). American composer, performer, instrument builder and ethnomusicologist. She received the BA from Sarah Lawrence College, and the MA and PhD from Wesleyan University, where she studied Indonesian and Indian music. She has performed with the ensembles of Philip Glass, Jon Gibson, Alvin Lucier, Philip Corner and Daniel Goode. In 1976 she co-founded, with Corner and Goode, the Gamelan Son of Lion, New York, a new music collective and repertory ensemble under her direction. In addition, she has built several Javanese-style iron gamelans, including the instruments used by the Gamelan Son of Lion and Gamelan Encantada, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Benary’s compositional output has been primarily in the areas of ensemble and chamber music, and music for the theatre. She has described herself as a ‘part-time minimalist who also likes to write melody’. Many of her works integrate world music forms, structures and instruments with traditional Western materials. Her works for gamelan ensemble, which number more than 30, have been performed internationally. ...

(b Bronx, NY, Oct 22, 1946). American luthier, notable for handmade archtop jazz guitars. In childhood he learned woodworking from his father, a skilled cabinetmaker, and music from an uncle, a violinist; his grandfather had worked for Steinway & Sons. A visit to the Gretsch guitar factory in Brooklyn fueled his interest in the instrument; he played a Chet Atkins model 6120 guitar from 1960 to 1968. Upon discharge from the US Air Force in 1968 he started to make his first guitar and began repairing Gibson, D’Angelico, and New York Epiphone instruments. At the time he was the youngest and least experienced archtop maker of a group that included William Barker, Carl Barney, Roger Borys, James D’Aquisto, Sam Koontz, and Philip Petillo. In the 1970s jazz guitarists such as Bucky Pizzarelli, Chuck Wayne, and Martin Taylor began to use and endorse Benedetto’s instruments. He incorporated his business as Benedetto Guitars, Inc., but in ...

(b Madrid, Spain, July 2, 1932). Spanish guitar maker. He became interested in guitar making while studying the classical guitar with Daniel Fortea, a pupil of Tárrega. He was apprenticed in 1954 to Ramírez and rose to become head of that famous workshop, leaving in 1969 to open his own business in Madrid. In the early 1970s he began experimenting with new internal structures using at first five struts, then seven, then an innovative pattern of four struts extending from the soundhole and three fan braces of different heights and thicknesses. He also developed a novel back design, and has sometimes employed unusual woods such as pear and camphor. His instruments’ colourful, strong but sweet, sustained tone attracted professional interest, and in 1972 Bernabe completed a ten-string guitar for Narcico Yepes, who played it for the rest of his career. Two years later Bernabe won a gold medal at the International Crafts Exhibition in Munich....

(b Chelsea, London, UK, Dec 20, 1957; d London, UK, Aug 18, 2007). English organ designer and organ historian. He attended Westminster School, Winchester College, and St Chad’s College, Durham University, before beginning work in 1979 for N.P. Mander Ltd. He collaborated with his architect brother Julian on the case for Mander’s organ at Magdalen College, Oxford, completed in 1986. In 1987 he was employed by J.W. Walker & Sons, designing instruments for Oriel College, Oxford (1988), Carlisle Cathedral (quire organ), and Kesgrave parish church near Ipswich. In 1989 he surveyed Buckingham Palace’s much-deteriorated ballroom organ. Returning to Mander as head designer in 1990, Bicknell undertook restoration of the chapel organ at St John’s College, Cambridge, designed a four-manual mechanical-action organ inspired by Cavaillé-Coll for St Ignatius Loyola in New York (1992) and two organs for Chelmsford Cathedral (completed 1994 and 1995), and directed construction of the organ in Gray’s Inn Chapel (...

(b Annapolis, MD, Dec 7, 1946). American organ builder. After graduating from the University of Utah with a degree in architecture, he studied organs informally in America and Europe before serving an apprenticeship with John Brombaugh for four years. In 1978 he opened his own workshop in Provo, Utah, to build mechanical-action organs based on historical northern European tonal principles, and in 1984 moved to a larger workshop in American Fork, Utah. A characteristic of some of his smaller two-manual organs is his unique ‘either-or’ stop action whereby three-position stop knobs allow the organist to use any stop on either of the two manuals, or to put it off altogether. An example of this type of organ, housed in a decorated case of classical design, was built in 1987 for the Mormon Church in Provo. Among Bigelow's larger instruments are those built for First Congregational Church, Oroville, California (...

(b Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey, UK, March 14, 1940). English dealer in musical instruments, rare music books, music iconography, and related ephemera. After leaving school at the age of 16, Bingham trained as a quantity surveyor and opened his own surveying business in 1961, about the same time he began dealing in general antiques. He had a partnership in a musical instrument business for one year until 1966, when he opened his first independent shop at 247 Kings Road, London. Through extensive travels Bingham obtains and sells both Western and non-Western instruments. He specializes in assembling collections of European woodwinds, illustrating their development also with patent documents, methods, and other materials. His shop at 11 Pond Street features collections of metronomes, oil paintings of musicians, trade cards, tuning forks, and trade catalogues in addition to instruments. Major museum clients include the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), the National Music Museum (South Dakota), the Musée de la Musique (Paris), and the Musashino Academia Musicae (Tokyo), while private collectors have included Joe R. Utley, Nicholas Shackleton, and H. Iino. Bingham has also published several important works on musical instruments, such as William Waterhouse’s ...

(b Soresina, Italy, April 2, 1929). Italian violin maker. Bissolotti was trained initially as a woodcarver and engraver in Castelleone, and subsequently learned marquetry and cabinetmaking in Cantù. He attended the Scuola Internazionale di Liuteria di Cremona (S.I.L.C.) from 1957 to 1961 and studied with Pietro Sgarabotto, Giuseppe Ornati, Luigi Galimberti, and Simone Fernando Sacconi. Shortly after graduating Bissolotti opened his own workshop in Cremona, constructing mainly violins and occasionally other string instruments including lutes and guitars. Sacconi shared Bissolotti’s workshop most summers from 1962 to 1972 and together they reorganized the Stradivari artefacts at the Museo Stradivariano, of which Bissolotti was the conservator from 1965 to 1979. In 1973 he founded the Associazione Cremonese di Liutai e Artigiani Professionisti with the purpose of promoting classical Cremonese methods of violin making. Highly respected as a luthier and as a teacher at the S.I.L.C. from 1961 to 1983, he trained numerous students including his four sons, Marco Vinicio, Maurizio, Vincenzo, and Tiziano....

Synthesizer module manufacturer founded by John Blacet (b 1946) in 1978 as Blacet Music Research in Lakeview, Oregon. Blacet initially made kits for analogue modules including a digital pattern generator, a voltage-controlled clock with event arranger, a phase filter, and a frequency divider, followed by analogue delay modules, the ‘Dark Star’ (a mini noise module) and the ‘Syn-bow’, a self-contained wand-controlled synthesizer. With the popularity of digital synthesizers in the 1980s Blacet’s business plummeted, but renewed interest in analogue synthesis in the 1990s enabled him to produce a full line of kit and assembled analogue synthesizer modules in the Frac format. These modules are noted for fitting a large amount of functionality into very small modules. In spring ...

(b Springfield, MA, June 13, 1965). American composer, performer, and instrument maker, based in Oakland, California. She holds the BA in Computer Science and Music from Dartmouth College (1987) and MA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College (1992), and since 1993 has taught electronic music at the College of San Mateo. She performs on french horn and acoustic and electronic instruments of her own design, often with the improvisation ensemble Vorticella. Among her original instruments are amplified rocking chairs, bull kelp horns, Leaf Speakers, the Gliss Glass, and the Sliding Speaker. Her composition Lift, Loft, Lull explores the sonic properties of balloons as resonators in instruments made of metal bars, pipes, plates, and scraps. Bobrowski’s kelp horns (1989 and later) are long, slender conical tubes of natural kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana), slowly dried and shaped, and blown like a brass instrument. Leaf Speakers (...

(b Haddington, Scotland, July 3, 1943). French recorder maker. He settled with his English father and French mother in France in 1960. He graduated with a gold medal from the recorder class at Lille Conservatoire in 1975, then taught himself recorder making with help from Friedrich von Huene and Claude Monin as well as woodworkers near Lille. In 1978 he moved his workshop to Villes-sur-Auzon, near Avignon. He has concentrated on solo instruments, including medieval double pipes and recorders (based on instruments in paintings), ‘transitional’ recorders (after a Haka descant in GB.E.u, modern ‘Ganassi’ recorders (freely based on an alto recorder in A.W.km) and a modern tenor of his own design. Composers including Donald Bousted and François Rossé have written pieces for his electroacoustic recorder, developed in 1995; its microphone, screwed into the side of the head joint, can be connected to an amplifier, effects processor, or other electronic equipment. Bolton also makes a copy of a flute-like tenor recorder by Thomas Stanesby Jr (in ...