I'm coming down on the side of conservation rather
than restoration here. (That is, educated
conservation, where instruments are set up as closely
as possible to how they would have been when they were
young.)
I think I heard that just about all Stradivarius
violins were "restored" (meaning changed) at some
point. The angle of the neck or fingerboard or
something was changed to the more modern standard. If
I were really interested in creating an absolutely
authentic Stradivarius-style violin, I'd rather
measure the original angle. Similarly, I can imagine
intonation on some other instrument being "restored"
to modern temperment by some well-meaning museum
worker, although this could be different from the
original temperment. I'd rather they didn't mess with
it, so luthiers could look at the original and draw
their own conclusions. Even if a part is damaged,
seeing exactly how it was damaged might tell us things
about how the instrument was played. (Are those stains
beer or wine?)
Melissa
www.melissatheloud.com
>
> having an untouched and unrestored instrument is a
> very rare and very
> important source of information:
> From the acctual Colson one can for example learn,
> that the maker
> had a way to create a very steady wheel and axle
> system, that "the
> keys in the upper register were very floppy in the
> key slots" -
> things you cannot learn from the restored
> instrument.
> Sometimens even the frets are untouched, giving an
> idea of the tuning
> system used 300 years ago - so even just making an
> instrument
> playable by tuning it to todays taste might destroy
> a very rare and
> important bit of information.
>
> S.
>
