If an instrument is playable it should be played. Nothing is eternal, everything goes through stages. I for one would not like to see the Trossingen Lyre 'restored', even though it just might be able to be with proper stabilizing methods. I like the fact that this instrument was played hard by it's owner, and now the glue joints are all non-existent and we can look into and around all the bits of it, and there are now a few very nice and beautifully authentic replicas out there that couldn't have been made if the time was taken to re-glue the soundbox closed and all that.
And one might say that no matter how good the replica, it will never sound just like the thing it replicates even if it is made with absolute painstaking attention to detail - it is organic and thus will not sound exactly like the original. But I say even the original will not sound like the original in context - even if you had a perfectly preserved Strad, played and maintained and cared for from the beginning, no modifications made except new strings (there you go changing things again, right?), you still would not have an instrument that sounds like that very strad sounded in context when it was built or even a hundred years later. So I don't see the need to restore an instrument to playable to hear what it sounded like back then - it really will only tell you what it sounds like now. But you can get a better approximation of what an instrument sounded like when it was first built by 'replicating' the instrument with materials of appropriate age and preparation. A replica of the Colson built out of all the right materials will sound more like the Colson sounded back then than the Colson itself would sound now. You could not, however, build the replica if it was properly 'restored', as the restoration locks away secrets that an unrestored antique object often gives up freely. I don't have the emotionality of seeing a tool that no longer functions without a bunch of support get used as a tool to discover secrets that could not be discovered any other way. I have a 5th century iron Frankish axe, in very good condition, that I had examined by modern metallurgists by magna-flux and other scanning methods, and it was found to be structurally sound enough to be once again used (it is a Frankish throwing axe head). So to share the experience, I handed it off to a student of medieval woodworking that I know to make a handle for it, and now it is going to go to an event with me where we will sing and dnace around a fire and sprinkle it with water from Merlin's Well and make petitions to Herne and (well, you get the picture, but really, it's just a hunk of metal) and then we will throw it and it will stick in a stump and everyone will go away feeling like they had just interacted with 1600 years ago. But did they?. No, we don't know what the handle reall! y was made like, and so it will throw differently, and we won't know much more than we know from throwing a replica of similar weight. But if I sacrifice the piece, and we get good analysis of the metallurgy and the methods, of the materials and techniques, by cutting it open, by examining the structure and strata of the iron, then we know much more, and can build objects that give the same experience. The tool that has lived long past it's usefulness and into an age where it has no purpose except in sport, can divulge so much and enhance the study of said things more in it's careful deconstruction than it can by being 'restored' or 'conserved'. Even if it was the last axe of it's type on the planet, just having it to look at, and not unlocking it's secrets, doesn't help. There are Colsons and Pajots and many other instruments from long departed masters out there that are still playing, many in reasonably authentic shape and relatively unmodified. There are many modern instruments that sound as good, and look as sweet. We have the benefit of recording the knowledge of the modern makers down to the smallest detail, in audio/video/technical drawings and more. So continuing the lineage of a modern master will be easier, if someone cares to make the effort to record it. But what of the discoveries and important technologies in the old instruments? These things, while old, still enhance our modern science and art. We only have the objects of the older creators to tell us as much of the story of their builders knowledge and experience as we can know. So I don't really feel devastated when at the end of it's realistic useful life, an object is opened up like a book and allowed to reveal it's secrets, that is a better end to an instrument than b! eing transformed into a flowerbox and allowed to rot from the inside out until nothing remains but 20 coats of latex paint and a few fibers of wood 9or, in many instances, being lost forever in an attempt to make it function again).. Just my $.02 worth - I know, I have a whole bunch of pennies lying around, don't I? Chris
