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Science Meets Music: Technical Studies of Musical Instruments
April 10, 2018
Video
Watch the video (129 minutes)
About the Program:
Technical studies of historical musical instruments remain relatively uncommon in the field of cultural heritage. This program features recent in-depth studies that serve as models of collaborations among curators, conservators, and cultural heritage scientists in the field of musical studies. As part of a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) Preservation and Access Grant-funded, collaborative research project involving the Library of Congress, the Catholic University of America, and George Washington University, Science meets Music: Technical Studies of Musical Instruments is the first of an annual series. These lectures highlight the NEH-supported study of glass flutes by Claude Laurent in the Library of Congress Dayton C. Miller Collection, along with invited talks that represent groundbreaking, collaborative research with broad appeal to cultural heritage curators, conservators, scientists, and musicians.
Schedule
Time | Talk Title and Speakers |
---|---|
3:00 | Introduction -- Fenella France, Chief, Preservation Research and Testing Division, Library of Congress |
3:10 | Collaborative Technical Study of Claude Laurent’s Glass Flutes* -- Carol Lynn Ward Bamford (Music Specialist and Curator of Musical Instruments, Music Division, Library of Congress), Lynn Brostoff (Senior Research Chemist, Preservation Research and Testing Division, Library of Congress), Isabelle Muller (Project Manager, Vitreous State Laboratory and Adjunct Professor of Physics, Catholic University of America), Stephanie Zaleski (Postdoctoral Scientist, George Washington University) |
3:45 | The Auloi of Meroë: Preserving and Interpreting an Ancient Musical Treasure** -- Jayme Kurland |
4:15 | Recent Research on Stradivari's Instruments at the 'Musée de la musique' in Paris -- Jean-Philippe Echard |
4:35 | Question and Answer |
* Co-authors: Andrew Buechele, Nikolaus Deems, Elizabeth Montagnino, Murray Loew
** Co-authors: Susanne Gänsicke, Stefan Hagel, Denise Doxey
About the Speakers
Carol Lynn Ward-Bamford is a flutist and, since 1993, has worked as Music Specialist and Curator of Musical Instruments at the Library of Congress Music Division, where she oversees the Library’s holdings of approximately 2,000 musical instruments for study, performance, and exhibit. She holds degrees in music, performance on the flute, and archives management from Tufts University.
Stephanie Zaleski, Ph.D., is a postdoctoral scientist at George Washington University, where her research focuses on developing simple, non-invasive analytical tools to study 19th-century glass in historical collections. She obtained her Ph.D. in chemistry from Northwestern University in 2016 and recently was a postdoctoral fellow with the Department of Scientific Research at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 2016-2017.
Isabelle Muller, Ph.D., is a project manager at the Vitreous State Laboratory at the Catholic University of America in charge of research and development programs for the U.S. Department of Energy (glass formulation for Hanford Site tank waste vitrification, long term water leaching of various waste glasses, and development of predictive algorithms of the glass properties). She obtained her Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Pierre et Marie Curie University, Paris VI, France and was a postdoctoral fellow in nuclear chemistry at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
Lynn Brostoff, Ph.D., holds a Ph.D. in Chemistry, Masters Degrees in Polymer Materials Science and in Art History, and an Advanced Certificate in Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works, with a specialty in Paper Conservation. For the last 25 years, Lynn has worked as a conservation scientist at leading museums and libraries, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian’s Museum Conservation Institute, and the Library of Congress, where she is currently a Senior Scientist and Analytical Service Liaison.
Jayme Kurland is a musicologist and independent researcher based in Northern Virginia. She is currently working on a project with the musical instrument collection at the Library of Congress. Previously, she was the Curatorial Research Fellow in Musical Instruments at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a curatorial assistant at the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.
Jean-Philippe Echard, Ph.D., is the curator of bowed string instruments at the French national collection at the Musée de la musique in Paris. He studied musical acoustics at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in Paris, was a Research Fellow at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and at the Laboratoire de Recherche et de Restauration of the Musée de la musique, developed methodologies for the observation and the analysis of materials of musical instruments. His Ph.D. (2010) research was on the materials and techniques used to varnish musical instruments (15th-18th centuries).