Collard & Collard Patent Repeater Action, London

[Ron Nossaman]

Stéphane Collin wrote:
> Terry,
> 
> I really don't mean to be sarcastic here, but you show the limits of 
> your interest in pieces that witness the glorious tradition of our 
> craft. Fortunately, there still are people wanting to exchange the 
> profit thing against the historic trip.  Apparently, also in the USA 
> (nice to observe that).
> 
> With all due respect.
> 
> Stéphane Collin.


Stéphane,
This attitude always puzzles me, as it universally ignores 
something I consider to be of fundamental importance. When 
this was a state of the art design, it was new. The strings, 
leather, felt, and whatever else it is composed of were fresh 
and functioning at their highest level. To adequately 
reproduce the performance this instrument was capable of when 
it was built, the better to show all due reverence to the 
history of our craft, we owe it to the builders to evaluate 
their work as nearly like they did it as we can, not from the 
shabby remains of a 150 year old carcass that they themselves 
would not likely have wasted their time patching up. 
Historically, this piano has never existed until right now. It 
was something considerably different when it was new and 
accurately representing it's builder 150 years ago.

So which is more important to paying historical homage to 
ancient pianoid artifacts, The best performance the design and 
materials of the time permits, or the accumulated dust? If 
we're interested in the art and craft of the builder, let's 
make the piano capable of reflecting that by gutting it and 
replacing everything necessary with new materials of as 
similar quality and performance characteristics as we can 
manage. If we want to pretend the piano still works and sounds 
like it did when it was built, and that replacement of 
anything would diminish it in any way, then we have a display 
artifact that we shouldn't do anything at all to. Careful 
reproductions can then be built to explore the performance 
potential without destroying the original.

In patching up a 150 year old piano to "play" again, we're 
serving neither the historical legacy or our craft, nor the 
performance needs of the pianist. What we're doing is creating 
a disposable toy out of something that is irreplaceable, or 
outright junk, while pretending to be concerned about both 
conserving a heritage that is no longer alive in the piano in 
question, and the needs of a pianist.

That's my take, such as it is.
Ron N