In his 35 years as its director, Richard Rephann has often heard the Collection of Musical Instruments described as "Yale's best-kept secret."
While he acknowledges that the characterization is a compliment, it's not one that Rephann finds particularly apt.
"There's nothing secret about it," says Rephann, noting that the collection -- considered one of the world's most important repositories of musical instruments -- is no different than Yale's renowned art and natural history museums: It is meant for public enjoyment and education.
Rephann doesn't deny, however, that there are a few mysteries surrounding some of the valuable instruments in his keeping.
Take, for example, an 18th-century French spinet decorated with a painted pastoral scene featuring a fox, flowers, butterflies and birds. Made by Pascal Taskin, who is considered one of the finest harpsichord builders ever, the instrument is rumored to have belonged to French Queen Marie-Antoinette. All it takes, however, is a quick search on the Internet to discover that there are quite a number of harpsichords and other keyboard instruments from the period that have been "linked" to the ill-fated queen.
Did Marie-Antoinette really own this instrument at one time, and is it possible that other notable historical figures, such as Bach or Mozart, once had their hands on the keyboards or strings of some of the instruments in Yale's collection?
Those are the kinds of questions that Rephann, curator Susan Thompson and associate curator Nicholas Renouf are often asked by visitors to the Yale collection, which is housed at 15 Hillhouse Ave.
"You can speculate but you'll never know," says Rephann, adding that he doubts that Marie-Antoinette ever owned the Taskin spinet. But given the fact that Yale's collection includes instruments by some of the finest craftsmen in the world, it is not far-fetched to assume that some of the nearly 1,000 instruments in the University's collection have, at one time or another, been played by a person of historical note.
Established in 1900 when a collector named Morris Steinert gave his assemblage of keyboard and other instruments to Yale, the Collection of Musical Instruments gained prominence in the early 1960s, when it acquired two important private collections -- the Belle Skinner Collection and the Emil Herrmann Collection. Rephann, a harpsichordist, became the collection's director shortly after he received his Master of Music from Yale in 1964. He then hired his student, Renouf, a pianist who earned his Master of Musical Arts degree in 1971. Under their tenure, Yale's collection has tripled in size in the past three decades and is now considered among the top 10 collections of musical instruments in the world, according to Renouf.
The collection serves as both a public museum of instruments that document the Western music tradition since the 16th century and as a resource for students and scholars of music history and music performance. It boasts, for example, a violin made in 1736 by the noted craftsman Antonio Stradivari Cremona (also known as Stradivarius) when he was 92 years old. The violin is notable among Stradivari's surviving instruments for its excellent state of preservation, right down to its original varnish.
Also among the stringed instruments is a mid-16th-century Italian bass viol made by Giovanni Battista Ciciliano that is one of the few viols from that time to survive, as well as one of the oldest stringed instruments in the country. Guitars, harps, kits, hurdy-gurdys and other instruments can also be appreciated for the artistry of their decoration and ornamentation, and a selection of wind instruments shows how they evolved from simple wood instruments with few keys to more sophisticated, fully keyed metal ones.
The collection features nearly 100 keyboard instruments spanning three centuries, including organs, clavichords, harpsichords, spinets, virginals and pianos. Many of the most notable makers of keyboards are represented in the collection.
"Because of its balance, the keyboard collection really is unsurpassed in the world," says Rephann. Among its treasures are an ornately painted double harpsichord made by the French maker François Etienne Blanchet in 1740 and a harpsichord made by Andreas Ruckers in Antwerp in 1640. "Ruckers is to the harpsichord what Stradivari is to the violin," explains Rephann. In addition, Yale has the distinction of owning three of the 13 surviving keyboard instruments made by the renowned Taskin (the maker so often associated with Marie-Antoinette).
What makes the Yale collection especially valuable, according to Rephann and Renouf, is that many of the musical instruments are in playing condition, giving visitors from around the world the chance to hear how a violin or a harpsichord or a piano sounded, for example, in the days of Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart or Chopin. This makes them important as much more than cultural artifacts, the curators note, because these instruments can be brought into the realm of current, personal experience.
"There are some people who don't know what a harpsichord sounds like or feels like," says Renouf. "Here, in the concerts we offer or in classes that come to use the collection, they have that opportunity."
Many of the performers featured in an annual concert series hosted by the Collection of Musical Instruments perform on the period instruments. In the next concert, on Feb. 17, harpsichordists Vera Kochanowsky and Thomas MacCracken will perform on the 1740 Blanchet harpsichord and on a modern version of the instrument from the collection. (See Calendar of Events for more information on this performance.)
To keep its valuable instruments in playing condition, the collection has two staff conservators, Robert Robinette and Frank Rutkowski. For extensive or highly specialized repairs or refurbishment of the instruments, the staff uses outside specialists who seek to maintain the original integrity of the instrument. In addition, renovations that included a new climate-control system were recently completed at 15 Hillhouse Ave. to ensure that the instruments will be useable to future generations.
"Before the renovations, one of these early harpsichords would need to be tuned every few days," comments Rephann. "Now, they stay in tune for several months."
When not being used in performance, all of the instruments are carefully protected: the stringed and wind instruments are displayed in glass cases, and all of the keys on all of the keyboard instruments are covered in clear plastic. "As you would expect, there's a great temptation to want to touch the keys of the instruments," says Rephann. "Unfortunately for our visitors -- but fortunately for the instruments -- we don't allow that."
Rephann, Renouf and curator Susan Thompson hope that in the future, however, visitors will be able to experience the sounds of many of the instruments, and not just during concerts.
"We'd like to be able to offer visitors headsets with CDs, where they could push a button to hear the instrument they are looking at," says Rephann. "This is a museum that allows its visitors to look at the objects without being bombarded with long descriptive labels. But we'd very much like to be able to offer them the music that comes from each wonderful object."
The Collection of Musical Instruments is open for public viewing 1-4 p.m. on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday from September through June. It is closed during University recesses and during the months of July and August. Admission is free for members of the Yale community and $2 for other visitors. For further information, call (203) 432-0822 or visit the collection's website at www.yale.edu/
musicalinstruments.
-- By Susan Gonzalez.
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