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Re: Who has seen an Adolph Sax clarinet?

Author: John Peacock
Date: 2019-12-12 19:51

Ruben: Edinburgh was already set up with a large collection of wind instruments (The Reid Collection), so they apparently had the necessary facilities in place. Ironically, a good fraction of that existing collection was explicitly intended for borrowing for concerts. For example, there is a beautiful pair of Heckel varnished maple basset horns that the then Professor of music, Donald Tovey, bought in the 1930s so that the Mozart Requiem etc. could be performed properly:

https://collections.ed.ac.uk/mimed/record/15782

I've played these in concerts many times, including outside Edinburgh. My guess is that Nick simply took it on trust that his instruments would be treated similarly.

But staff and attitudes in the collection have changed with time. The tragedy is that it would only have taken a few extra words inserted into the text of his bequest and then the long-term availability of these instruments for performance could have been guaranteed. It would have been easy to do, and perhaps one should blame his lawyer for not having insisted on spelling things out more clearly. Hindsight is wonderful.

I have to say that, as a staff member of Edinburgh University, I am ashamed of this situation. But so far I've been unable to bring about any change.

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