Graduate Student, Music
B.Sc. Hons. (Lond. Guildhall), M.Mus. (Leeds) D.Phil, (Oxon. - in progress)
St Cross College : benjamin.hebbert@music.ox.ac.uk
Thesis Title: The London Music Trade, 1500-1725. (or possibly: From Patronage to Commercialism: Instrument Making and the Musical Environment in Early Modern England)
About
I divide my time between my academic work and a life as a private dealer and consultant-specialist in rare stringed instruments and early musical instruments of all types. I was formerly head of the musical instrument department at Christie’s in London, and have represented and consulted with most things string related, from instruments for students and advanced amateur musicians to some of the greatest violins in the world by makers including Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu. I am a co-author of a major new analytical monologue on Stradivari's varnish (forthcoming, autumn 2009). I am particularly interested in early English makers both commercially and intellectually.
My major research interest is in the technological development of musical instruments and the social and cultural context within which they evolved.
My doctoral thesis uses evidence from material culture in order to evaluate the history of music in England from about 1500 to 1725 firstly to document the shift in London from a patronage based economy to a commercial market, and also to examine the integration between music and the broader cultural context of the time through the material medium of musical instruments and other physical artefacts. I am also working on a projects about the violin as a symbol of nationhood in post-Revolutionary France, and about Stradivari and what his instruments can tell us about the development of the concerto.
My expertise in musical instruments includes working as European Specialist Head of the musical instrument department at Christie's in London. I have also been awarded two fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, one in Art History and the other in Conservation Science in order to further work on issues of authentication. In an earlier life, my professional training concerns the forensics relevant to the authentication of paper objects, and I worked first as an apprentice and then in the dealing department of Stanley Gibbons Ltd. I then studied for an undergraduate degree at London Guildhall University where I trained as an instrument maker, before winning a music scholarship to the University of Leeds to study for an M.Mus in historical musicology.
My work at Oxford is highly influenced by my training as a musical instrument maker, and by a desire to understand the genesis of instruments that we copy today. As a respected authority on the authentication and connoisseurship, I have been a consultant for numerous musicians, collectors, and museums worldwide.
See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/30/nyregion/30violin.html
http://www.thestrad.com/nStory.asp?id=528
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/letters/letters-stradivarius-viol
Toronto Globe and Mail, 25 June 2009:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/rare-hart-house-viols-to-make
Standard (Romania) 10 September 2009
http://standard.money.ro/articol_106243/viori_de_20_milioane_de_euro_c
Money Express, 22 September 2009
http://moneyexpress.money.ro/articol_19168/cutia_de_rezonan__a.html
Contact Information
St Cross College
Oxford
OX1 3LZ
