Instrumental Odyssey

Instrumental Odyssey: A Tribute to Herbert Heyde offers essays by seventeen prominent scholars of musical instruments in celebration of the 75th birthday of an esteemed colleague. A leading historian of Western instruments with a long, distinguished museum career, Herbert Heyde continues to inspire others with his breadth of interests, his imaginative approach to fundamental issues of musical instrument design, manufacture, and authentication, and his advancement of the highest ethical and critical standards.
These well-illustrated essays range from biblical antiquity to the 21st century and address subjects appealing to collectors and curators, musicologists and musicians, and everyone desiring to grasp more fully the construction, characteristics, and functions of musical instruments. Emphasizing brass and woodwind topics which lie at the center of Herbert Heyde's work, Instrumental Odyssey also covers string and keyboard instruments, classification and commerce, performance practices and iconography, and the motives of makers and collectors.
Detailed studies of important instruments in major collections add fresh information and interpretations, while new analyses of documentary sources enhance our understanding of how various instrument types were used historically. The influences of the Early Music movement and of politics and economics are also explored by experts who illuminate modern approaches to organology pioneered by Herbert Heyde.