English family (of mixed French, German, Swiss and Bohemian origins) of instrument makers, scholars and performers of early music. (1) Arnold Dolmetsch had great influence on late 19th- and 20th-century attitudes to scholarship and performing practice, particularly through the reconstruction and development of obsolete instruments (the viols, keyboard instruments and notably the recorder). His work was continued by his heirs, principally (5) Carl Dolmetsch.
(4) Rudolph (Arnold) Dolmetsch
(5) Carl (Frederick) Dolmetsch
Obituaries: M. Campbell, The Guardian (14 July 1997); S. Godwin: The Independent (14 July 1997)
MARGARET CAMPBELL
(b Le Mans, 24 Feb 1858; d Haslemere, 28 Feb 1940). Pioneer in the revival of performances of early music (particularly instrumental) on the original instruments and in the style of the period. Born into a family of musicians and craftsmen, he learnt piano making in his father's workshop and organ building from his maternal grandfather, Armand Guillouard. In 1878 he married Marie Morel, a lawyer's daughter eight years his senior. After a short visit to the USA, he studied privately with Vieuxtemps and at the Brussels Conservatory from 1881 to 1883. He then went to the Royal College of Music, in its first year, where he studied the violin with Henry Holmes and harmony with Bridge; he also played in the first five concerts given at the college in a quartet led by Emil Kreuz (1883–4). George Grove, both then and later, encouraged his growing interest in early music. From 1885 to 1889 he taught the violin at Dulwich College, where to assist intonation he fretted his pupils’ violins and favoured the learning of simple tunes rather than scales or exercises. His published arrangements of instrumental music by Corelli, Handel and Purcell, with realizations of the figured basses, date from this time and are not truly representative of his work.
In 1889, while looking for music for the viola d'amore, Dolmetsch first came upon English fantasies for viols in the RCM library and in the British Museum. He began to acquire and restore early instruments, which were then played by his wife, his daughter and some of his pupils. In 1890–92 he supplied musical illustrations to Bridge's Gresham lectures, playing works by Jenkins, Simpson, William Lawes and Locke, on viols and harpsichord. At his first public concert, in June 1890, his daughter Hélène played Eight Divisions on a Ground by Simpson on the bass viol. Throughout the 1890s he gave concerts in his own home on period instruments, regularly introducing works taken from manuscripts and early printed editions. In 1894 he and his wife separated; they were later divorced. At that time Dolmetsch still lived in Dulwich; later he moved to Bloomsbury where Elodie, formerly the wife of Edgard Dolmetsch (Arnold's brother), kept house for him and played the harpsichord in his concerts. They were married in 1899.
After restoring many old instruments, Dolmetsch made his first lute in 1893; his first clavichord followed in 1894. At the suggestion of William Morris he built his first harpsichord, which was shown at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition in October 1896. It was at this time that Mabel Johnston first came to Dolmetsch as a violin pupil; she later became an apprentice instrument maker. In 1897 Arnold and Elodie played the harpsichord continuo in the first ‘modern’ performance of Purcell's King Arthur (in Fuller Maitland's edition) in Birmingham under Richter. In July 1900 he provided the musical accompaniment for Isadora Duncan's Dance Idylls at the New Gallery in London.
In 1902, after various financial and domestic upheavals, he toured the USA, where he was greeted with enthusiasm. The next year, when his second marriage failed, he married Mabel Johnston. He went to America again in 1904, when he worked with Ben Greet, the Shakespearean actor-manager; at Boston he accepted a job at the piano makers Chickering & Sons, running a department of his own where he made harpsichords, clavichords, lutes and viols. Some of his finest instruments date from this period, including a harpsichord for Busoni. He stayed with Chickering from 1905 to 1911. After a trade recession he left the USA, and he worked for Gaveau in Paris from 1911 to 1914.
At this time he began the work which led to the publication of his book on the interpretation of 17th- and 18th-century music. Although many other scholars have since expanded the state of knowledge in this field, Dolmetsch's work remains a landmark: at that time nothing comprehensive had been written on the subject. In 1914 Dolmetsch returned to England; in the following year, he designed and built his first ‘triangular harpsichord’, a spinet-type instrument with two pedals which, when folded, fitted into a London taxicab.
In 1917 he moved to Haslemere, and he later taught at Dunhurst School. In 1919, following the loss of a Bressan recorder acquired in 1905, he perfected the first modern recorder made to Baroque specifications. Friends financed the building of a workshop in 1920, and from that time until World War II Haslemere was a centre for the study and re-creation of the traditions of performance of the music of previous centuries under unique conditions. The first Haslemere Festival was held in 1925 and consisted of two weeks of concerts of early music played on contemporary instruments. By 1926, Dolmetsch had reconstructed the full family of recorders and these were played for the first time in the festival of that year. Although those early performances showed signs of under-rehearsal, interest and support were such that the festival became an annual event. Much of the music performed there is still edited from manuscripts and early printed music in the Dolmetsch library, which (together with its instruments) was one of the finest private collections in England (now at the Horniman Museum, London). The workshops that Dolmetsch started still produce keyboard instruments and viols following Arnold's maxims and developed by his son (5) Carl Dolmetsch, but it is the recorder which is especially associated with the workshops at Haslemere; examples are to be found in the hands of schoolchildren and of professional players all over the world. In 1929 the Dolmetsch Foundation was established to further the study and performance of music according to Dolmetsch's principles: it provides apprenticeships and scholarships to students of all nationalities and produces a bi-annual journal devoted to its aims, the Consort (first published in 1929, sporadically until 1948, and continuously from that date).
In 1937 Dolmetsch was granted a British Civil List pension, and in 1938 the French made him a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur; in 1939 he was awarded an honorary DMus by Durham University.
Throughout his career Dolmetsch was met consistently by the prejudice of his contemporaries, which was due largely to their scepticism, but also to his own intolerant and intractable nature. Towards the end of his life scholars and musicians were at last beginning to recognize the true value of his work, but he was a very sick man and had by then lost touch with them and their researches, and refused to believe their sincerity when they praised him. In Grove 5 Donington, who worked and studied at Haslemere, wrote:
In his prime his critical faculty fully matched his uncanny intuition: in his last years his intuition remained more fruitful than unintuitive learning can ever be, but grew less sure from lack of scholarly contact … His flair for early style and for inspired tone-production on early instruments … amounted to a unique phenomenon … He once characteristically remarked ‘students should learn principles rather than pieces: then they can do their own thinking’.
Dolmetsch's great gift was that, in a period when early music was virtually ignored except for academic study, he had both the imagination and the musicianship to take a musical work which had become a museum piece and make it speak to the people of his own time in a language intelligible to them. Today, the performance of early music has taken its place as a subject for serious study: Dolmetsch's pioneering work helped to lay the foundation for such a development.
‘The Lute: I’, The Connoisseur, viii (1904), April, 213
‘The Lute: II’, The Connoisseur, ix (1904), May, 23
‘The Viols’, The Connoisseur, x (1904), Nov, 134
The Interpretation of the Music of the XVII and XVIII Centuries Revealed by Contemporary Evidence (London, 1915, 2/1946/R1969 with preface by A. Harman)
R. Donington: The Work and Ideas of Arnold Dolmetsch (Haslemere, 1932)
P. Grainger: ‘Arnold Dolmetsch: Musical Confucius’, MQ, xix (1933), 187–98
Obituary, The Times (1 March 1940) [funeral report, 4 March]
Obituary, MT, lxxxi (1940), 137
W. McNaught: ‘Arnold Dolmetsch and his Work’, MT, lxxxi (1940), 153–5
M. Dolmetsch: Personal Recollections of Arnold Dolmetsch (London, 1958/R)
S. Bloch: ‘Saga of a Twentieth-Century Lute Pioneer’, JSLA, ii (1969), 37–43
M. Campbell: Dolmetsch: the Man and his Work (London, 1975)
M. Campbell: ‘Not Quite Eye to Eye’, The Consort, l (1994), 124–9
M. Campbell: ‘Authenticity Reborn: Dolmetsch the Violinist’, The Strad, cvi (1995), 492–5
(b London, 6 Aug 1874; d Haslemere, 12 Aug 1963). Third wife of (1) Arnold Dolmetsch. She specialized in the playing of the bass viol, and studied this instrument with (3) Hélène Dolmetsch. She is best known for her extensive researches into court dances of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.
She had four children: Cécile (b Dorking, 22 March 1904; d Haslemere, 8 Aug 1997), who specialized in playing the pardessus de viole; Nathalie (b Chicago, 31 July 1905; d Seavington St Mary, 14 Feb 1989), who founded the Viola da Gamba Society in 1948 and edited much viol music, wrote prefaces to facsimile editions of tutors for the viol by Simpson and John Playford (1955, 1965) and wrote The Viola da Gamba: its Origin and History, its Technique and Musical Resources (London, 1962, 2/1968); (4) Rudolph Dolmetsch; and (5) Carl Dolmetsch.
Dances of England and France from 1450 to 1600 (London, 1949/R)
Dances of Spain and Italy from 1400 to 1600 (London, 1954/R)
Personal Recollections of Arnold Dolmetsch (London, 1958/R)
D. Poulton: ‘Mabel Dolmetsch: a Tribute’, LSJ, v (1963), 49
(b Nancy, France, 14 April 1878; d Dulwich, 7 July 1924). Only daughter of (1) Arnold Dolmetsch by his first wife. A pupil of Carl Fuchs, she was a cellist and a highly gifted viol player. Her career began in her father's concerts when she was seven, but in 1902, following litigation over the disputed ownership of an instrument, she ceased to play with the Dolmetsch consort.
(b Cambridge, MA, 8 Nov 1906; d 6 or 7 Dec 1942). The eldest son of (1) Arnold Dolmetsch and his third wife. He played the harpsichord and viol, the former brilliantly and the latter with a promising natural talent. He was educated at the RCM and was the first of the family to show an interest in modern music, both as composer and conductor. His career was cut short tragically when he was lost at sea during the war.
(b Fontenay-sous-Bois, France, 23 Aug 1911; d Haslemere, 11 July 1997). Second son of (1) Arnold Dolmetsch and his third wife, (2) Mabel. He made his début in a viol consort at the age of seven, and was a soloist at the first Haslemere Festival (1925). He studied with his father, Carl Flesch and Antonio Brosa. He played a variety of instruments, including viols, but was best known for his virtuoso recorder playing. He was a founder-member and was the first musical director of the Society of Recorder Players (founded 1937). In 1947 he became the musical director of the Haslemere Festival and the Dolmetsch Foundation.
Carl Dolmetsch was the father of four children. Jeanne and Marguerite (both b Haslemere, 15 Aug 1942) were educated at the RAM and also studied the recorder, viol and harpsichord with their father. Jeanne specializes in the recorder and treble viol, Marguerite in the recorder and tenor viol. Both played in the Dolmetsch Ensemble with their father. Carl's second son was Richard (Arnold) (b Haslemere, 2 March 1945; d Preston, 9 May 1966), who was educated at the RAM and played the recorder, violin and harpsichord. In 1961 he won the Gold Medal of Le Royaume de Musique in Paris, but his later years were marred by illness, and he committed suicide.
Carl Dolmetsch gave regular recitals with Joseph Saxby (harpsichord) and had many works specially written for him and his instruments by Berkeley, Cooke, Chagrin, Gál, Maw and Rubbra, among others. As well as his concert activities, Carl supervised the workshops at Haslemere. He wrote many articles for a variety of journals, both musical and those concentrating on the technical aspects of instrument construction. He made many editions of music for recorder, and was the general editor of Il Flauto Dolce, a series of tutors and music for the instrument. He was made a CBE in 1954.
Ornamentation and Phrasing for the Recorder (London, 1939)
‘Recorder and German Flute during the 17th and 18th Centuries’, PRMA, lxxxiii (1956–7), 49–63