Description
This paper follows the journey of an Italian harpsichord, purchased by renowned New York architect Stanford White during his 1895 European tour, to explore changing attitudes towards early musical instruments in the United States at the turn of the century. After its travels across the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean, the instrument, known as the “Colonna harpsichord,” probably once owned by the aristocratic Colonna family of Rome and currently in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of New York, arrived in the United States at a crucial juncture in the history of US American collecting practices. Based on new archival evidence – including White’s private correspondence with dealers, appraisers, piano makers and artists in his circles, as well as records of Italian art export licenses – this paper explores the harpsichord’s journey from a showroom in Venice to White’s Music room in New York, revealing the agents, the negotiations, legal implications and the architect’s initial intentions, which ultimately failed, to restore the instrument to its playing conditions. The story takes an unexpected turn in 1906, when White was killed by his lover’s husband in what became known as the murder of the century. As the story unfolds, the arrival of the harpsichord in New York’s high society circles opens a new window on a number of narratives, including tensions around this failed attempt to bring back the forgotten voice of this mysterious relic of a musical past, the accumulation and aesthetic consumption of foreign goods as markers of elite tastes, and attitudes on collecting of European luxury antiques and art to construct a class identity for the new U.S. American industrial “aristocracy.”
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