Experimental Restoration and Reconstruction in Music Archaeology

Abstract

Restoration attempts to recover the original shape of excavated musical artifacts that have been damaged. Reconstruction is primarily focused on unearthed musical instruments or those depicted in images, and aims either at creating reproductions of playable replicas and imitations, or at simulative manufacturing and model reconstruction. Restoration, on the other hand, can be carried out in tangible or intangible ways. Tangible restoration can be perceived visually, while intangible restoration is instead sonic, and therefore aurally perceptible. Restoration not only recovers the integrity of fragmentary instruments, but also, if possible, reconstructs the sound of the original instrument based on pitch measurement and analysis. Restoration can also be applied to musical iconographic sources and musical textual symbols, such as musical notations and sur-viving classical texts. The restoration of musical notation is not the same as transcription of musical score. The restoration of epigraphic texts aims mainly to restore blurry and otherwise unclear or missing characters. Reconstruction, on the other hand, is a kind of simulation experiment that uses physical or virtual manufacturing to copy, imitate, and reproduce musical remains, for the purpose of exploring ancient musical practices. Based on excavated objects, musical instruments can be copied or imitated, while simulative experiments based on iconography are necessarily limited to speculation.