“Strange Luggage”: Raymond Russell, the harpsichord and early music culture in the mid-twentieth century

Abstract

Collectors of musical instruments have often been neglected in narratives of the twentieth century Early Music movement in comparison to performers and musicologists. Nevertheless, across the British Isles, instrument collectors have interacted with the movement in significant ways; for example, by making their collections available for organological and performance studies. The Musical Instrument Museum at The University of Edinburgh houses a number of large collections from private donors, including the Raymond Russell Collection of Early Keyboard Instruments. Raymond Russell (1922-1964), one of the most significant contributors to the museum, is also connected to two other British heritage sites, including the National Trust’s Mottisfont Abbey, Hampshire, and The Old Operating Theatre Museum, London. Yet, until recently, his work has been little explored. A collector and advocate for the harpsichord, Russell’s work was situated within the wider revival of interest in early music in the first half of the twentieth century, in which the instrument played a fundamental role. A wealthy individual, with a flair for historical research, Russell amassed what is now one of the most influential collections of early keyboard instruments, posthumously donated to the University of Edinburgh.
Through the example of Russell, this thesis advances three central arguments. The first relates to the importance of integrating collectors into the story of the Early Music movement. The second suggests that associating collections more closely with the person, aesthetics and ideologies of the original collector may lead us to a deeper understanding of their contents and value to us. Finally, Russell’s example underlines the importance of viewing the Early Music movement within its wider societal context, one in which networks based on socio-economic status, gender and identity shape the process of intellectual and aesthetic development. Thus, it combines primary research into a previously unstudied contributor to the Early Music revival with the development of further methodological tools in its study. In highlighting a pioneering yet underappreciated group of Early Music advocates, and in contextualising this movement within an early twentieth-century social reaction to heteronormativity and its stereotypes, the thesis opens up avenues for further research combining music history, materiality and gender studies.

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ORCID for Laurie Stras: orcid.org/0000-0002-0129-2047

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