Exclusively of Historical Plucked Musical Instruments
ABOUT
I was born in Belgium, in the area between Bruges and Ghent. I spent much of my youth between these two cities. Art, history and music were part of the environment in which I grew up, and they had a certain influence on the way I came to see things.
I began my education at an art school in Bruges. In 1997, I began studying instrument making at ILSA in Antwerp. I completed my studies in 2001 and, that same year, moved to Italy to continue my training in restoration at the Civica Scuola di Liuteria in Milan. In 2003, I began working with Federico Gabrielli's workshop. In 2008, I opened my own workshop in Cremona.
At first, my work consisted mainly of restoration and repairs.
It was the work available to me and, at the same time, a way of learning: working on different instruments, observing how they were made and trying to understand why they had been constructed in a particular way. As for making new instruments, however, I did not yet feel ready.
I had studied historical instruments, but I knew many of them only through drawings, photographs and documentation. What I lacked was direct contact with the originals. Then came the restoration of a 1714 gallichon by Gregor Ferdinand Wenger.
It was a significant restoration project, and while working on it, I realised how much I could observe and understand only by having the original instrument in front of me. A drawing can provide a great deal of information. But an original instrument reveals other things. From that point onwards, I began seeking out instruments directly in museums and collections: travelling, observing, measuring, photographing and taking notes. Among the instruments I have studied and restored are two mandoras by Andreas Ferdinand Mayr, dating from 1730 and 1774, a theorbo by Giovanni Tesler from 1622, and many other plucked instruments from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Restoration gave me the opportunity to examine instruments from the inside as well, and to understand how they had been constructed.
But at a certain point, I realised that this was not enough. Understanding how an instrument was constructed did not yet mean understanding its sound. I therefore began relating what I observed in the instruments to the music for which they had been made, their historical and musical context, the materials, the strings and the information I could gather through my work.
And then I began making instruments myself. Each new instrument gave me the opportunity to reproduce certain characteristics I had observed, modify others and listen to the effects of those choices. More than anything else, it was this experience that helped me understand the relationship between construction and the way an instrument responds.
Mass and stiffness are not merely theoretical concepts. Their distribution within an instrument influences the way it responds. At a certain point, I began to understand something apparently simple:
what does what, and where it does it.
From then on, I began listening differently during the making process. It was no longer simply a question of judging whether the sound was beautiful, but of understanding the acoustic response I was obtaining and which construction choices contributed to producing it.
Meanwhile, I also continued teaching.
Since 2016, I have been an adjunct professor at the University of Pavia, in the five-year Master's Degree Programme in Conservation and Restoration of Cultural Heritage – PFP6, Musical, Scientific and Technical Instruments. I also teach at CR.Forma in Cremona, on the Restoration Technician training programme. From 2017 to 2023, I also taught at the Civica Scuola di Liuteria in Milan. Teaching has become an integral part of my work. Explaining what I do to others leads me to reflect on my knowledge, to test my own understanding and to become more conscious of the decisions I make in my work.
Today, restoration, conservation and instrument making are, for me, parts of the same journey.
I continue to study historical instruments, to work on their conservation and to make new ones. Each instrument confirms certain things I have learned, challenges others or raises new questions.
I do not believe that this kind of research has a definite end.
It is simply the way I work today.
PUBLICATIONS
Van de Kerckhove, Bob. “Defining an 18th century lute, the Mandora & Calichon: an organological study on the instruments of Gregor Ferdinand Wenger.” Philomusica on-line, vol. 22, no. 2 (2023).
DOI: 10.13132/1826-9001/22.2286
Van de Kerckhove, Bob, and Tiziano Rizzi. “Tecniche costruttive del guscio e ipotesi sulla conformazione originale.” In Note perdute. Il restauro del liuto di Vendelino Tieffenbrucker del Museo Nazionale degli strumenti musicali. Studi e restauro, edited by Sonia Martone and Massimiliano Guido, pp. 43–47. Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2024.