Welcome

In his essay "Über die bildende Nachahmung des Schönen" (On the formative imitation of beauty) published in 1788 Goethe's friend Karl Philipp Moritz expressed a basic principle of our  research. We consider the intact substance of the instrument a capital permitting us to apprehend not only a fundamental part of our musical culture and its sociocultural environment as well as base of research.

Understanding an instrument's structure and knowledge manifest in it requires a overall exploration of its manufacture process. A documentation of the instrument, analysis of materials, and  forensic exploration of traces of the tools used in manufacture establish a base for all the following proceedings.

Thus applying methods of experimental archeology we develop procedures of "formative imitations of beauty" to achieve an understanding of the keyboard culture of its period.

The complete repetition of all stages of works reveals the formative process leading to the finished instrument, closely linked to the conditions and desires of its time.

A scientific reconstruction thus represents a wider range of information than a mere copy. It offers a base for experiments of musical and technical function preserved in the original instrument but inaccessible without altering the historical substance.

The methods developped in our Institute preserve the original as an unaltered source of information and remnant of culture, enable a way of formative imitation of beauty to collect experiences of an epoch which established the fundaments of our present cultural identity.