Loan
Loan of an 18th century harpsichord
Once again, the collaboration between museums -near or far- in relation to objects, exhibitions or digital content, means that one of the jewels of the Music Museum, the harpsichord made by Christian Zell in 1737, is leaving. However, not too far, in fact to some neighbors -who have not asked us for salt, this time- with whom many things unite us: the Meridiana, the fact of being municipal and several points in common between the collections.
With them, among other collaborations, we tied the digital project DivenDress, where we did a chronological review between dresses from the Design Museum and our musical instruments, over the course of six months through social networks, and which explained very well Nacho Granero in his blog La Cultura Social.
Soon, then, the Zell leaves us and heads to the Design Museum to be part of the temporary exhibition Toquem fusta! Disseny, fusta i sostenibilitat, which starts next November 8 and ends on January 22, 2023.
This harpsichord, made in Hamburg in 1737 by Christian Zell, who inherited the workshop of another builder, Carl Conrad Fleischer, with museum registration number MDMB 418, has undergone several restorations. The last one was carried out by Paul Poletti, who found the solution to redo the keyboard, not with ivory, a material prohibited by law, but with a material (a kind of artificial ivory) that is very similar and has a surprisingly very similar touch, generated from cow's milk protein.
A previous restoration of the polychromy, carried out between 2002 and 2007 by Blanca López de Arriba, revealed to us that the greenish color we all knew was not the original but an oxidation that, once removed, gave way to an intense blue, type Ducados (tobacco brand).
With the Zell we have had the luxury of listening to distinguished musicians, among others, such as Maria Lluïsa Cortada, Ton Koopman, Jean Rondeau, Mark Kroll or Justin Taylor. Just before the pandemic, Luca Guglielmi recorded Johann Sebastian Bach's The Well-Tempered Clavier - and you can already listen to it on the platforms.
