REVIEW BY RUPERT TILL
I first came across Graeme Lawson’s work about 16 years ago. He is a pioneer in exploring musical instruments in the archaeological record. His work is always highly detailed, applying an archaeologist’s methodological rigour to provide detailed evidence from excavations. He is also an excellent musician; unlike some music archaeologists, he plays replicas with a musician’s ear for detail. Lawson’s first publication was a letter in CA 52, in 1975, written from Cambridge University, where his PhD was published in 1981. It was soon followed by a Cambridge fellowship at the age of 25, starting a long-standing association with the university’s McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research.
His book is highly anticipated, as he hasn’t published extensively in recent years due to his commercial work. It draws on a lifetime of work as a music archaeologist, studying musical instruments often in fragments, with a detective-like approach to unveiling their stories. It is written in an erudite but accessible, intelligent style, but does not include academic citations. It is highly readable, with small chapters of a few pages each, telling bite-sized stories about individual artefacts. It’s a shame there are few references, but Lawson’s knowledge of music archaeology is unique and very reliable. Many of the chapters in his book refer to instruments where he was the archaeologist who studied the find; he has direct knowledge of many of these cases, or otherwise has a close connection to those who do.
Most stories tracking the history of musical instruments start with the oldest and move forward through time, but this book delves into the musical past beyond history into archaeology’s timescale. It starts with the modern era and stretches backwards through the industrial era, Enlightenment, Renaissance, ancient Rome, Greece, and beyond into prehistory. Layer by layer, Lawson takes us back in time, a process reminiscent of H G Wells’ time machine, telling stories at points through the journey and providing an understanding of the development of musical instruments.
