Jeanne-Marie Dolmetsch, who died in 2018, has given the Library a legacy of a substantial collection of music books and manuscripts, and the archive of the French-born musician and instrument-maker Arnold Dolmetsch and the remarkable Dolmetsch family.   

Arnold, Jeanne's grandfather, was a leading figure in the late-19th and 20th-century revival of interest in early music. He started his research work in the mid-1880s when, as a student at the Royal College of Music, he first came across music for viol consort, began restoring surviving original instruments, and within a decade had made his first lute (1893) and his first clavichord (1894). In 1925 in Haslemere he established an annual festival devoted to the field. Arnold’s vocation became a unique family passion, shared and developed with an equally passionate and gifted community of musicians, craftspeople, historians and artists.

The archive — the Jeanne-Marie Dolmetsch Collection — sheds light on many unknown aspects of the Dolmetsch Circle, including primary sources relating to the well-documented work of Arnold Dolmetsch and his family members on reviving the instruments, music and dances of western Europe, as well as items of a more diverse nature. The latter materials enable and inspire research into the international and intercultural reach of the Dolmetsch phenomenon.

The Dolmetsch Family, 1928

How does Cambridge fit into this eclectic musical story?

Jeanne and her family were great friends with Professor Gerald Gifford, Fellow and Director of Studies in Music at Wolfson College and Honorary Keeper of Music at The Fitzwilliam Museum. It was many conversations with Professor Gifford that helped inspire Jeanne to trust that Cambridge was the right home for the archive of this astonishingly talented and uniquely inspired family.

Jeanne was delighted when Professor Gifford put her in touch with Anna Pensaert, Head of Music Collections at the University Library, and a conversation began about how the Dolmetsch legacy could be housed.

Jeanne’s niece Dr Arabella Blood remarked, “It is wonderful that the archive has not only found such a good home, but also that it is already being used for research as Jeanne and the family hoped.”

Jeanne and her twin sister Marguerite were accomplished musicians themselves, with special insight into music and instruments gained through a lifetime’s immersion in their family’s heritage. Jeanne lectured widely on musical and cultural history, and in 1997 became director of the International Dolmetsch Early Music Festival and musical director of the Dolmetsch Foundation.

Jeanne’s musical interest spanned from Medieval through Tudor to Georgian times, to the Arts and Crafts movement — indeed William Morris and other leading cultural lights of the time were friends of the family. 

According to Marguerite, ‘Jeanne was a scholar and a researcher, a performer and a lecturer — and like her ancestors before her, a pioneer and inventor. Her intuition and passion shone through.  She had the unusual combination of three virtuoso skills — craftsmanship, scholarship and performance.

“Jeanne knew that music broke down barriers and transcended beliefs, a language [our family] all understands. The music will now live on, as her legacy.

“She was so proud of the collection and ardent that it should not be lost. She wanted the archive to be there for people long into the future, and to inspire scholars.” 

And indeed it has.

Professor David Irving (ICREA & Institució Milà i Fontanals de Recerca en Humanitats (IMF), CSIC, Barcelona) said, “The Jeanne-Marie Dolmetsch Collection is an invaluable and indispensable resource for any researcher looking into the social, cultural, material, and economic histories of the early music revival. It opens up new vistas onto the complex story of the early music revival in Britain from the late nineteenth century to the present, and throws light on connections with early-music activities in many parts of the world.

The Dolmetsch legacy has informed David’s wider work in ethnomusicology, helping to establish links between the Dolmetsch family and the early music revival, with music in India, Tibet, Sri Lanka and beyond.

The Library’s Anna Pensaert, concurs: ‘Having been privileged to be in conversations with Jeanne, I know she would be delighted that students across musicological disciplines will be able to access this invaluable resource. We can’t wait to see how researchers use this rich material to create new knowledge.

The Dolmetsch family were particularly keen that no one type of music was ‘better’ than another — as evidenced by the engraving inside one of their beautiful harps: ‘L’Orient inspire l’Occident’ — the East inspires the West.  Now, thanks to Jeanne and her imaginative and far-reaching legacy to Cambridge, generations of ethnomusicologists and others examining the Jeanne-Marie Dolmetsch Collection will dive deeper into how music weaves people and cultures together.