The British Museum Citole: New Perspectives
Stevenson Theatre,
British Museum
4-5 November, 2010
Organizers and Sponsors
James Robinson
is Curator of Medieval Collections in the Department of Prehistory
and Europe at the British Museum. He is the author of Masterpieces of the Middle Ages,
and recently oversaw the design and opening of the new Medieval Gallery
at the British Museum.
Naomi Speakman is the John
Rassweiler Project Curator at the British Museum, assisting James
Robinson, and the primary contact for citole symposium inquiries.
Her email is NSpeakman @ britishmuseum.org.
Kate Buehler-McWilliams became acquainted with the British
Museum
citole while doing graduate work at the University of Minnesota under
guidance of Donna Cardemone Jackson. Initially interested in the
citole as a gift between Robert Dudley and Queen Elizabeth, her
research expanded into the history of the artifact itself. Her
Master's thesis, "Retelling the Story of the English Gittern in
the British Museum: An Organological Study, ca. 1300-present," was
completed in 2002. Her studies of the instrument have greatly
enriched
her work as an instrument builder, and likewise her experiences
building reproduction citoles have only increased her respect for this
instrument. In 2007 she published a citole article in the Journal of the American Musical Instrument
Society, and she has read citole-related papers at Galpin/AMIS
(2003), Leeds (2003),
Kalamazoo (2004 and 2009), Basel (2005), and RSA (2009). Kate can be
contacted regarding the citole symposium, particularly the fringe
events, at kate @ trombamarina.com.
Alice Margerum is currently
finishing her PhD, “Situating The Citole, circa 1200-1400”,
at London Metropolitan University. Her thesis examines the documentary,
literary, iconographical and material evidence related to this
instrument type. The thesis will be completed by August 2010. This
research follows on from her 2002-4 MA project to reconstruct a typical
fourteenth-century English citole using historically appropriate tools
and techniques, in the process of which she discovered a wealth of
sources relating to the citole from various parts of Europe. Originally
trained as an instrument maker, she holds a BTEC National Diploma, BTEC
Higher National Diploma and BSC (Hons.) in Musical Instrument
Technology and also trained with the historical harpmaker Tim Hobrough.
She worked as a self-employed harpmaker and decorative woodcarver
during the 1990s before returning to university. She intends to resume
full-time instrument-making upon completion of her PhD. If you have any
questions about citoles in European art or literature, please feel free
to email Alice at <carvedstrings@gmail.com>.
Benjamin Hebbert has a B.Sc.
in musical instrument making from London Guildhall University, and a
Masters of Music in historical musicology from the University of Leeds.
He is presently at St Cross College, University of Oxford where he is
completing his doctorate on the subject Patronage to Commercialism:
Instrument Makers and the Material Consumption of Music in Early Modern
London. As a musical instrument specialist, he has been a Fellow in
Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and head of the musical
instrument department of Christie’s. He is now Program
Leader for musical instrument making, furniture making and furniture
and objects conservation, and lecturer in material culture and history
of decorative arts at West Dean College.
We would like to thank our sponsors: Dr. John H. Rassweiler,
The Galpin Society,
Gamut
Strings, and "Unprofitable
Instruments"
