Benjamin Hebbert Violins

Benjamin Hebbert www.hebberts.com
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TEACHING & LECTURES

I frequently give lectures at the violin from the violin making schools and provided guided study for violin making students at the Ashmolean Museum. I also give guest lectures in a variety of places, especially music conservatoires and departments, and also to the general public. These deal with a range of subjects, from the authenticity of Stradivari’s Messiah, understanding baroque instruments, all the way to complicated ethical problems of restitution and spoliation from the Second World War. Just some of my lectures are found below. 

ALADFI 2017

With irony, chagrin and shame in equal measure, my lecture...

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CONFERENCES

I’ve been particularly privileged to organise a number of conferences during my term as chairman of the British Violin Making Association. The advantage of setting a strictly curated theme is that you get to decide who the speakers will be. This was especially the case for the Stradivari Messiah conference in 2017, which provided the opportunity to interrogate every claim made about the instrument and provide an appropriate expert response to every significant question that has been asked of it. 

STRADIVARI’S MESSIAH

Messiah Conference for the British Violin Making Association, 2017.
In 2017 I curated and chaired a conference for the British Violin Making Association centered on the 1716 Messiah, coinciding with its 301st year. Known for its remarkable preservation and controversial reputation, the instrument sparked debates globally. Given the degree of analytical investigation that could beapplied to the question of authenticity, the conference was designed to look at how a forensic approach could provide an independent way to validate claims of connoisseurs about the authienticity of the instrument.

DIGITAL AMATI

Getting technical.
I invited my friend Harry Mairson, a computer scientist with a passion for stringed instruments, to give a workshop at the Ashmolean Museum in 2018 for members of the British Violin Making Association. Harry’s expertise lies in expressing classical Cremonese instrument architecture through coding, allowing for rapid prototyping of design variations while preserving the integrity of sixteenth-century ideas.

VIOLIN MAKERS OF NORTH EUROPE, 1560 – 1725

Conference for the British Violin Making Association, 2019.

I organized and chaired a conference for the British Violin Making Association in 2019, aiming to challenge the history of early violin making outside of Italy and encourage a knowledge exchange among those interested in the earliest periods of violin making. The conference focused on the surprisingly intermingled early schools of making in Northern Europe, influenced by the German town of Füssen and trade routes between northern cities.

THE HILL BOW MAKERS

Workshop for the British Violin Making Association 2016
When the BVMA offered a study day to celebrate the publishing of their book on The Hill Makers, with an accompanying exhibition at the Bate Collection at Oxford University, I wagered more people would be able to come than thirty-or-so that the faculty lecture room on offer could take. I provided the sponsorship and the logistics for the event which brought more than 180 bow makers and experts from around the world. An excellent proof of concept for future conferences.

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