Unlocking the Secrets of Historical Keyboards
REM@KE is a pioneering research project dedicated to reconstructing historical keyboard instruments too damaged to play. Through advanced reconstruction techniques, the initiative aims to restore their sound and playability, offering fresh insights into musical heritage. The project unites research teams from the Academy of Music and Drama, the University of Pavia, and the University of York, with funding from the European Research Council.
At its core, REM@KE explores long-neglected aspects of four historical keyboard instruments: how their mechanisms respond to a player’s touch and how they generate sound. While many of these instruments are preserved in museum collections as valuable historical artefacts, their voices have been silenced over time. REM@KE seeks to resurrect their distinctive sounds and playability through advanced reconstruction techniques and allow them to be experienced once more.
"This project will create a strong, interdisciplinary research environment, a new platform that brings together resources from organology, musicology, cognitive sciences, artistic research, restoration, applied sciences for cultural heritage, computer engineering, digital humanities and acoustics. The new replicas of the keyboard instruments will offer musicians, scholars, museum professionals, and the public a new, immersive way to experience their distinct sounds," says Maria Bania, Assistant Head for Research at the Academy of Music and Drama.
She adds: "REM@KE is concerned not with static objects, but with the people who are engaged in them: makers, performers, teachers, and listeners."
Cognitive and Digital Organology: A Revolutionary Approach
The REM@KE project revolutionises organology – the study of the history and construction of musical instruments – by bridging material, social, and digital dimensions of musical instruments.
By combining cognitive science, artistic research, historical musicology, and both physical and digital reconstruction, REM@KE creates replicas that offer musicians and scholars an interactive way to rediscover these instruments.
Preserving and Recreating Musical Heritage
REM@KE will explore how performers of the past interacted with these instruments. The project promotes sustainable and accurate replication methods, ensuring wider access to these reconstructed instruments and preserving the knowledge they embody.
Collaborators:
- Massimiliano Guido, Project Director, University of Pavia
- Joel Speerstra, Academy of Music and Drama
- Andrea Schiavio, University of York
Total grant from the European Research Council (ERC): €8,031,360
Project time: 2025–2030
Academy of Music and Drama
More than €2 million of the total grant will go to the Academy of Music and Drama at the University of Gothenburg. Joel Speerstra will be joined by two doctoral students, a workshop leader and an organologist who will work in Gothenburg.
