Bassoons

 
scan041  19 fl
scan043  19 fag

 

As a bassoon player, Baines took a special interest in the bassoons at the Bate Collection. These two examples are photos taken by Baines of instruments at the Bate—balanced rather precariously against the wall!

Both these instruments were made in Paris by Jean Nicolas Savary (1786–1853), who was a performer and a maker of bassoons. There are eight bassoons by Savary at the Bate, five of which came to the museum as part of Philip Bate’s founding collection; the additional three were given via William Morley-Pegge in 1972. Cataloguing the Anthony Baines Archive has allowed us to gain a better understanding of the history of the individual instruments in our care.

Also in box 19, alongside the folder marked ‘fag’ (‘fagotto’ is the Italian for bassoon, commonly used in orchestral scoring), are other folders, envelopes, and packets of photos grouped by instrument type: flute, horn, oboe, recorder. Baines’s ring binders of notes—now stored in archive-appropriate folders and boxes—are similarly divided into instrument groupings.