Langwill and his Index

A tribute by William Waterhouse

from the 1993 print edition of The New Langwill Index

It is a rare achievement to create a reference book that in a comparatively short time becomes the standard work in its field. This was the distinction of Lyndesay Graham Langwill, who was born in Edinburgh in 1897, the son of an accountant in private practice. On completion of his studies he joined the firm of his father, whom he subsequently succeeded. A keen amateur cellist, in his early thirties he switched to bassoon, an instrument in which he had always taken an interest. He not only decided to became proficient as a player but to research every aspect of its history. These studies, carried out largely by correspondence and the help of a fine private library that he gradually built up, subsequently enabled him to publish a major monograph on the bassoon (Langwill 1965) as well as his Index. During all this time he pursued a busy career as an accountant, becoming professionally involved in a number of charitable fields. He served for 44 years as Secretary and Treasurer of the Scottish Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, subsequently becoming President of the World Federation for the Protection of Animals; in 1969 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his services to animal welfare.

His involvement with organological matters may be traced back to 1913, when at the age of 16 he was given a copy of Canon Galpin ’s recently published book on early English musical instruments (Galpin 1910). His interest becoming subsequently aroused in wind-instrument history, in 1930 he wrote to the publishers asking for the author’s address. This was the start of correspondence that was to occupy him for the next half century. His first letter to Galpin asked where he could find out more about the history of the bassoon, by this time his preferred instrument; Galpin, a player himself, was able to direct his enquiries in the right direction. By 1932 he was writing to Curt Sachs in Berlin for information. Hearing soon afterwards of Dayton Miller’s flute collection in Cleveland, Ohio, he obtained his List of instrument makers represented by specimens in the Dayton C. Miller collection of flutes, an eight-page typescript which Miller had prepared for private circulation in 1931. Listed in alphabetical order, it gave for each maker the workplace and period, together with the check-number of the appropriate flute in the collection. Miller told him that he also kept a card catalogue containing the names of some 1200 flute makers. Langwill himself was by now starting not only to collect historical data on the bassoon but to list makers; by March 1933 he already had 120. Others engaged in similar work included Geoffrey Rendall, who not only kept a list of clarinet makers but was reportedly putting together a full list of predominantly English makers, and Adam Carse, who was starting to collect woodwinds at this time, systematically noting down the names of makers as he came across them.

At this time, by comparison with the strings, wind instruments and their makers were poorly documented. Regarding instrument makers in general, the earliest book had been published in 1884 in Italian by Count Valdrighi (Valdrighi 1884), in which he listed almost 4000 makers of every kind of musical instrument; however his selection of wind-instrument makers was somewhat erratic and much of the data given inaccurate. The only comprehensive list attempted up to this time had been compiled by Ernst Euting (Euting 1899), who in 1899 had written a dissertation on the history of wind instruments in the 16th and 17th centuries. In an appendix he prepared a list of some 600 wind-instrument makers dating from the 16th to 19th centuries, tabulating the details of type of instrument made, attributable dates and source of information; however when his work came to be printed, this appendix was omitted. It was deposited in manuscript in the archive of D-Berlin, where it was lost in the war (however a photocopy was obtained by Langwill in 1939). Based in Edinburgh with neither the time nor the means to travel regularly like Miller, Langwill could only carry out his research by building up an intelligence network of strategically placed correspondents. Among these were Canon Galpin, Adam Carse, Robin Chatwin, Walter Blandford and Geoffrey Rendall in England, Fritz Marcus and Wilhelm Heckel in Germany, and Dayton Miller in America. Carse nicknamed them the ‘International Society for Instrumentenkunde’ — the term organology was to be coined later. Following a brief meeting with Miller in London in 1936, the idea began to develop between them not only that everyone should pool their information on wind instrument makers but that the results should be published.

By March 1938 Miller, who had already published a catalogue of his extensive library of books on the flute (Miller 1935), had definite publishing plans in mind. In a letter he told Langwill that he had made ‘a card catalogue of every known maker of wood wind instruments covering the world, so far as any available printed information goes’; of the 1000 named instruments in his collection, 330 were made in London. His plan was to publish ‘this list of London makers in pamphlet form so that it might be useful to other collectors I had in mind merely an alphabetical list of makers with their various addresses and the authenticated dates at which they were at those particular addresses. By authentic dates, I mean such as are verified by actual publication in a directory or perhaps in some other book’. At this time new collaborators, such as Reginald Morley-Pegge and Philip Bate, were helping Langwill to add steadily to his card index of makers. By 1939 this contained nearly 1400 names, which he now proceeded to turn into a written list so that he could more easily circulate it for others to add to. Not only did the outbreak of war disrupt much of this work, but Miller’s untimely death in February 1941 was sadly to prevent the publication of his London makers list. Langwill felt now a moral responsibility to carry on with this work alone. In a letter to Carse he wrote that he was ‘glad to have his hobby to relieve the tension of these times’. These dark days were now to witness the birth of the Index.

In August 1941 he issued the first of what subsequently came to be known as ‘Langwill’s Lists’. Set out in the same way that Miller had done ten years before, it was entitled 'List of some 1800 Woodwind and Brass Makers and Inventors', and consisted of 25 pages of typescript: in three vertical columns were given name, workplace and working dates. In thus tabulating for easy reference a mass of data assembled from a multitude of sources, his professional experience as an accountant served him well. Over the next months he proceeded to send these out free of charge to friends and libraries in the UK and the US. As was to be customary later on with the Index, corrections and additions were invited. The predictable result was that already within a couple of months he had to issue the first of what he called Addenda & Corrigenda. These supplements continued to be made and sent out at roughly 12-month intervals over the next few years. B y the third of these, dated August 1943, he was also adding an extra column giving such data as the types of instrument built, location of specimens and source of information. In the immediate postwar period there were a number of factors that stimulated his further efforts in this field. In May 1947 the Galpin Society was formed and he assumed the post of Honorary Treasurer, which gave him regular contact with everyone in the Society. He was soon commissioned by the Society to make a census of all musical instrument collections, both public and private in the United Kingdom. Then Eric Blom asked him to update Galpin’s earlier article on musical-instrument collections for the fifth edition of Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He accordingly sent out questionnaires to all museums and private collections at home and abroad.

Langwill prepared his seventh and final Addenda list in early 1949. The following summer he issued a 29-page typescript listing some 2500 makers, ranged this time under the towns in which they worked. In June 1952 he prepared a five-page list of some 150 recorder makers for the membership of the Sussex Recorder Players. In the preface he wrote: ‘the card index from which [this] has been compiled gives details of over 2600 Wind Instrument Makers. Publication of such an index is necessarily a costly matter and could probably only be achieved by subscription’. He was thinking more and more seriously about this now. After at least one unsuccessful request for outside funding, he was in 1958 offered a guarantee against loss on condition that no commercial publisher was employed. He printed a prospectus showing a specimen page which he sent out to likely purchasers. After 200 orders had been received, he decided to proceed with an edition of 500 copies. As a do-it-yourself publisher, he had to deal with a variety of problems: these ranged from rewriting and typing out the cards for his printer (he had decided for the sake of completeness to include modern makers as well) to business matters such as fixing trade discounts and the securing of US copyright. In January 1960 the book finally appeared; one perceptive reviewer wrote that with this publication he had ‘laid the foundation for all future systematic study of wind-instrument manufacture’ (Josef Marx in Notes (March 1961) 234).

By the end of the year he had cleared his expenses and within 13 months sold his entire stock. Two years later there were sufficient new orders to finance a second edition of 850 copies; within three and a half years these too were sold out. There continued to be a steady demand for the Index, so he repeated the same pattern over the years. After his stock became exhausted he would send out a prospectus for a new updated edition to test the market; when enough orders were in, he would go ahead. In this way he produced no fewer than six editions — in spite of constant fears over rising costs and, when over 80 years of age, of ‘leaving a large Edition to my trustees for disposal’. He shouldered most of the chores of publication and distribution himself and, by always ploughing every penny of profit back into the next edition, was able to offer it every time at a bargain price. Each successive edition was bigger than the last, and contained the new material he was being sent all the time as he became recognized everywhere as the international clearing house, not only for information on hitherto unrecorded makers but for instrument acquisitions as well. The addenda which had appeared in the second and third editions (1962, 1971) were incorporated into the re-set fourth edition (1974). The fifth and sixth editions (1977, 1980) each contained once again appendices of added material. By the end of his life he had sold over 5000 copies throughout the whole world.

In a letter dated 1 September 1982 addressed to his friends, Langwill wrote: ‘Thanks to much help and encouragement received over the years from my many friends, I have been able to compile and publish six successive editions of my Index of Wind-Instrument Makers. I am writing now to tell you that I no longer feel able to carry on with this vital work myself, but that my friend and colleague William Waterhouse proposes to undertake responsibility for the seventh and subsequent editions This initiative on his part has my wholehearted support’. Having the previous year been appointed one of his literary executors, the author felt responsible for guaranteeing the future of the Index when it became apparent that Langwill could no longer do so. Langwill had keenly felt the loss of his second wife Jane in December 1978; he himself passed away in September 1983 at the age of 86.

Having circulated a letter to some 50 international colleagues, the author was encouraged to receive from them the promise of both moral and practical support. The acquisition by bequest of Langwill’s archive, comprising his extensive correspondence (which only the vigilance of a friend had saved from being destroyed), cards, handwritten material and books was of the greatest value. Enlisting Tony Bingham as his publisher, he was from the start able to obtain from him much practical advice and assistance concerning acquisition of the requisite computer skills and equipment necessary for a project of this kind. In consultation with many colleagues, fresh guidelines for the book were exhaustively discussed and gradually codified. A first step was the systematic assembling of the basic data on earlier makers; ‘national lists’ were prepared containing the names of some 2750 pre-1850 makers ranged by country, which were submitted to an international network of collaborators for scrutiny. From 1984 a five-year research grant from the Leverhulme Trust generously helped to fund his research; much of this he conducted abroad, visiting over 60 localities in 12 countries. Before initiating primary research of his own, it proved necessary to become acquainted with the very considerable amount of work, much of it unpublished or inaccessible, that had already been carried out by others in this field. Notable here, for example, was the index of organological data compiled over 30 years by Friedrich Ernst (d 1976) preserved in D-Berlin, consisting of some 30,000 slips, especially valuable for makers active in central Europe; for Bohemia the work of Jindrich Keller (d 1980) was outstanding. Comparable work had been done on London makers by Dayton Miller (d 1941), and on those of Paris by Reginald Morley-Pegge (d 1972). Among more recent help received, that from ‘The AMIS Committee for Liaison with the Langwill Revision’, a committee especially formed by Lloyd Farrar in 1985 from members of the American Musical Instrument Society to forward data on American makers, has been outstanding.

The scale of the task undertaken has turned out to be considerably greater than that initially envisaged. The scope and size of the entries, especially those relating to the more significant workshops, increased far beyond that of Langwill’s book. The number of entries grew to circa 6400 compared to Langwill’s circa 4000. Accordingly, the planned date of completion became progressively delayed. Publication at this time represents a current stage of work still in progress rather than any definitive finality. █

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