Full-text Article Downloads

The articles on this page can be downloaded as .pdf files. These can be viewed via Acrobat Reader, available for free download here. Those using a Mac running System X 10.3 or higher can also view these using Preview. More articles will be added gradually. If you are going to quote parts of any of these articles in papers, articles, books, etc, which you're very welcome to do, please be fair and cite the source. If it's for exams of any sort, it'll then count as research and avoid any accusation of plagiarism!

New, September 2020

Interview with Jeremy Montagu in the NEMA Newsletter, March 2018

New, August 2020

Decorating the Dots

Problems in Musical Notation

The Artificial in Musical Instruments

Problems of Pitching

Why do I Collect Instruments?

New, July 2020

Timpani and Side Drums in England in the 16th and 17th Centuries

New, June 2019

Do Instruments Harm Their Players?

How to Wreck Your Instruments

The Dangers of Mediæval Iconography

Can You Reproduce an Instrument?

The Fakery of Early Music

Why Differing Pitch Standards?

The Frame Drum

Speech in Music

Slit Drums

Human Instruments

Our Fingers

New, May 2019

Classical/Popular/Folk

Ancient Greek Music Revived

New, December 2018

The Right Instrument

Big Beasts

New, October 2018

The Changing Sound of Music

Transmission of Instruments

Sinister Dexterity

New, August 2018

Quail Whistles

A tribute to Jeremy Montagu on his 90th birthday, from the CIMCIM Bulletin, August 2018

New, June 2018

The Oldest Organ in Christendom, updated 2007

New, April 2018

Origins of Music

New, October 2017

Musical Instruments of the Baroque.

The Orchestra in History, a lecture series given in the 1980s

The Pipe and Tabor is Alive and Well in the Basque Country.

Tutankhamon’s Trumpets and the Ḥatsots’rot.

New, July 2017

The Magpie in Ethnomusicology, The John Blacking Memorial Lecture, 1997

The Javanese Gamelan Kyai Madu Laras


Supplement to Reed Instruments - the Montagu Collection: An Annotated Catalogue (Lanham, Scarecrow Press, 2001). Download. (1 mb)

A CD-ROM with illustrations of all the instruments in the book is available only from the Author. These are arranged in two complete series, one typologically so that you can see all the shawms, for example, in one series; the other page by page so that you can see what the instruments look like as you read the book.

An acoustical problem

As Like as Two Peas

The Billingsgate Trumpet

Brexit -- Why I voted leave

Citt-Gitt

A Clavichord By Hieronymus Hass in the Bate, and how we treat our instruments

Collecting Musical Instruments

The Conch

Corrections for Diagram Group 'Musical Instruments of the World'

Cowbells – a Request

Did shawms exist in antiquity?

The Divorce of Organology from Ethnomusicology

Don't go overboard about ivory

Drum rhythms for dance music.

Early Music – Earlier and Later

Ellis at Belfast.

ESEM – Why it Began

FoMRHI history

The Galpin Oboe

Genesis of the Duct Flute

Grove Picture Story

Historical Instruments and their Role

Hornbostel-Sachs Reconsidered

How Far Do We Dare to Revise Hornbostel and Sachs?

How Music and Instruments Began

Hypothesis on the Symphony

Instrumental Influences in the Mediterranean

The Mary Rose- What’s here, what isn’t here, and why were they there?

Metal-covered threads before 1600 (by Gwen Montagu)

Muslim Influence and the Global Mediterranean

Muslim Influence in Spain

The Oldest Organ in Christendom

On the Skill of Viennese Brass Instrument Makers

Organological Gruyère

A Polemic After a Conference

Popular Oboes of the Mediterranean

Pottery Skeuomorphs of Conches in Antiquity

Provision of Plans

Secret Aerophones

Side-Blown Horns

The Silver Trumpets, Ḥatsots’rōt

Some manuscripts in the British Library with Instruments

Survival of Instrumental Types around the Baltic

Tuning and Tempering

Typology and Classification

Voices and Instruments

What can we expect museums to allow?

What do we mean by 415?

What Is Ethnomusicology?

Why ethno-organology?

William of Wykeham’s Crozier

More articles will follow soon. Please visit again.