The MFA’s impressive collection of musical instruments started with a single collector: English clergyman Francis William Galpin (1858–1945). Despite being of modest means, Galpin assembled an impressive and global collection of musical instruments, 560 of which were sold to Boston businessman William Lindsey in 1916. Lindsey donated the collection to the MFA in honor of his late daughter, Leslie Lindsey Mason, who perished aboard the Lusitania in 1915 alongside her bridegroom. Today the collection has grown to nearly 1,300 objects and is cared for by Bobby Giglio, Pappalardo Assistant Curator of Musical Instruments. I recently had an opportunity to sit down with Bobby and learn more about his career and vision for the MFA’s collection of musical instruments.

Deb Glasser: How did you first get interested in music?

Bobby Giglio: I started with trumpet in the fourth grade and loved it. By the time I was in high school, I decided that I wanted to go into music and try to become a professional performer. This was a long shot, for sure, but I wanted to try. Growing up in a small town in northern New Jersey, I was among the best players, but when I arrived at the Purchase Conservatory of Music, I was amazed at how good my peers were. I needed to make a shift, and at the same time I was loving my intro to music history class. So, I ended up creating a dual degree in musicology and historical brass performance. My academic interests centered on historical brass instruments, especially the Baroque trumpet and Renaissance cornetto. Incidentally, we have examples of each on view at the Museum.

DG: And what was your path from the conservatory to the MFA?

BG: Shortly after graduating from the conservatory I got the idea that I could work in a museum with historical instruments. I attended McGill University and studied under a keyboard player and scholar named Tom Beghin. Tom’s research on the historical technology of pianos matched my own burgeoning interests, and, using high-speed videography and Tom’s replica of Mozart’s piano, I performed experiments that led to new insights about pianos from the era. Later, working under Tom at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, we used a replica of Beethoven’s French piano by Erard [Chris Maene, 2016] and further high-speed-video experiments generated new findings about the composer’s relationship with his musical tools. That research will be included in Tom’s forthcoming book on Beethoven’s Erard.

I then held two consecutive internships at the National Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota, where I learned how to catalogue and handle historical instruments, and really how to work in a museum environment. That experience, and the incredible mentorship I received there, steeled my desire to pursue a museum career. When my wife, Sylvia, began her medical residency in Neurology at UMass Memorial in Worcester, I approached the Musical Instrument Department at the MFA and was initially hired as a consultant, doing database management work. After a time, I became the full-time department coordinator, and in March of 2021 was promoted to assistant curator.

DG: What is the best musical performance you have ever seen? 

BG: The first one that comes to mind is my professor Tom Beghin playing a song cycle by Schubert called Winterreise [Winter’s Journey] on the fortepiano with a tenor vocalist. I had studied these songs as an undergrad, but that performance was mesmerizing. The piece is made up of 24 songs, the last of which is “Der Leiermann” [“The Hurdy-Gurdy Man”]. The music is solemn and trudging, and Tom used a stop on his fortepiano called a bassoon stop, which lowers a piece of paper over the bass strings and creates a buzzing sound. This evoked the hurdy-gurdy to such great effect and made the despair of that final song even more visceral.

DG: That does sounds mesmerizing. OK, fantasy time: What is the one musical performance you wish you could see?

BG: That is easy. I would love to be able to see Louis Armstrong play with the Hot Five or Hot Seven. That was really rocking stuff, which I have admired since childhood.

DG: Turning back to the musical instruments at the MFA, in your view what are some of the collection highlights?

BG: The MFA’s collection represents traditions from around the world and across time. Everything from a 2,000-year-old Greek trumpet to a recently made Malian kora. If you go to the MFA’s YouTube page you can view 44 videos of instruments from our collection being played. As to highlights, I would mention that Greek trumpet from about 300 BCE–200 CE. Though technically this belongs to my wonderful colleagues in Art of Ancient Greece and Rome, they have graciously allowed MI to store the object and participate in research over many years. This trumpet is unusual in its great length—about five feet!—and as such, its purpose may have been ceremonial. It is theorized that it may have been used in the ancient Olympic Games, which included trumpet blowing contests from 396 BCE. It’s a visually striking object, made from animal bone and bronze, and in the 1990s, an archaeological excavation in Greece uncovered fragments of bone and bronze tubing exactly matching the trumpet in our collection.

DG: Without thinking, if the Museum were on fire, what is the one object you would grab?

BG: If size, shape, and weight didn’t matter, I would grab our Javanese gamelan. This is a pitched gong chime orchestra that was made in 1840 and 1876 in Central Java, Indonesia. It’s made up of some 60 distinct instruments in two different tunings. When a tuned set of instruments come together, the rhythmic pulse and running melodies of the gongs, it is truly astonishing, and you can hear it on our YouTube channel! I’m glad size and weight are irrelevant in this scenario, as all the instruments together likely weigh hundreds and hundreds of pounds and fill up a medium-sized room.

DG: Bobby, what is your dream acquisition?

BG: I would love to add a Cremonese School violin by Nicolò Amati, Antonio Stradivari, or Giuseppe Guarneri. We have one example by Nicolò Amati but, while it is a fantastic object, it does have a later belly that was made by another luthier, Carlo Tononi of Bologna. We also have an incredible Stradivari violino piccolo on loan. Instruments such as these have mostly been discovered, and they are already in institutions or being used by performers. I would also love to add a 19th-century guitar made by influential Spanish maker Antonio de Torres Jurado.

DG: What do you think the current holes are in the MFA’s musical instrument collection? 

BG: Instruments made by women artists. It is unacceptable that in our whole collection, we have one violin bow that is known to be made by a woman artist. Another gap is contemporary instruments of Latin America. We have only a handful of 19th-to-21st-century instruments, and none are playable. In the near term, and with the generosity of MI department supporters, we are working to add a Colombian tiple by renowned luthier Anamaría Paredes García from Bogotá. Stay tuned on that front. We also lack any instruments at all from the Korean Peninsula, and I look forward to working with colleagues in Art of Asia to address this. I would finally like to collect completely novel designs for musical instruments—ideas springing up in the workshops of innovators around the world today.

DG: Thank you so much for your time. Anything else you would like MFA Patrons to know? 

BG: This was fun, but before I go I would love to plug Art in Tune. This is a program that started in 2017 on the 100th anniversary of Mr. Lindsey’s original gift of the Galpin collection. We had instruments from our collection played in related galleries throughout the Museum, sparking conversation with the works of visual art in those spaces. For visitors, it was a two-hour treasure hunt throughout the MFA, and it was so popular that it became an annual event. During the pandemic, we went virtual and had an opportunity to do something a bit different. We asked musicians to choose spaces and particular works of visual art that inspired their music making, and we gave them choice of instruments in the collection to further their craft. To plug the MFA YouTube page again, you can view the virtual performance. I love this event, and I am excited about returning to an in-person Art in Tune in the not-too-distant future. I hope to again give performers a choice of space and artwork, creating a juxtaposition with music that can only happen here. I think Patrons will enjoy it and all our exciting plans in store from our small but passionate department.