Ancient Instruments

Casually, like well-bred amateurs, the ten musicians adjusted lights and music racks, then began to play Handel's Concerto Grosso in G Major. There was nothing casual, nothing amateurish about their playing. They were, in fact, a hardworking group of Philadelphia professionals, called the American Society of the Ancient Instruments, and last week they were giving their 17th annual festival in the University of Pennsylvania's little cream-brick Museum auditorium.

The Society of the Ancient Instruments, whose recordings have long been treasured by chamber-music addicts, is a nonprofit labor of love. It is the creation of a little grey-maned, Dutch-born music teacher named Ben Stad. Conductor Stad, 59, came to the U.S. in 1908, eventually founded Philadelphia's Institute of Musical Art. Some 20 years ago, it occurred to him that modern instruments like the piano and violin were not suited to the music written for harpsichord and viole d'amour during the 17th and 18th Centuries. This idea was the beginning of Ben Stad's unique Society.*

Passion Is Essential. He began by collecting ancient manuscripts and ancient instruments: a pardessus de viole (high-pitched, five-stringed viol), a viole de gambe (six-stringed forerunner of the cello), a viole d'amour (whose seven steel strings vibrate in "sympathy" as the seven gut strings are played), a basse de viole (big forerunner of the stringed bass). He commissioned Pleyel of Paris to make a two-manual, six-pedal harpsichord.

Over the years, Ben Stad's musical prejudices have hardened. When it was once suggested that son Maurice might study the saxophone, Ben said firmly: "I don't want to hear one note of it." Son Maurice grew up to be a cellist. Last week's performers included Mrs. Stad, Daughter Julea Stad Chapline and Son Maurice Ben Stad (in Navy uniform).

*Other groups with the same idea: England's Dolmetsch family, and Henri Casadesus' Societe des Instruments Anciens in Paris, with which Stad studied.

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