Dolmetsch, (Eugène) Arnold (1858-1940)

English musician and instrument maker, born into a Swiss family settled in France. Together with his family, including his son Carl (1911-1997), he revived interest in the practical performance of solo and consort music for lute, recorders, and viols, and established the baroque soprano (descant) recorder as an inexpensive musical instrument for schools.

He worked in Boston, USA, and Paris, France, as a restorer and maker of early musical instruments before establishing his workshop in Haslemere, England, in 1917.

Dolmetsch studied violin under Henry Vieuxtemps in Brussels, Belgium, but turned his interests to early music and instruments. He worked with the piano firm of Chickering in Boston 1902-09, and then with that of Gaveau in Paris until 1914, when he moved to England and set up his own workshop for harpsichords, viols, lutes, recorders, and other instruments in Haslemere. He arranged periodical festivals of early music and brought up a family to take part in them with various instruments. He edited early music and wrote a book on interpretation.