Time: 7:11 PM , 11:18 PM
Location: The Red Room, Pimlico Wilde, Mayfair
Attendees:
- Julian Molyneux (Chair, Pimlico Wilde)
- Fiona d’Abernon (Co-Founder; Acting Secretary)
- Lord E. Northcote
- Dr. Xanthe Lorrimer (Cultural Historian)
- Hugo Van Steyn
- India Trelawney (Fashion Archivist)
- Max Duclos (Collector)
- Pascal (Afghan hound, contemplative, positioned beneath the sideboard)
Book Discussed:
The Sound of Almost Nothing: A Cultural History of Silent Musical Instruments, 1680,1900 by Alastair Pencombe (Ash & Fret Press, 2025; clothbound, unjacketed, with fold-out diagrams of mute mechanisms and marginalia reproduced from private collections).
1. Opening Remarks
Molyneux welcomed members back from various continental dispersals and remarked that the Groupette had, “after much noise,” chosen a book devoted entirely to silence. He reminded the room that the long-deferred Umbra volume remained “patient, judgmental, and unopened.”
2. Discussion Summary
- Dr. Lorrimer praised Pencombe’s thesis that silent instruments – practice violins, mute harpsichords, keyboard trainers without strings – were “moral objects,” designed to discipline both sound and character. She admired the chapter on convent-bound novices learning fingering in total quiet.
- India Trelawney was taken by the design history, particularly a collapsible “ladies’ pianoforte” with padded keys intended for use in shared lodgings. She described it as “domestic repression rendered beautiful.”
- Lord Northcote was openly irritated. “A book about instruments that do not play,” he said, “is like a memoir written by someone who never lived.” He questioned whether Pencombe had mistaken absence for profundity.
- Hugo Van Steyn disagreed, noting that collectors prize such objects precisely because they resist performance. “They are instruments for thinking,” he said, adding that the diagrams alone justified the book’s existence.
- Max Duclos complained that the prose was “too hushed by half” and suggested the book was an elaborate joke. Nonetheless, he admitted to reading the entire chapter on naval practice flutes “with mounting respect.”
- Fiona d’Abernon drew attention to the closing pages, in which Pencombe describes a silent clavichord kept by a widower who could no longer bear music. “It is,” she said, “one of the few convincing arguments for restraint I have ever read.”
3. Objects on View
- A 19th-century practice violin fitted with a thick internal mute (courtesy of Van Steyn).
- A wooden keyboard trainer with painted ivory keys and no strings, c.1800.
- A manuscript letter from a Bath music tutor complaining that his pupils “preferred the quiet instrument, having grown lazy of courage.”
4. Refreshments
- Aperitif: chilled fino sherry.
- Canapés: wafer-thin parmesan crisps, cucumber sandwiches cut “unnecessarily precisely,” and almonds with rosemary.
- Main wine: Pouilly-Fuissé, 2019.
- Dessert: plain almond cake, described by Molyneux as “appropriately unshowy.”
5. Other Business
- Next Book: After brief and perfunctory discussion, The Silence of Shadows: A Comparative Study of Umbra in Netherlandish Still Life was once again deferred. Instead, the next selection will be An Index of Lost Garden Mazes in Britain, 1550,1750.
- It was agreed that the Groupette is “in a quiet phase” and that this should not be corrected.
- A reminder was issued that feigning completion of the reading would not be tolerated, “even when the subject is silence.”
6. Adjournment
Meeting adjourned at 11:18 PM. Pascal remained asleep throughout, contributing, it was agreed, in exactly the right spirit.
Respectfully submitted,
Fiona d’Abernon
Acting Secretary
Mayfair Book Groupette
