The assessment and functional rehabilitation of historic wooden musical instruments: The “reference voice” method and its application to the grand piano

This paper gives some information about the strategies for the functional rehabilitation of wood-made historical musical instruments, taking into due account the properties of this material. Actually, while for some types of wooden musical instruments it is possible to keep intact, or to recuperate, the (true or supposed) original voice and playability through quite straightforward steps during the restoration works, for other kinds of musical instruments made of wood, it is shown that a much more complex approach is required, and that a tool developed for monitoring the obtained results could be useful both for control and documentation purposes.