Arnold Dolmetsch (1858-1940) English music antiquarian an scholar. He studied in Brussels and at the Royal College of Music, London. His father was a piano-maker. After being aroused by the collections of old instruments in the British Museum, he began to build his own clavichords and harpsichords, first for Chickering of Boston, then for Gaveau of Paris. He later built and revived the playing of almost every instrument of the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, training the members of his family to play them. He established his workshop in Haslemere, Surrey, and gave frequent concerts in London. In 1925 he founded an annual chamber music festival for old music in Haslemere. His book The Interpretation of the Music of the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (London 1915) is a landmark in the revival of the performance practices of ancient music. Pound must have met Dolmetsch about 1914; at least on November 30 of that year he wrote to his father (unpublished letter), "Dolmetsch is about to have a concert." Of their meeting Mrs. Dolmetsch wrote to Pound's biographer Charles Norman:
Ezra Pound, then a budding poet of rather flamboyant appearance, was immediately attracted to Arnold Dolmetsch; and through their continued intercourse he became deeply interested in the English music of former centuries. He delighted in listening to Arnold's performances on the clavicord. For this reason he became possessed of one. (Charles Norman, Ezra Pound, New York, 1969. p. 124.)Pound asked Dolmetsch to make him a duplicate of his own clavichord, but Dolmetsch sold him the original. It accompanied him later to Rapallo and finally ended up in the castle at Brunnenburg. Pound wrote numerous articles about Dolmetsch, beginning with that in The New Age, January 7, 1915. He was particularly influenced by Dolmetsch's study of rhythm and tempo in the old music. Dolmetsch is mentioned in Cantos LXXX, LXXXI, and XCIX.
--EP, Ezra Pound and Music, ed. R. Murray Schafer, New York, New Directions, 1977, pp. 489-490.