The Nicolas Bessaraboff Prize
One of two publication prizes, conferred in alternating years, the Nicolas Bessaraboff Prize is awarded for the most distinguished book-length work in English which best furthers the Society's goal "to promote study of the history, design, and use of musical instruments in all cultures and from all periods." The first award in this category was given in 1989 and has been awarded in odd-numbered years thereafter.
The prize consists of the sum of $500 and a certificate, and the winner is announced at the Society's annual meeting and in the Society's Newsletter. Nominations (including self-nominations) and copies of the book nominated should be submitted to Jim Kopp, Publications Prizes Committee chair, by October 31:
1106 Garden Street
Hoboken, NJ 07030
Recipients
2007 Geoffrey Burgess and Bruce Haynes for The Oboe (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004).
2005 Ardal Powell for The Flute, The Yale Musical Instrument Series (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2002)
2003 Matthew Spring for The Lute in Britain: A History of the Instrument and Its Music. Oxford University Press, 2001.
2001 Bernard Brauchli, The Clavichord (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
1999 Stephen Bicknell, The English Organ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
1997 John G. Koster, Keyboard Musical Instruments in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1994); and
1997 Stewart Pollens, The Early Pianoforte (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
1995 Robert Barclay, The Art of the Trumpet-Maker; The Materials, Tools, and Techniques of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries in Nuremberg (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
1993 Grant O'Brien, Ruckers: A Harpsichord and Virginal Building Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).
1991 Edmund A. Bowles, Musical Ensembles in Festival Books 1500-1800: An Iconographical & Documentary Survey (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1989); and
1991 Martha Maas and Jane McIntosh Snyder, Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989).
1989 Mary Remnant, English Bowed Instruments from Anglo-Saxon to Tudor Times (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).