My father, Jeremy Montagu, who has died aged 92, was a conductor, museum curator and author who specialised in the history and origin of musical instruments.
Jeremy was born in London to Ewen Montagu, a barrister and judge, and his wife, Iris (nee Solomon), who both served in intelligence during the second world war. Evacuated to the US, Jeremy first studied horn at Hotchkiss school in Connecticut. Back in Britain, he went to Gordonstoun, in Moray, where he learnt the ethos of service to others, promoted by the school’s founder, Kurt Hahn, to which Jeremy always attributed his dedication to helping students and colleagues.
His interest in musical instruments was sparked during his national service in the Education Corps in Egypt (1947-48), when he started his collection.
Then Jeremy went to Cambridge, intending to follow his father into the law, but left to study music at the Guildhall School in London, graduating in 1952. He studied horn, percussion, and conducting with Norman Del Mar.
Subsequently he founded and conducted the Montagu String Orchestra, which performed in London until 1956. He was a pioneer of historically informed performance and the attempt to reproduce the sound the composer heard. At that time few shared this enthusiasm.
He met Gwen Ingledew at a concert and they married in 1955.
Jeremy became interested in the worldwide development of musical instruments and started to collect and write about them in the 1970s. He joined the Galpin Society of musical instrument experts, becoming its secretary and eventually president.
As a percussionist for Michael Morrow’s Musica Reservata early music group he built his own instruments to try to reproduce the sound of medieval percussion. In 1981 he became curator of the Bate Collection at Oxford University, where he lectured, raised money to expand the collection and encouraged students to come and play the instruments. He was a fellow of Wadham College, Oxford, and of the Society of Antiquaries.
Jeremy wrote 20 books, numerous articles and many entries in Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments. Until his heart began to fail during August he was still working and writing.
He enjoyed entertaining, travel, good food and the company of colleagues, friends and family. He was a longtime and much-loved senior member of the Oxford Jewish Congregation.
Gwen died in 2003. He is survived by his children, Sarah, Simon and me, by 10 grandchildren and five great-grandchildren, and by his sister Jennifer.
