Musical instrument museum
A musical instrument museum is a museum that collects and stores musical instruments .
Musical instrument museums often have a thematic focus in their collections, e.g. B. the history of classical European instruments, pre-classical instruments, certain instrument families, non-European instruments, etc.
overview
The most important collections of historical instruments in Germany are owned by the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg, the Musikinstrumenten-Museum Berlin , the Museum for Musical Instruments of the University of Leipzig and the Organ Art Museum in Windesheim (Rhineland-Palatinate). In Austria, the collection of old musical instruments in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna is probably the most important.
An instrument collection is often a department of an arts, crafts, technology history or historical museum, such as B. in the Deutsches Museum in Munich, in the Hamburg Museum for Art and Crafts , in the City Museum Munich , the Augustinermuseum Freiburg, in the Historisches Museum Basel or in the Landesmuseum Württemberg .
The instrument museum at the Paris Cité de la musique takes a comprehensive approach, the basis of which is the collection of classic European instruments in the old conservatory . The Victoria and Albert Museum in London , the Brussels Museum of Musical Instruments , the Gemeentemuseum Den Haag and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York also have high-level collections .
Numerous museums collect objects from special areas. These include the German Museum of Music Automatons in Bruchsal and the Rolf Irle Collection in Wolfenbüttel . Another group of museums emerged in important centers of the music industry such as the Musical Instrument Museum in Markneukirchen and the German Harmonica Museum in Trossingen .
history
prehistory
The beginnings of instrument collections can be traced back very far in time. The temple and death cultures form an enormous building block and are the beginning of a conscious preservation of musical instruments. Religions of the ancient world and the Far East play a major role, since the belief in the lasting value of objective elements represents the preliminary stage of rational collecting. The temples of East Asia and the tombs of the ancient Orient represent the forerunners of the later museum facilities. Cult instruments that were collected for burials are the first preserved collections. A particularly remarkable find is a Chinese tomb excavated in 1972, which is 2100 years old. Among the nobles who were buried near Changsha in the Hunan Province, statuettes of musicians playing miniature instruments were found, as well as real instruments. Even in later times, Chinese tombs are an important source of historical instruments. In the Song Dynasty (960–1126), for example, an enormous number of zithers, mouth organs, oboes and percussion instruments were collected in holy graves.
Middle Ages and Modern Times
Very few musical instruments have come down to us from the Christian and Islamic Middle Ages, as religious ideas restricted their cultic use. There does not seem to have been any larger collections of instruments. Instrumental music played a rather subordinate role.
However, instrument collections played an important role in the courtly chambers of curiosities of the Renaissance such as B. Ambras Castle . However, the focus was on handcrafted examples. Only instruments made of valuable material, which were played in the courts of the nobles, were deliberately kept in the treasury. The Victoria and Albert Museum and many other art museums took this artisan approach even later. Normal musical instruments were only considered objects of daily use. This increases the value of iconographic and written sources for instrument science for the development of the instruments.
In the 19th century private collections of the bourgeoisie and the collections of music conservatories played an important role. Mainly instruments of classical and popular music from the 17th to 19th centuries were collected. The collection of the Bachhaus Eisenach is based e.g. B. at its core on a gift from the Leipzig instrument dealer Paul de Wit (1907, four instruments) and a gift from the estate of the musicologist and collector Aloys Obrist (1910, 164 instruments). Non-European musical instruments, however, collected u. a. the British Museum and many folklore museums around the world.
Development of state museums
The Berlin Musical Instrument Museum was founded in 1888 . The important collection of old musical instruments in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna was established in 1916 and goes back to the collections of the Habsburgs . The “Municipal Musical Instrument Collection ” in the Munich City Museum , created in 1946, is based on the collection of Georg Neuner (1904–1962). The musical instrument collection of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg contains instruments of all genres from the 16th to the 20th century. After numerous acquisitions of private collections since the 1960s, the holdings now comprise over 3,000 objects. Important newly founded musical instrument museums are the Brussels Musical Instrument Museum, which was expanded in 2000, and the Cité de la musique in Paris, founded in 1995 . The scientifically oriented German Museum in Munich also deals with technical aspects of musical instruments.
See also
literature
- "Instrument collections, museums, memorials", in: Deutscher Musikrat (ed.): Musik-Almanach 2007/08. Data and facts on musical life in Germany, ConBrio, Regensburg 2006, pp. 713–731.
Web links
- Museums for musical instruments, directory on Webmuseen.de
- Instrument collections, museums and memorials in Germany (list from the German Music Information Center)
Individual evidence
- ^ MGG Online. Retrieved December 17, 2017 (American English).
- ↑ Sabine Haag (Ed.): Ambras Castle Innsbruck. Museum guide. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna 2013.
- ^ Herbert Heyde: Historical musical instruments in the Bachhaus Eisenach. Bach House Eisenach 1976.
- ↑ Stephan Tourmalin: The collection of old musical instruments of the Art History Museum . Mandelstamm, Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-85476-821-0 , pp. 14-25.