House of Music (Stuttgart)

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The House of Music has been housed in the historic fruit box on Schillerplatz in Stuttgart since 1993
Event room for concerts, with salon organ and double grand piano
Cowbell piano
Chopping board, around 1765
on the left a Buccin , as requested by Hector Berlioz for his mass solennelle , on the right a viola d'amore

In addition to other exhibitions, the Landesmuseum Württemberg also has a collection of musical instruments in the House of Music in the Fruchtkasten on Schillerplatz in Stuttgart. The focus of the collection was initially on the keyboard instruments. But increasingly from the 1970s, other orchestral instruments found their way into the collection since the 19th century. Small concerts and activities for children are organized to help understand the instruments.

history

In 1901, the Stuttgart piano manufacturer Carl Anton Pfeiffer (1861 to 1927) donated his collection of hammer pianos and pianos to the then Stuttgart State Trade Museum , which was primarily intended to convey the history and mechanics of the hammer piano to trainee piano makers . In addition to original instruments, the collection also consisted of 300 functional models. The collection was later supplemented by donations from the Bayreuth piano manufacturer Steingraeber & Söhne and the Stuttgart violin maker Gärtner. From 1930 there was no more collecting activity. The exhibition rooms were destroyed in the Second World War , and the collection itself remained intact after being relocated. After the state trade museum was closed and taken over by the Württemberg state museum, selected pieces were shown in the old castle from 1970 onwards. In 1985 the collection was assigned to the Fruchtkasten at Stuttgart's Schillerplatz , which the company moved into in 1993. By 1990 the collection acquired a large number of brass and woodwind instruments at low prices . A concert hall is located on the ground floor of the building, in which the Württemberg State Museum regularly organizes events on the subject of “Sound Worlds” or “Historical Development” of the instruments. More specific pieces are on display on the upper floors and there are opportunities for children to try them out.

Stock (selection)

The majority of the collection includes keyboard instruments, including an originally preserved two-manual harpsichord from eastern France around 1680. A fortepiano by the Augsburg piano maker Johann Andreas Stein comes from 1780, and its special stringing without a pedal enabled it to be played loudly and quietly. This instrument with its five octave range represents a forerunner of the modern pianoforte . Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart got to know Stein's hammer pianos in Augsburg in 1778 and was enthusiastic. He created numerous compositions for this instrument. Another instrument in the collection is a dulcimer from France, around 1765, so an instrument used by poor people, beggars and vagabonds is also represented in the collection. String instruments are also available in the House of Music. A viola d'amore from 1783, made by Johann St. Thumhardt from Straubing. The instrument soon went out of fashion. Johann Sebastian Bach used the sound of the instrument in the St. John Passion (BWV 245) to musically underline passages that speak of God's tenderness, love and longing. The so-called invention horn belongs to the brass instruments . The instrument in the Stuttgart collection comes from the Stuttgart instrument maker Carl Binder, around 1850. The tuning of this horn consists of the relatively limited series of natural notes . In order to extend the range, this horn has plug-in pipe bends for the coils. It was true that the re-plugging took place quite quickly during a concert, but at the latest after Mozart's opera Don Giovanni , in which the composer asked for 36 different tunings for the horn, the horn players had to re-insert the bends about every five minutes, the time was ripe for the more practical valve horns which already existed from around 1815. In addition to the usual instruments of classical music, the House of Music also exhibits unusual ones. These include rarities such as a stick trombone , rainwater trumpet and travel harmonium .

From the collection of the composer for new music in the second half of the 20th century, Mauricio Kagel , come instruments and props made from everyday objects for his avant-garde instrumental theater . In the House of Music, so-called bell shoes, which are black loafers with electric bells, are on display. There is also an old tin can as a resonance body, on which a coil spring is mounted, and a plexiglass table tennis bat with bat. These props were used in Kagel's controversial play Staatstheater in 1971 , which was performed in the Hamburg State Opera . Due to threats, this was only possible under police protection. Another Kagel instrument is the hose trumpet, which consists of a green garden hose and a funnel. This instrument was played in 1968 by the trumpeter Edward H. Tarr on the occasion of the premiere of the work Der Schall, for five players by Kagel.

literature

  • Volker Himmelein: Art in the Old Castle . Ed .: Württembergisches Landesmuseum. Theiss, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1198-1 , p. 162 ff .
  • Landesmuseum Württemberg, House of Music in the Fruit Box (Ed.): (Un) heard! Musical instruments with a difference . Stuttgart 2013, OCLC 862993816 .

Web links

Commons : Collection of musical instruments in the House of Music  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Official website
  2. ↑ Volker Himmelein: Art in the Old Castle . Ed .: Württembergisches Landesmuseum. Theiss, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1198-1 , p. 162 .
  3. ↑ Za Za Pum Zaza . In: Der Spiegel . No. 17 , 1971 ( online review).
  4. ^ Obituary for Kagel. In: Die Zeit , No. 39/2008
  5. ↑ Information from the list of exhibits in the House of Music