Musical instrument museum of the University of Leipzig

**Musical instrument museum of the University of Leipzig**
	; Museum logo
Data
place	in the Grassimuseum ( Leipzig , Germany )
Art	Museum of Musical Instruments
opening	May 30, 1929
Number of visitors (annually)	30,000 (as of 2008)
operator	University of Leipzig
management	Josef Focht
Website	mfm.uni-leipzig.de
ISIL	DE-MUS-854213

Musical instrument museum in the New Grassi Museum

The Musical Instrument Museum of the University of Leipzig is a museum belonging to the University of Leipzig . With over 5500 inventory units, around 10,000 objects, including valuable European and non-European instruments, in particular valuable pieces from the Renaissance and Baroque periods as well as the Leipzig Bach era, it occupies one of the top positions of high rank worldwide. Today it is the second largest museum of musical instruments in Europe after the museum in Brussels (7,000 instruments) and in front of the museum in the Cité de la musique in Paris (4,000 instruments).

The museum is located not far from Leipzig city center in the New Grassi Museum on Johannisplatz . The museum, together with the two other museums in Grassi , the Museum of Ethnology in Leipzig and the Museum of Applied Art , was included in the German government's blue book under the “cultural beacons of East Germany”.

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history

Entrance ticket to the Paul de Wit Museum of Music History (1904).

The roots of the museum go back to the 1890s. In 1893, the Dutchman Paul de Wit (1852–1925), who lived in Leipzig, opened a music history museum in the Leipzig Bosehaus at Thomaskirchhof . After negotiations about the purchase of the collection by the city of Leipzig failed at the beginning of the 20th century, he sold it in 1905 to the Cologne paper manufacturer and art collector Wilhelm Heyer (1849–1913). Heyer had musical instruments, musicians' autographs, letters and portraits collected and built a house for them in 1905 on Worringerstrasse in Cologne . Shortly after his death in 1913, the Wilhelm Heyer Museum of Music History was opened to the public with 2,600 musical instruments, 1,700 music autographs and almost 4,000 pictorial works, in which, in addition to the de Wits collection, a valuable collection of instruments by the Florentine Baron Alessandro Kraus (1853–1931) and some Keyboard instruments of the Prussian company Ibach were exhibited. After Heyer's death, the museum remained in existence for a few years until his heirs decided to sell: the collection was bought by the University of Leipzig in 1926. The purchase price was covered with funds from the Free State of Saxony in the amount of 600,000 marks and the music publisher CF Peters in the amount of 200,000 marks.

On May 30, 1929, the musical instrument museum of the University of Leipzig was officially opened in the north wing of the New Grassi Museum.

Due to the threat of air raids, parts of the collection were relocated during the Second World War . When Leipzig was bombed on December 4, 1943, the building complex was badly hit and a large part of the remaining collection, including the Ibach pianos, the archive and the library, was destroyed. After the end of the war, it turned out that the stocks that had been outsourced also showed considerable damage and losses, which were due to improper storage and theft.

From the beginning of the 1950s, the museum was rebuilt and gradually opened to the public. The collection was expanded in the decades that followed through targeted purchases and individual donations. The most important collections today include the

Paul de Wit collection

Heyer Collection

Collection Alessandro Kraus

Ibach collection (mainly smaller instruments have been preserved, such as a clavichord by Donat or a virginal in a sewing box as well as some of the Asian instruments)

Amerling and Lingner collection

Wilhelm Meissner Foundation (valuable string and wind instruments, Steinweg - Hupfeld grand piano with piano rolls, owned by the museum since 1959)

Reka Collection (around 250 European and non-European instruments by Paul Kaiser-Reka [1881–1963], in the museum's possession since 1960)

Drum collection Wolf (over 20 sound devices by Leipzig drum maker Thomas Wolf [1964–2002])

Cinema organ by M. Welte & Sons , 1931

exhibition

Tenor flugelhorn
postage stamp of the German Post of the GDR, ( 1979 )

The permanent exhibition of the Musical Instrument Museum traces the most important music-historical and instrument-making epochs as well as the music history of Leipzig. The oldest exhibits date from the 16th century. The exhibition is arranged chronologically and divided into the following 13 sections:

Renaissance : "frembde canzones and good German songs"
Heinrich Schütz : The longing for harmonious order
Bartolomeo Cristofori : Instrument maker at the Medici court
Johann Sebastian Bach : Director chori musici
Cinnamon
Tonkunst around 1800 - masterpiece and hobby
Stein & Streicher - four generations of hard work and hard work
Romance - feeling melted in love
Saxony, the major musical supplier
The voice rings and fades ... - jukeboxes and music playback devices
Moving times - time of movements
New Renaissance - a return to old music

There is also the opportunity to try out musical instruments in a sound laboratory. In the autumn of 2008, an extensive study collection aimed at the specialist public was also opened. This means that around 40% of the collection can be admired in exhibitions. The number of visitors in 2000 was around 16,000. In the interim exhibition during construction at the Grassimuseum, it fell to around 10,000. Since the reopening, the number of visitors has been growing steadily, so that around 30,000 visitors were registered in 2008. According to the visitor survey, around 50% of the guests come from abroad.

Connections to the University of Leipzig

The Musical Instrument Museum has been part of Leipzig University since 1929. Research and teaching have always been of outstanding importance. The new museum and exhibition concept also took this task into account. The museum has a teaching collection (approx. 200 objects) and a study collection that plays a central role in teaching.

In the Musical Instrument Museum, there are courses on instrument science and acoustics in the musicology and music pedagogy courses as well as for students from the Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy University of Music and Theater .

literature

Eszter Fontana , Birgit Heise: Equally pleasing for eyes and ears. Musical instruments from five centuries. Edited by the Musical Instrument Museum at the University of Leipzig, photographs by Janos Stekovics, Halle / Saale 1998
- New edition as a museum for musical instruments of the University of Leipzig , Stekovics, Halle / Saale 2008.
Helmut Zeraschi : History of the Museum. (Series of publications by the Museum of Musical Instruments at the Karl Marx University, Issue 2), Leipzig 1977

Web links

Commons : Grassimuseum - Museum for Musical Instruments of the University of Leipzig - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Website

Individual evidence

↑ List of employees on the museum's official website
^ Stefan Lieser: Cologne, the city of music? A musical instrument museum is to be built. In: Guitar & Laute 8, 1986, Issue 1, pp. 28–35; here: p. 31 f.

51.33766 12.388104Coordinates: 51 ° 20 ′ 15.6 ″ N , 12 ° 23 ′ 17.2 ″ E

[1] List of employees on the museum's official website

[2] Stefan Lieser: Cologne, the city of music? A musical instrument museum is to be built. In: Guitar & Laute 8, 1986, Issue 1, pp. 28–35; here: p. 31 f.