Musical instrument collection at the University of Göttingen

Formerly Accouchierhaus , today the seat of the musicology seminar and the musical instrument collection of the University of Göttingen (Kurz-Geismar-Straße 1)

The musical instrument collection of the University of Göttingen is a collection of musical instruments from the musicology seminar at the Georg August University of Göttingen in the city of Göttingen in Lower Saxony .

The custodian of the musical instrument collection has been the music ethnologist and instrument expert Klaus-Peter Brenner (* 1958), who brought some objects from his own field research and bequeathed them to the collection on permanent loan .

Duration

The collection of musical instruments includes over 2,000 musical instruments from various European and non-European countries - mainly from Africa and Asia, but also from Oceania and North, Central and South America.

These are u. a. to historical keyboard instruments , pedal harps , historical plucked instruments , brass instruments , historical woodwind instruments , ancient Egyptian instruments, log drums , tambourines and rattles .

The most important pieces in the collection are an ancient Egyptian bow harp , a Coptic lute and the oldest surviving recorder from the European Middle Ages from the 14th century.

Areas of responsibility

The musical instrument collection serves as a research archive for instrumental research and university teaching. Around half of the collection items are presented in a permanent exhibition , which is housed on a total of 420 m² of exhibition space in 15 rooms of the listed Accouchierhaus in Göttingen and is accessible to the public.

History of the collection

In 1964, the collection was set up as a teaching and research collection on the initiative of Heinrich Husmann (1908–1983) , who then held the chair . The foundation was formed by the private collection of the instrument manufacturer and music publisher Hermann Johannes Moeck (1896–1982) from Celle, comprising 1,050 objects since the 1930s . The state of Lower Saxony had acquired this for the University of Göttingen with funds from the Volkswagen Foundation.

Since it was founded in 1964, the collection was expanded through sporadic occasional purchases until the late 1970s. Since the early 1980s, it has been systematically expanded through the purchase of well-documented field research collections in the music-ethnological field. In addition, individual particularly important pieces in the field of European historical woodwind and keyboard instruments were acquired or on permanent loan.

literature

Klaus-Peter Brenner: inventory catalog. (PDF; 5.5 MB) Musical instrument collection of the musicology seminar of the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen . July 26, 2018, accessed August 13, 2018 .
Klaus-Peter Brenner: The Naderman harp in the musical instrument collection of the University of Göttingen. A French instrument of the 18th century as a machine, a sculpture, a piece of furniture, a prestige fetish, a commodity and a sound tool . Edition Re, Göttingen 1998, ISBN 978-3-927636-55-2 , pp. 253 .
Klaus-Peter Brenner and Martin Staehelin: The musical instrument collection of the musicology seminar. In: “Completely designed for studying.” The museums, collections and gardens of the University of Göttingen. Wallstein, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3892444528 , pp. 110-118.