The first collections of musical instruments appear in the Renaissance princely courts and chapels. Then music lovers, scientists, and travellers constitute other collections characterised by their eclecticism. The National Convention thus promulgates a special law, on the 3rd of August 1795, which institutes the creation of a Music Conservatory and of a Musical Instruments Museum affiliated to it. The museographical part of this project is realised seventy years later with the purchase by the State of Louis Clapisson’s 230 instruments thus giving birth to the musée du Conservatoire National de Musique in Paris. Following the opening of this museum, the musée du Conservatoire Royal de Musique was founded in 1873 in Brussels with Fétis and Mahillon’s collections, the museum of the Königliche Hochschule für Musik of Berlin in 1888 through the acquisition of De Wit’s first collection and in 1929, the Museum für Musikinstrumente der Universität in Leipzig, when Wilhelm Heyer’s collection was bought by the State of Saxony and the city of Leipzig. Music was thereby largely represented in the form of museums of musical instruments throughout European and North American Museums, in which the museography still often took after the panoply inherited from the collectors. In 1962, when it becomes necessary to find a new location for the musée instrumental du Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, Georges Henri Rivière had the idea of a museum in which the collection would be presented according to themes and where the social dimension would no longer be excluded from the presentations. “[This museum]”, writes curator Josiane Bran-Ricci in La muséologie selon Georges Henri Rivière, “was meant to strive for interdisciplinarity by including the musical phenomenon into society, which would make it an unprecedented scientific and cultural instrument.” After the initial unsuccessful attempt at the Hôtel de Beauvais in Paris, the musée de la Musique was build in the Parc de la Villette. Meanwhile, the idea behind this project spread throughout Europe, including Stockholm where the Musikmuseet opened in 1980. This concept of “museum of Music” is a new one, defined by Florence Gétreau – who took part in the transformation of the museum in Paris, of which she analyses the genesis in her comprehensive book Aux origines du musée de la Musique – as follows: “ a conceptualisation and a contextualisation of this art, upheld by educational programs.” The assimilation of private collections – which used to be centered around their creator – to the collections of public museums and the metamorphosis of the musical instruments museum into a museum of music, are followed by museums that aim at giving primacy to the sensory experience of music, often using high or avant-garde technology.

This evolution shows how complex dealing with music and with its instruments within the museum is. On the one hand, we focus on exhibiting the intangible, its creation and its transmission; on the other hand we simply show objects whose essence is foremost to ring, or we try to combine both without, as it seems, quite succeeding. “The picture, the etching, the statue, the carpet delight the eye; the instrument however, is for the eye and the ear” wrote Curt Sachs in an essay called “La signification, la tâche et la technique muséographique des collections d’instruments de musique”. According to him, it is this particular characteristic that distinguishes the museum of musical instruments from any other museum. This, furthermore, recalls the general public opinion for whom it seems that most of the time these objects are so impregnated with music, that they can under no circumstance be decently separated from it. Marion Leonard, who examines the specificities of the collection and of the exhibition of objects related to popular music, explains that the difficulty is to construct, reflect and evoke particular histories through tangible objects and despite their diverse natures. “This in itself” she writes, “raises issues about the intangible nature of music and music cultures and the ability to capture or properly reflect the experience of listening to music and participating within its associated cultures in the static space of a museum.”

Curt Sachs writes, in 1934, that to define the particular purpose of the museum of musical instruments, we should ask its curator “what the visitors’ requests are”, as he believes the public of these museums to be greatly “mixed”. Various factors influence the fact that so called museums “of Music”, museum of musical instruments, and other exhibitions that have music for their theme, appear to us as fertile ground to analyze the relationship between museum and visitor. The spectrum of the visitors’ diverse interests for music and for its objects extends far beyond the novice/amateur/professional distinction. The richness and the complexity of the relationship between music and museum is already made clear by the simple fact of thinking of music, or a set of sociabilities, as a museum object. Finally the eminent evocative power of the “objects of music” within the museum, musical instruments or any other object that evokes musical creation, transmission and reception, also contributes to the richness of the interactions.

We will be looking into this triple relationship between visitors, music and museum.

This workshop takes place within the frame of the seminar entitled “Musiques et sociétés – La musique au regard des sciences sociales” organised at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin.

It will include contributions by researchers from various disciplinary horizons and by museum professionals, who will question their experience, their work and/or their observations according to different lines of thought: knowledge and practices of the visitors of museums and exhibitions about music, the visitor/museum relationship, the representation of music within the museum, the status of the musical instrument as object of the museum.

Each presentation will be followed by a discussion with the audience.

The presentations will be held in English, and the discussions will be conducted in English, French and/or German.