Old instruments in museums

Subject: Old instruments in museums
From: Grab
Date: 28 Feb 01 - 01:36 PM

Went to Oxford (England) last Saturday and visited the Pitt Rivers Museum. This is a museum attached to the Museum of Natural History (it has a homepage here).

Most museums (like the MNH) are laid out with everything labelled and quite spaced out. The Pitt Rivers isn't, apparently by design. If you've ever played the game "Shivers", you'll have a good idea of what it's like - quite spooky! Basically, it was started by one guy, General PR, who collected mostly weaponry and stuff during the Victorian era, and it's accumulated more and more stuff over the years as ppl have donated their collections of stuff to the museum. But the treat is the loose categorisation - things are roughly grouped together by type but it's not really done strictly, and the low light level means that some stuff you might miss, or some things are way up at ceiling level, so you might look up by accident and realise there's a box of shrunken heads above you!

Anyway, some of the exhibits are a load of musical instruments. There's all sorts of mouthbows, single-string and 2-string fiddles, cowrie shells, flutes and stuff like that, collected by ethnologists over the years. But there were some real oddities of European instruments in there too which caught my eye.

There's several traditionally-shaped fiddles in there. One had a wild bit of carving instead of the scroll-work, and had a small bow actually shaped like a bow - IIRC this was around 400 years old. The most impressive musically was one which had 4 strings as usually, but then also had 6 other strings which ran under the fingerboard, over a lower section on the bridge, to finish somewhere lower-down on the tailpiece. I'd guess these would provide "drone" notes by resonating freely, or would resonate on certain notes to amplify the sound.

Also several mandolin-type things in there, of various shapes, sizes and quantity of strings. One of those had 12 strings, arranged in pairs, and then had an auto-plucking mechanism on the bridge, with 6 ivory keys you'd press to play a note.

Plenty of other stuff too - I wasn't taking notes and my brain was in information overload by then! I'd recommend visiting this place if you're ever in Oxford, anyway.

On a similar theme, does anyone else have any reports of similar strange instruments seen around? By strange I don't just mean "more strings than normal", but with something genuinely different about their design. Also, does anyone know of museums which actually _play_ their collections of unusual musical instruments?

Grab.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 28 Feb 01 - 01:47 PM

There are similar ethnographic collections at the  Horniman Museum  in Forest Hill (South London), which I used to visit quite a bit when I was a child; in those days it was like an enormous antique/junk shop, though nowadays it's a modern museum.  Some images can be seen at their website.  The big problem with playing instruments held in such collections is that many are just too delicate to stand it, though I believe that it does happen in some places.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 28 Feb 01 - 03:45 PM

We were at the Pitt Rivers Museum about 10 or 12 years ago. It's neat.

Isn't this the place where they issue you a set of headphones when you go in and whatever instrument you're looking at is playing in your ears?

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: GUEST,Rana
Date: 28 Feb 01 - 04:26 PM

Just got back from Washington DC. Having a couple of hours to kill, I went to the National Museum of American History. Upstairs they had numerous Stradivarious's, what I found interesting was an instrument in the Materials section (on Aluminum) which showed an aluminum violin from the turn of the century. Apparantly it didn't sound metallic but was better that traditional violins. Unfortunately, so the card said, to make it sturdier they had to alloy the aluminum with copper. It then became metallic sounding. Unfortunately there was no sound bite.

They also had some early Gibson electric guitars which were neat (ca. 1939).

Rana

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 28 Feb 01 - 07:19 PM

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has an interesting collection of instruments - lots of theorbos (lutes with extra unfretted bass strings) - though that link I gave is pretty horribly gimmicky, and very hard to use, all part of the modernising process of turning museums into wannabee theme parks.

I'm glad to hear the Pitt Rivers is still a proper museum. Headphone guides, now that is the type of modernisation that makes sense. It's the patronising sort of changes that get up my nose that pretends to flatter people while really sneering at them.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 07:59 AM

Grab,

The fiddle you describe is probably a Hardanger fiddle from Norway.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Margaret V
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 08:24 AM

Go to www.usd.edu/smm/ to see highlights of the amazing collection at the Shrine to Music museum in Vermillion, South Dakota. Also, if you're ever in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a nice collection too (but nowhere near as cool as the Shrine to Music). Margaret

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: wes.w
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 08:32 AM

The Horniman is closed until April, I think, so don't make a trip without checking!

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: GUEST,Rana
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 09:16 AM

A few weeks ago on CBC's Basic Black (Feb. 10) they interviewed 3 BC musicians who play a Nickelharpa from Sweden - interesting looking and sounding instrument. People here might find it interesting. Picture on www.basicblack.com with a link to

http://www.nyckelharpa.org/

which looks like a fascinating site.

Rana

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: reggie miles
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 09:18 AM

Grab, manitas at work is correct. I heard a fellow who is a champion player of this rather unusual instrument just last week here in Seattle while I was sitting in with some friends at their show a Hank Williams Review. This player was in the area so my friends who'd heard of him asked him to step up on stage at their gig at the Tractor Tavern and demonstrate his ability. What a wild sound it has with those drone strings! Then I ran into him again at the Wintergrass festival the following day, Thursday, in Tacoma.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 09:50 AM

Hardanger Fiddle Association of America

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 10:43 AM

If the fiddle wasn't all inlaid and fancy like a Hardanger, it might have been a Viola d'Amore.....they have sympathetic strings also. (and I want one reallll bad, but boy are they expensive!!)

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 02:00 PM

Here is a link to the Horniman Museum, (imagine growing up with a name like that...) - as wes said up the thread, it's closed until April 30th - the link tells you about what they've been doing to it , and how to get there etc.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: GUEST,Margaret V at work
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 05:24 PM

The link Malcolm provided has a convenient blue clicky to the above-mentioned Shrine to Music museum. I think some of my favorite instruments there are the little dancing masters' fiddles (you can see them in the Pressler Gallery if you go to the virtual gallery tour). They're like a fiddle equivalent of a backpacker's guitar. RE: the nyckelharpa, have a listen to Olov Johansson, he plays beautifully.

Margaret

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Grab
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 07:44 PM

Manitas, that sounds right. I was in total system overload by the time I reached the musical instruments - just kind of wandering around going "wow, man", and it wasn't chemically-induced either - so I couldn't remember what it was called.

Bev/Jerry, that sounds about right. Unfortunately we didn't notice that until we were on the way out. Still, I never did get to see the displays of clubs and swords and stuff upstairs, so I'll be back another day.

On the music front, I've done some digging, and they actually have a full-time musicologist on the staff of the museum. Guess they'd be the person to ask about what gets played.

Grab.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 08:24 PM

Mind you, if we're talking 6 rather than 4 sympathetic strings, I'd go for Sorcha's guess rather than Manitas'.

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Sorcha
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 09:28 PM

Also, most, but not all, d'Amores have more than 4 playing strings. Some have as many as 8 bowed strings, plus the sympathetics...but they are almost never "glorified".

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: catspaw49
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 11:08 PM

Drifting back to museums.........A museum of a different sort can be found in Norris, Tennessee, just about 25 miles north of Knoxville. The Museum of Appalachia is simply a wonderful and fun place to go to see a collection of artifacts from the history of East Tennessee and the Appalachian region. John Rice Irwin's collection of mountain folklore is astounding and most of it is still in the condition it was found or given to the museum. Bev and Jerry just returned from there I here and our own Bill in Alabama (Bill Foster) plays there every year at the annual Homecoming.

The instrument collection is just plain fun! How about a jawbone fiddle or a hamcan banjo. These are NOT all novelty instruments by any means and you can see a very complete history of dulcimers and banjos made by the people in the region. Celebrities also donate and Grandpa Jones "first decent guitar" is there along with John Hartford's first banjo. Here are a few pictures I took of the instrument room. I should have taken 30 more to do the place justice, but you get the idea.

If you're in the area it is well worth your time!

Spaw

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Bev and Jerry
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 11:27 PM

These are almosts all homemade instruments. There's a sign on the wall there that says, "What we had is what we made".

Bev and Jerry

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Chocolate Pi
Date: 01 Mar 01 - 11:40 PM

The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston just had a major exhibit on the "Art of the Guitar" recently. They have an extensive collection of old musical instruments, too.

Chocolate Pi

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: English Jon
Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:16 AM

I used to live with the guy who did the conservation work on the Horniman collection. He says everyone used to call the place the "hornyperson" museum...

Playing collections are rare for a number of reasons. A lot of the inherant vices of instruments are caused by the process of playing, I.E. blow down an antique recorder, the wood reacts to the moisture etc etc. Then it reacts again as it dries out...

If you want to play instruments all the time, by all means take measurements from your Hardanger fiddle or whatever, and make a new one. Constant playing is good for instruments, but if people can just go in, poke the collection about for an hour, and then leave them to gather dust a lot of damage can be done. The business of Conservation (as opposed to restoration or repair) is to preserve the instrument in it's current state without making any alterations/affecting the historical record. We can make better hurdygurdies now than ever before (modern glues/machinery/methods etc). But if we repair all the old ones in this way, the original techniques of manufacture become obscured. This is the sort of issue that faces a museum. Also, the expense involved in keeping such a collection in peak condition is highly prohibitive.

It is also true that a lot of instruments are preserved because of a visual aspect, and may not actually be playable at all.

Anyway, This may all be bollocks, but it's quite interesting.

Jon

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Margaret V
Date: 02 Mar 01 - 08:21 AM

Not bollocks at all, Jon, but a concise description of current conservation practice (and the theory behind it) that applies to all sorts of artifacts, e.g. furniture, not just musical instruments. People are lots more passionate about music, by and large, than they are about sitting, so it tends to be harder to convince folks that old instruments in collections shouldn't be played ("poked," I like that) than it is to convince them not to plunk themselves down in an artifact chair. Margaret

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Jim Krause
Date: 02 Mar 01 - 04:10 PM

Grab, You posted "One of those had 12 strings, arranged in pairs, and then had an auto-plucking mechanism on the bridge, with 6 ivory keys you'd press to play a note."

This sounds as if it may have been a piano-guittar, a sort of cittern type instrument that was a hybrid between the 18^th century wire strung guittar, and a piano. It didn't last long, however. Am I right?
Jim

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: oggie
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 03:16 PM

Old instruments also wear out and become unplayable (as do some modern ones!) Michaela Petrie reckons a recorder lasts her about 7 years before it's worn out.

Another issue is that while many of us can play a variety instruments there are many where even the correct tuning is lost - when faced with a 15 string bass-harp guitar (Spanish C17th) most of us would struggle and could do imeasurable damage.

A wonderful resource if you're interested in early instruments is David Munrow's box set of albums on the subject recorded by EMI in the early 1970's. I'll try and post details but a light-fingered 'friend' has lifted my copy. The background notes and photo's are superb but it may be a case of specialist LP suppliers as I don't think it's on CD.

All the best

Steve

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: GUEST,Rana
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 05:36 PM

One boxed set (probably the one mention above) by David Munrow is

Instruments of the Middle Ages and Renaissance

It is on Angel - # is SBZ-3810. It includes a 96 page (12" x 12") booklet on the instruments with some great photos - including one of the player standing on a radiator to hold up an extended great-bass recorder which is 10-12 feet in length. It is in the museum of Musical Instruments, Brussels.

Two lp's, all the diferent instruments and the tracks they are on are identified in another insert.

Rana

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: GUEST,Rana
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 05:42 PM

This web site lists all the tracks of the above mentioned Munrow recording - apparently a Japanese CD was put out, but that is all.

http://www.medieval.org/emfaq/cds/emi988.htm

Rana

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Rollo
Date: 03 Mar 01 - 07:32 PM

A couple of days ago I listened to a group of antique rome music enactors... now THAT's a strange kind of music! The instruments are looking quite normally, if you don't mention the aulos (double flute), but what they produced was quite... let's say... erm... strange. Yes, strange.

(Allthough noone seems to know how antique music really sounded, they have tried to reconstruct it from poetry descriptions and other sources like philosopher's discurses about the theory of music. the instruments were reconstructed from pictures and the occasional found.)

Subject: RE: Old instruments in museums
From: Susan of DT
Date: 04 Mar 01 - 08:28 AM

There is or was a musical instrument museum in the Finger Lakes area of New York. I remember stringed instruments of all kinds, some of which you were allowed to play. There were also a variety of self-playing instruments (deposit a nickel and hear this fiddle as it sounds when so-in-so played it). It was a lot of fun. Anyone know whether it is still there and exactly where it is?