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Volume 28, No. 4 - June 2004
Anderson, Michael: Historic Music Instrument Web Sites Jun04/65
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The Internet, with its vast resources, offers an unprecedented volume of information to trumpet players. ITG offers this column as an introduction to this exponentially expanding resource. ITG cannot guarantee that these locations are completely accurate, and that all copyright laws have been observed. For suggestions and/or comments, contact Michael Anderson, website@trumpetguild.org
Historic Music Instrument Web Sites
IN EACH JUNE ITG JOURNAL, WE FOCUS on music-related web sites that are of general interest and not solely for trumpet enthusiasts. This issue’s column is dedicated to musical instrument collection web sites. Most of these sites represent the musical instrument collections of museums
Although there are many web sites dedicated to musical instruments, I listed only those sites where there are significant numbers of photos and descriptions of the instruments themselves. I also tried to choose sites that have brass instruments in their collection, but have included some that don’t. You will find sound files of the actual instruments being played on some of these sites. Unfortunately, a few museums that have significant brass holdings are not listed here simply because they haven’t put much or any of their collection online or I couldn’t locate them on the web.
Please remember that all copyrights of the images and sound files found on these web sites are held by the owners of the collections and cannot be used in any manner without written permission.
If you are interested in historical instruments, particularly trumpets, I encourage you to first visit the photo gallery featured as a part of the coverage of the 1999 ITG Conference in Richmond, Virginia. One of the highlights of this conference was a temporary exhibit entitled Historical Trumpets from the Henry Meredith Collection. (http://www.trumpetguild.org/conferences/conference99/wednesday/w1015.htm). Meredith is a long-time member of ITG who has one of the largest personal collections of historical instruments in the world. This exhibit is a small but select portion of his collection. Click on the link on the right side of this page to access the photo gallery.
Two sites that don’t qualify as musical instrument sites but are valuable resources for those interested in this subject are the CIMCIM, International Committee of Musical Instrument Museums and Collections (http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/cimcim/id/) and the “Links to History of Musical Instruments” page on the Acadia University web site (http://plato.acadiau.ca/courses/musi/Callon/2273/Instr.htm).
The following list is in no particular order, but it contains the cream of the crop found in my search.
• National Music Museum - America's Shrine to Music. http://www.usd.edu/smm/
(Vermillion, SD, USA) This museum is located on the campus of the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. This place is special to me because it is close to where I live and I have visited it often with students in tow. It’s a beautiful museum with excellent educational programs. Their collection includes more than 10,000 American, European, and non-Western instruments from all cultures and historical periods.
• The Joe R. & Joella F. Utley Collection of Brass Instruments. http://www.usd.edu/smm/Utley.html
(Vermillion, SD, USA) This site is a part of the National Music Museum but worth listing on its own because it represents a collection of over 500 brass instruments with significant trumpet and cornet holdings.
• Deutches Museum. http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/dauer/musik/e_musik.htm
(Munich, Germany) I have visited this museum several times, and have always been in awe of the sheer number of instruments they display and the great variety available to the public. All areas of organology are well represented on this web site and there are several sound files of the actual instruments being played.
Note: A very interesting page on this site is the “The Mechanical Trumpet Player” (http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/meister/e_tromp.htm) built by Friedrich Kaufmann (1785-1866). This instrument is an actual automaton that produces sounds on a natural trumpet.
• Brass Players Museum http://neillins.com/brass.htm
(Springfield, MA, USA) This site has many photos and descriptions of antique brass instruments and an interesting collection of historic brass instruments for sale.
• Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien - Collection of Ancient Musical Instruments http://www.khm.at/homeE3.html
(Vienna, Austria) Scroll down on this page to get to the Collection of Ancient Instruments. This is an important collection of Renaissance instruments, many originally belonging to the Hapsburgs. The site is professionally designed with excellent navigational features. As an added bonus, some of the instrument pages have attached sound files.
• Metropolitan Museum of Art - The Collection: Musical Instruments http://www.metmuseum.org/collections/department.asp?dep=18
(New York, NY, USA) The Department of Musical Instruments holds approximately five thousand examples from six continents and the Pacific Islands, dating from about 300 B.C. to the present. Unfortunately, the website includes details on only a fraction of the collection (50), but they are well presented with a considerable amount of detailed information available.
• Musée de la Musique (The Museum of Music)
http://www.cite-musique.fr/anglais/musee/index.htm
(Paris, France) This collection includes many 18th and19th century European instruments as well 600 of African and Asian origin. There are not many instruments viewable on the site, but it features 3D panoramic views of the galleries. Navigation is challenging, so to see the images that are available, click on the “virtual visit” link on the left of the page.
• Musikinstrumenten-Museum der Universität Leipzig
http://www.uni-leipzig.de/museum/musik/
(Leipzig, Germany) Click on the Union Jack for the English version. There are two ways to get to the images and sound files. You can click on “gallery” and scroll through all the images, (it’s a bit cumbersome), or you can click on “Exhibition Rooms” and follow the list on the right to go look at instruments based on time periods.
• Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments http://www.music.umich.edu/resources/stearns/
(Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA) This collection contains more than 2,000 instruments and dates back to 1899. There aren’t many brass instruments available online but there are a considerable number of pages of historical keyboards. Navigate to the “Kiosk” for interesting instruments and to “Exhibits” for the keyboard pages.
 • Schloss Kremsegg Brass Instrument Collection http://www.pizka.de/kremsegg.htm
(Kremsmünster, Austria) This is a simple, one page site, but it has several photos of historic horns, trumpets, and trombones. The horns are from the former Louis Stout Collection. You can also see a replica of the Reiche trumpet with a copy of the famous portrait in the background.
• The Orpheon Foundation Museum of Historical Musical Instruments http://www.orpheon.org/
(Vienna, Austria) This site is mostly about stringed instruments and features very high quality, professional photographs.
• Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments
http://www.music.ed.ac.uk/euchmi/index.html
(Edinburgh, UK) This site is full of photos, sound files, and video demonstrations of many types of historical instruments. Of note for trumpeters is a page on making a natural trumpet including a demonstration by Crispian Steele-Perkins.
• The Eddy Collection at Duke University http://www.duke.edu/music/eddy/eddy.html
(Durham, North Carolina, USA) This is a one-page site with interesting group photographs of a large personal collection donated to Duke University in 2001.
• 120 Years of Electronic Music http://www.obsolete.com/120_years/
This is not the web site of an actual museum, but a remarkable resource that traces the history of electronic musical instruments. It contains pages with information and images of electronic instruments from the 1870s to the 1990s.
| About the author: Michael Anderson is Assistant Professor of Trumpet at Oklahoma City University, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He is the Executive Director of the ITG Web Site, a member of the ITG Board of Directors, the ITG Journal Editorial Committee and Chair of the Technology Committee. Anderson was also the project manager of the ITG Journal CD-ROM that was distributed to each member in the year 2000. |
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