Publish at December 18 2012 Updated June 12 2024
Listening to music from the past or from all over the world is possible thanks to the virtual presence of musical instrument museums. Here are just a few examples worth visiting, where musical sounds are exhibited virtually.
The Mim, the musical instrument museum of the Royal Museums of Art and History of Belgium, in Brussels, is one of them. At the Instrument of the Month tab in the Collections section, you can find out about some amazing instruments, see them and listen to
recordings of musicians playing them, such as theglass armonica, which is said to have caused fainting and other ailments in its day; the hajhouj, a lute played by descendants of black slaves in Morocco; or the modeku, which can be made from a turtle shell.
MIMO, Musical Instrument Museums Online, is a European project that brings together 11 musical instrument museums: it features photographs, videos and audio documents of the instruments in their collections. The site's interface is in fact a search engine, intended primarily for professionals, researchers and curators.
It is preferable to visit the multilingual Europeana site, which provides easier access to MIMO. This is where you can visit the virtual exhibition Exploring the World of Musical Instruments, translated into five languages, including French. Consultation is via six themes, including Instruments and Creatures, Experimental Instruments, Rites and Cultures. Each section features high-resolution images of instruments, which can be zoomed in on to reveal their sometimes unusual details. You can hear the sound of certain instruments, and consult additional information on the object by clicking on the "i" at the top right of the image. For example, you can listen to a guitar that belonged to the composer Hector Berlioz, or hear the sound of a trombone with a dragon's head on its horn.
On the Philharmonie de Paris media library website - Cité de la musique, under the"Philharmonie à la demande" - Instruments tab - you can listen to around a hundred recordings of instruments from the collection, including mechanical, electronic and world instruments.
You can listen to excerpts from a piece played on a lute dating back to 1634, an excerpt from a Mexican xylophone marimba concert, or anelectronic organ standard played on Hammond's famous Model A, which may bring back fond memories of masses galore...
From the same Cité de la Musique, you can check out the Minutes au musée series on its Youtube channel, where you can both see and hear amazing musical instruments being played, explained by the museum's curators. The channel also gives access to concerts filmed at the museum, such as one featuring Gwoka drums from Guadeloupe. Also on the Cité de la Musique media library site are listings of museums and collections of musical instruments, enabling further exploration of musical sounds on virtual resources.
It was along this path mapped out by the media library's archivists that we discovered Connecticut Wesleyan University's magnificent Virtual Instrument Museum site, launched in 2003. Although it is in English only, the interface is visually simple, clear and efficient, and it will undoubtedly be easy to navigate and consult the bank of sound extracts even if you don't speak the language.
Searches can be made by geographical region, type of instrument or manufacturing material. In addition to extensive textual explanations, the virtual exhibition includes striking 3D images of the instruments, photographs, videos and numerous sound extracts. Not all types of documents are available for all instruments, but the richness of this unpretentious virtual museum is breathtaking. Among the instruments in this impressive collection, you can, for example, hear the dulcimer and see it played, discover the Brazilian berimbau de barriga or the Chinese zheng. A must-see site.
The Smithsonian Institution devotes one of its many web spaces to the discovery of music and instruments not only from America, but also from many other parts of the world. Smithsonian Folkways offers free access to excerpts of recordings, searchable by artist, style, or in the World Music section, each of which features numerous short sound extracts, sometimes accompanied by videos. A wealth of information, in English only.
LINKS
MIM Musical Instrument Museum: http: //www.mim.be/fr
MIMO Musical Instrument Museums Online: https: //mimo-international.com/MIMO/default.aspx?_lg=fr-FR
Europeana Virtual exhibition Exploring the world of musical instruments: http: //exhibitions.europeana.eu/exhibits/show/musical-instruments-fr
Médiathèque de la Cité de la musique - Philaharmonie de Paris: https: //pad.philharmoniedeparis.fr/
Virtual Instrument Museum, Wesleyan University: https: //wesomeka.wesleyan.edu/vim2/
Smithsonian Folkways: http: //www.folkways.si.edu
Title illustration: Cité de la musique YouTube channel.
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