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Description: | Music making around the world is represented by the Horniman's collection of musical instruments, one of the most comprehensive in the UK. The museum has over 7,000 objects made to produce sound. The oldest instrument is a pair of bone clappers in the form of human hands made in Egypt around 1,500 BC. Electric guitars and synthesizers dating from the 1990s are among the most recent acquisitions.
The museum aims to acquire sound and video recordings with the documentation for each new instrument. Recent collections of instruments commissioned from makers in Belarus and Uzbekistan, and the newest collections associated with traditional music in India, are supported by a rich archive of such recordings since museum instruments are not normally played in order to ensure that they are preserved for future generations. The music that the instruments make is made available to visitors via recordings alongside the displays, and through recitals and performances.
The musical instrument collections include wind instruments, stringed instruments, percussion instruments and keyboard instruments with major collections from Europe, Asia and Africa.
Unique to the Horniman Museum is the collection of over 600 concertinas and related European free reed instruments, purchased with the support of the Heritage Lottery Fund and the MGC/Science Museum PRISM Fund.
The core of the collection consists of 127 instruments created by Charles Wheatstone (1802-1875), the inventor of the concertina. Wheatstone's prototype concertinas which he was producing by the 1830s, and his patent models, are featured in the collection. The work of other British and continental makers of free reed instruments is also represented here. The collection includes an extensive archive, with the Wheatstone factory daybooks and diary, souvenir postcards of performers, and 78rpm recordings of celebrated concertina players. | Subjects: | Musical instruments | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | +44 (0)20 8291 5506 | Telephone: | 020 8699 1872 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:5370 | Go to resource |
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