Iacobus Leodiensis [Iacobus de Montibus, Iacobus de Oudenaerde]

Instruments, collections of.

Musical instruments are collected for many reasons – for use in performance, as objects of veneration or visual art, to furnish ethnological and historical evidence, to illustrate technological developments and serve as models for new construction, for financial investment and sale, and merely to satisfy curiosity. Amateur and professional musicians, wealthy aristocrats, religious and municipal bodies, schools and museums are among those who amass instruments for one reason or another. Criteria distinguishing successful modern collections include not merely size, but also quality and accessibility of holdings, condition and documentation of individual objects, and integrity or coherence of the whole. This article outlines the history of instrument collecting with attention to the motives and conditions that influence collectors, and deals with assemblages of musical instruments gathered intentionally and more or less permanently. Instruments awaiting dispersal (e.g. in a dealer’s or maker’s shop) or accumulated apparently by chance are considered only in passing.

1. The earliest collections.

2. Medieval.

3. Renaissance to 1800.

4. Since 1800.

5. List of collections.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

LAURENCE LIBIN, ARNOLD MYERS (1–4), BARBARA LAMBERT, ALBERT C. RICE (5)

Instruments, collections of

1. The earliest collections.

Assemblage and deliberate preservation of groups of instruments is an ancient but not a universal practice. Little evidence exists of large-scale collecting outside urban centres; nomads, subsistence-level tribes and those occupying hostile environments may not save instruments at all. Though Amerindians seldom preserved collections of instruments, descendants of the Aztecs still occasionally hoarded specimens of the teponaztli and huéhuetle in the 1950s. Elsewhere, particularly in settled societies where ensemble performance predominates, collections associated with worship or venerated in their own right are not uncommon; notable examples include New Guinean slit-drums, East African royal drums, and ceremonial instruments in Himalayan monasteries. Such groups may be of substantial size: the Tibetan monastery at Tin-ge owned at least 12 bone trumpets, four long trumpets, and hundreds of cymbals, drums, small bells, and other ritual noisemakers. Special ceremonies, taboos and skills connected with their manufacture and use reinforce the instruments’ extra-musical connotations among non-literate societies; revered collections may thus be said to express a people's history and beliefs. But largely because of political factors and the greed of Western collectors many native assemblages have been dispersed, injuring continuity of traditional practices in affected areas such as central Java, where late 18th- and early 19th-century rulers of some principalities maintained three complete gamelans. Although national pride and affluence have led to re-establishment of collections in some former colonies, the most extensive repositories occur today in urbanized, literate societies with long histories of instrumental art music.

The oldest extant groups of instruments, dating back some 6000 years, do not represent consciously preserved collections. Late Roman and early medieval instrument groups, usually fragmentary and found in northern European mounds, may similarly be coincidental. Since relatively few ancient instruments survive, however, such small archaeological assemblages demand attention. Archaeological departments of art and history museums often include instruments that are not catalogued with the institutions' main instrument collections, but are accompanied by excavation data without which the objects might be valueless to scholars. A major responsibility of modern collectors is to obtain accurate documentation of their instruments and to transmit this information with the instruments should they change ownership; in this respect archaeological and ethnographic collectors generally have been conscientious.

Quite apart from accidental accumulation, the thoughtful collection of instruments is an ancient practice. History records the jealous guarding of many individual instruments, including even a fake ‘lyre of Paris’ that Plutarch mentioned as being kept in Troy in 334 bce; references to collections are less common, but although well-known passages in 2 Chronicles and Daniel may be late and unreliable there is no reason to doubt that collections of instruments formed part of the sacred property both of Solomon's temple and of Nebuchadnezzar's band. The Second Temple seems to have owned a small orchestra of lyres, harps, horns, trumpets, oboes and cymbals, and there is much evidence of earlier collections used in ritual and entertainment.

Besides collecting instruments for ensemble performance, many ancient peoples hoarded apotropaic (evil-averting) and votive instruments for inclusion at burials. Cult instruments brought together to be entombed constitute the oldest extant true collections. Tutankhamun's tomb (c1352 bce) yielded pairs of trumpets and sistra, but most Egyptian burial collections consist only of jingles or votive clappers. Of greater interest to musicians is an assemblage excavated in 1972 from the 2100-year-old tomb of a Chinese noblewoman near Changsha, Hunan province. This includes models of performers playing miniature instruments, as well as real instruments in a state of fine preservation. The Elgin auloi and fragmentary lyre now in the British Museum, from a 5th-century bce Athenian tomb, were likewise once playable. Despite topical inscriptions such as occur on bronze ceremonial instruments excavated in 1955 from the 5th-century bce tomb of the Marquis of Cai, Shouxian county, Anhui province, such interred collections were probably never intended to be seen again in this world.

After the destruction of instruments ordered by Emperor Qin Shihuang (221–210 bce) China again became the home of remarkable collections intended for use in performance. Unlike Indian courts, where small ensembles predominated despite the wealth of instruments available, Tang court ministries and conservatories of music involved hundreds of musicians playing about 50 kinds of instruments, often in large orchestras. The cosmopolitan Tang court conservatory (established 714 ce) collected not only the finest Chinese instruments but also foreign ones brought from trade centres as far west as Bukhara, gifts to the music-loving Emperor Xuan Zong (712–56). In quality and quantity, as well as in geographical scope, his repositories dwarfed any known in Europe for nearly the next 1000 years. Some idea of those holdings may be gained from the dozens of superbly decorated instruments still preserved at the Japanese Imperial Treasury of Shōsōin at Nara; many of these were played by foreign musicians at the unveiling of a Buddha at Tōdaiji temple in 752.

Under the Song dynasty (960–1280) some Chinese shrines employed as many as 120 qin, 120 se, 200 sheng, 20 oboes and percussion. In 1114 the emperor continued the practice of instrument exchange on a grand scale by sending to Korea a collection that included ten sets each of stone chimes and bells.

Instruments, collections of