Whether it’s a violin crafted by Stradivari, a clavichord from the Baroque era, or a grand piano once played by Chopin, musical instrument museums offer a tangible connection to what can feel like a very intangible art form.
Here are seven of the most fascinating musical instrument museums in the world.
1. Musée de la Musique (Paris, France)
Official website: https://philharmoniedeparis.fr/en/musee-de-la-musique
Musée de la Musique
The Musée de la Musique’s origins date back to the French Revolution, when instruments were gathered from the estates of fleeing aristocrats and given to the Paris Conservatory.
The collection continued to grow over the generations. In 1978, the holdings were transferred from the conservatory to the government.
The first museum spotlighting these instruments opened in 1997. When the Philharmonie de Paris was opened in 2015, the collection was moved into the complex.
Today, the collection numbers over 8,000 items, showcasing musical treasures from the Renaissance to the twentieth century.
When you visit, don’t miss:
- Stradivari’s only surviving pochette (a small stringed instrument)
- The 1708 “Davidoff” and 1716 “Provigny” Stradivari violins
- The 1742 “Alard” Guarneri del Gesù violin
- An octobass
- Early instruments by the inventor of the saxophone, Adolphe Sax
- Pianos played by Liszt and Chopin
2. Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) (Phoenix, Arizona, USA)
Official website: https://mim.org/
Musical Instrument Museum (MIM)
Former Target CEO Bob Ulrich retired in 2008. Two years later, he founded the Musical Instrument Museum in Phoenix.
The collection has grown to 15,000 instruments in a $250 million building. Their goal is to collect instruments from every country in the world; currently, they have instruments from over two hundred.
The museum is designed with different sections for different areas of the world. In the European portion of the museum, there are a number of instruments used to play classical music.
The museum hosts nearly 300 concerts a year in its 300-seat auditorium.
3. Galleria dell’Accademia (Florence, Italy)
Official website: https://www.galleriaaccademiafirenze.it/en/
Galleria dell’Accademia
This museum is best known as the home of Michelangelo’s David, but the building also features an extraordinary collection of musical instruments.
The Galleria dell’Accademia was founded in 1784 by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II. In 1873, the sculpture David was moved from an outdoor location to the Galleria, making it a prime tourist attraction.
Much later, in 2001, the instrument museum opened. It includes roughly fifty instruments owned by the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, the Medici family, and the Lorraine family.
This collection includes a tenor viola by Stradivari, a piano by Cristofori (the first piano maker), harpsichords, wind instruments, and even percussion instruments.
There are also paintings of the Medici family with their musicians and stringed instruments.
4. The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York City, USA)
Official website: https://www.metmuseum.org/departments/musical-instruments
The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Tucked within one of the world’s most famous art museums is a stunning musical instrument sub-collection.
This collection began in 1880, just ten years after the founding of the museum, with a handful of ancient instruments.
In 1889, a woman named Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown donated nearly three hundred instruments. Over the following decades, she continued collecting them on behalf of the museum. By 1918, the year she died, the museum had acquired over 3500 instruments.
In 2019, the Met opened a remodeled musical instrument gallery. It features six hundred instruments: viols, lutes, wind instruments, string instruments, and more.
The crown jewel of the collection is the earliest known surviving piano, an instrument by Bartolomeo Cristofori, dating from 1720.
5. Musikinstrumenten-Museum (Berlin, Germany)
Official website: https://www.museumsportal-berlin.de/en/museums/musikinstrumenten-museum/
Musikinstrumenten-Museum
This collection was founded in 1888 and contains around 3000 musical instruments. Its European instruments date from the sixteenth century to the present day.
The museum features harpsichords, spinets, flutes, and other instruments played by musical royals like Queen Sophie-Charlotte of Prussia and Frederick II.
The website also advertises: “The collection of Naumburg wind instruments, the almost complete instrumentarium of a central German town pipe workshop from around 1600, is outstanding.”
One of the most famous instruments in the collection is the “Mighty Wurlitzer” organ, which has 1228 pipes, making it one of the biggest instruments of its kind in Europe. It also features sound effects like birdsong, thunder, sirens, and more.
6. The National Music Museum (Vermillion, South Dakota, USA)
Official website: https://www.nmmusd.org/
The National Music Museum
The National Music Museum was founded in 1973 on the campus of the University of South Dakota in Vermillion (current population: 11,700). Despite the small size of Vermillion, the NMM has become one of the great musical instrument museums in the world.
The museum’s collection began with Arne B. Larson, who was born in Minnesota in 1904. He grew up to become a piano tuner, teacher, and collector. In 1966, he was hired by the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, and he brought his massive musical instrument collection with him.
Highlights of the collection include the earliest surviving grand piano from France (dating from 1781), a virginal from ca. 1520, hundreds of historical band instruments, and a collection of stringed instruments by Stradivari, Amati, Andrea Guarneri, and others. They also own one of the only two surviving Stradivari mandolins.
7. The Cobbe Collection (East Clandon, UK)
Official website: https://www.cobbecollection.co.uk/
The Cobbe Collection
The Cobbe Collection is one of the most remarkable assemblies of historic instruments in the world, and it exists in an eighteenth-century English country house in Surrey.
The setting adds to the atmosphere: visitors can see these instruments in elegant vintage rooms, much as they would have appeared in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Many of the instruments were played by major composers. Highlights of the collection include several pianos that Chopin played while traveling in England, as well as pianos that once belonged to Elgar, Mahler, and even Marie Antoinette!
Conclusion
Whether you’re a professional musician or just a listener who loves music, these museums offer a rare chance to get up close with the instruments that helped shape classical music history.
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