When I arrived in Luzern (aka Lucerne) I was surprised to see a sign pointing to a Richard Wagner Museum. I had come to Luzern to see an opera by Giuseppe Verdi, and had completely forgotten that Wagner lived here off and on during his long exile from Germany resulting Read More …
This “House of Music” (Haus der Musik) in Vienna describes itself as “an interactive sound museum which provides a new approach to music on a playful as well as scientific level.” It was opened in the year 2000 in a building that was once the palace of Archduke Charles (1771–1847), Read More …
One of the many departments of the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (Germanic National Museum) in Nürnberg is their collection of six hundred musical instruments from various historical periods. Many of these are keyboard instruments of all sorts, but the strings and woodwinds are also well represented. If you think you have finally Read More …
Nearly a thousand musical instruments and works of art are on display at the attractive and informative music museum in the Parc de la Villette in Paris. The permanent exposition covers the two hundred years from the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the 19th. At the Read More …
Right next door to the Berlin Philharmonie, in fact in the same complex of buildings and built in the same style, is the Musical Instrument Museum (Musikinstrumenten-Museum). This museum belongs to the State Institute for Music Research, which has a collection of 3500 musical instruments from the 16th century to Read More …
On the Schillerplatz in the center of Stuttgart there is an exhibition of historical musical instruments. While this collection is not as large as the ones in Brussels, Berlin, Nürnberg or Paris, it is still well worth seeing and has interesting explanations of why certain Baroque instruments went out of fashion, Read More …
We 21st century folks are so accustomed to doing everything electronically that we tend to forget about (or not even know about) the amazing mechanical devices our grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents and great-great-great-grandparents used to use. From music boxes to player pianos, musical clocks to orchestrions, barrel organs to self-playing violins, Read More …
In 2019 I returned to Bruchsal along with some of the same people from nine years earlier. Again, we were on an excursion from a VirtualTourist meeting in Karlsruhe, even though the website VirtualTourist had ceased to exist in 2017. All you loyal readers of my previous post Look ma, Read More …
This ‘Museum on the River’ in Antwerp was opened in 2010 after fifteen years of preparation and construction. I don’t know how much it cost or how controversial it was or is, but I was surprised to find that it is strikingly beautiful and evidently quite popular with locals and Read More …
The Danish Music Museum in Copenhagen is one of the oldest museums of musical history in the world, having been founded in 1898. It features detailed exhibitions on the chronological development of musical instruments from the Bronze Age to the 21st century. Although I can’t recall seeing any instruments from the Read More …