To break free from the rigid perception of instruments, take the dynamic, evolving nature of musical cultures into account, and open up the musical heritage of the different regions of the world: this was the concept behind the new presentation of the collections of the Musée de la Musique1, comprising some 9,000 instruments and works of art. The Musée Instrumental of the Paris Conservatory of Music first opened to the public in 1864 with an endowment of instruments from Asia, Africa, Oceania and the Americas, impressive for the quantity, variety and age of the pieces on display. After lying dormant throughout the 20th century, this collection enjoyed a revival and enrichment with the opening in 1997 of the Musée de la Musique, heir to the original Musée Instrumental.

“The presentation of these collections, in a space dedicated to ‘music of the world’ set apart at the end of the tour, had however become outdated,” explains Alexandre Girard-Muscagorry, curator and member of the team in charge of reorganising the museum’s displays. “Thirty years ago, the aim was to spotlight the cultural specificity of the objects on view, contextualising them through consistent geographical groupings. But this type of presentation is rather static, and tends to overlook the historical, artistic and socio-political contexts, not to mention the numerous interactions among cultures, especially European and non-European, in which these instruments existed.”

Indeed, no instrument can be considered as though it had evolved in isolation. For the 30th anniversary of the Cité de la Musique, its parent organisation, the museum is inaugurating a new exhibition that offers a comprehensive, connected approach to music, specifically emphasising the historical and contemporary links between musical worlds.

“For example,” Girard-Muscagorry says, “we show the similarities between the Arabic oud, introduced to Europe between the 9th and 13th centuries via Moorish Spain and southern Italy, and the Western lute that was derived from it .”

Visitors will be able to see how the violin, invented in 15th-century Italy and derived from multiple stringed instruments of diverse origins (the Indian ravanastron, the rebec of Arabic origin, the viol of mediaeval Europe), became a popular street instrument while also winning esteem among the nobility, and how it was played in different countries, giving rise to a widely varied range of repertoires, playing techniques and types of craftsmanship.

In the Nordic countries, e.g. Finland and Norway, the violin was associated with dance music, but it was also adopted in North Africa starting in the 19th century, becoming part of the takht ensembles that played Arab-Andalusian classical music. It is also played in countries as far removed as Indonesia, Mexico and Madagascar! In Indian music it is held upside down, with the scroll resting on the ankle of the musician sitting cross-legged. It was even adopted by slave musicians, who brought its distinctive sound to colonial theatres and European salons.

Similarly, the accordion, the emblematic instrument of France and Europe, arose from the sheng, a Chinese mouth organ with 17 bamboo pipes. The sheng shares with the accordion and harmonica the principle of the free reed: a thin metal strip that vibrates when air is blown or inhaled across it.

The history of the piano, an instrument identified quasi-automatically and exclusively with European music, is in fact also much more complex. After a year-long residency at the Musée de la Musique, analysing the archives of French piano manufacturers, the researcher Anaïs Fléchet2 has managed to trace how the instrument conquered the world by linking it to international history – colonial at first, followed by social and political – as evidenced by its peregrinations, from the bourgeois salons of Europe to the plantations of South America, via the saloons of small-town USA…

The museum’s new installation encourages visitors to think in terms of a “whole-world” of music, according to the concept of the Martiniquais intellectual Édouard Glissant: a living interweaving of cultures, sounds and creativity, in perpetual flux, in which music and instruments enrich each other without relinquishing their uniqueness.  ♦

The Musée de la Musique of the Cité de la Musique-Philharmonie de Paris opened its new exhibition space on 14 May, 2025: https://philharmoniedeparis.fr/en/activite/27974
 

Music Opens the Way to all Cultural Worlds
Piano : l’interprétation musicale décryptée (video – in French)