The

Collection of
Musical Instruments

The Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments is a museum where you can listen to a music box or organette built in the 1800s. The gallery also houses an 18th century harpsichord that Bach might have used to write one of his sonatas and a piano similar to the one on which Mozart wrote his first minuet. This gallery offers an opportunity to see and hear the instruments used by the great composers from the past. The Yale Collection of Musical Instruments museum on Hillhouse Ave.

The Beginnings

The beginnings of the Collection go back to the 1880s when a local Jewish piano manufacturer and retailer, Morris Steinert (1831-1912), returned to Germany to collect old and forgotten instruments. His great love for music began when he was taught to play the clavichord by the old cantor in his native town of Scheinfeld, Bavaria. By the time he was a teenager, he had mastered not only the piano, but also the flute, violin, and guitar. He had been in business in New Haven for about forty years when he began to fulfill his dream of collecting and restoring these old instruments. In 1912 he donated his collection, mostly piano forerunners, to Yale. The University housed this world-class collection in the rotunda of Woolsey Hall. It remained there until Yale established the present museum on Hillhouse Avenue.

Morris Steinert (in later life)

Woolsey Hall ca. 1910

Woolsey Hall rotunda

At Present

Encased along an adjacent wall is a now obsolete black wind instrument from the mid-1800s called the serpent. Having derived its name from its unique winding shape, the serpent was one of the first wind instruments specifically designed to bring the fingerholes, on the body of the horn, within convenient reach of the musician.

An 18th-century Russian bassoon features a painstakingly-carved serpent head which some scholars argue was used to entertain bystanders at parade events, while others argue it was used to ward off enemy forces during military attacks.

But the Yale collection is more than simply a museum of musical artifacts. According to Associate Curator Nicholas Renouf, "It's more like a reference library. Of course students can't check instruments out, but they can in fact work closely with them." Students in the School of Music can, by appointment, examine individual instruments and in certain cases, depending on its condition, actually play the instrument.

The Collection of Musical Instruments also hosts an annual concert series where musicians perform on the actual historical instruments.

According to Renouf, the Yale collection is "one of the ten most important in the world." Renouf explained that while the some of the world's larger exhibits, in Brussels or the Metropolitan Museum in New York were created to be exhaustive, Yale's collection is much more selective. As with any museum, restoration is a complex issue. "While people generally want to restore an instrument simply to satisfy their curiosity as to what it sounds like, restoration is an irreversible process, so we tend to minimize it. Our main goal is to preserve, not to restore." Renouf said.

Information

The Yale University Collection of Musical Instruments, 15 Hillhouse Avenue, contains over 1,000 instruments, the majority of which document the Western European art music tradition, especially the period from 1550 to 1850. Included in the holdings of the Collection are the Morris Steinert Collection, the Belle Skinner Collection, the Emil Herrmann Collection, the Albert Steinert Collection, and the Robyna Neilson Ketchum Collection.

The collection is open to members of the Yale community free of charge -- $1 donation is suggested for the general public --. Hours are 1-4 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday (closed July and August). The museum maintains permanent exhibits and presents lectures, special exhibitions and other events. A series of Sunday afternoon concerts featuring performances on restored instruments from the collection is presented annually. For information, call 432-0822. For information about the concert series, tickets and reservations, call 432-0825.