MIMO - Musical Instruments Museums Online

MIMO - Musical Instruments Museums Online is an European project.
Eleven partner museums have photographed their musical instruments (including a large number of those never shown publicly), edited audio and video material and prepared their databases so to make their content available to the public.
It constitutes an impressive database of some 45 000 musical instruments.

They also propose a virtual exhibition called 'Explore the World of Musical Instruments' which shows a selection of instruments from all around the world and illustrates various styles and cultural uses.

The Attributes of Music

Two paintings, The Attributes of civilian music and The Attribute of Military music (1767) by Jean-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) were recently given to the Louvre.

The paintings were supraporti ordered for the château de Bellevue in Meudon. Bellevue was given by Louis XV to his mistress Madame de Pompadour. She died in 1764, leaving the chateau to her brother, Abel François Poisson de Vandières, Marquis de Marigny (1727-1781).

Provenience : Coll. Eudoxe Marcille up to 1890, kept by his descendants until 2010.
RF2010-12 et RF2010-13.

These two paintings are companion pieces to The Attributes of music (INV.3200) and The attributes of the arts (INV.3199) (1765) already part of the Louvre collection.

The Hours of the Day, Musée Magnin, Dijon

Through paintings, documents, objects and pieces of furniture, the exhibition describes the daily life of a high-society family from the late 17th century to the late 19th century. It introduces the routines and habits and shows their evolution through the time.

Testifying on the importance of music, a "table à sextuor" (sextet table) designed by Pierre II Migeon.

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Les Heures du jour - Dans l'intimité d'une famille de la haute société, de Louis XIV à la IIIe République

Musée National Magnin, Dijon (France)

Nov 19 2009 - February 14 2010

Musée Magnin

Closure of the V&A Instrument Gallery

A major collection of historic musical instruments, that of the Victoria & Albert Museum (London), is to be permanently close on 22 February 2010, and the instruments dispached to various places.

It's a sad piece of news. When a collection is scattered that way, the chances for a future revival are scarse, if not completely jeopardized.

Read here.

Cygnus Musicus

Swans and a sistrum,
A beautiful wallpaper by Jacquemart (1803)

Since Antiquity the swan is associated with music. It is connected to Apollo, the Great God of Music, and an attribute of Erato, the Muse presiding over Love Poetry, Hymns and Wedding songs.

Swans play en important part in the birth of Apollo. The Greek mythology tells that when Apollo was born, sacred swans came and fled over the island of Delos seven times. Then, they took the baby to Hyperborea, the region ruled by Boreas, the God of the North Wind, where the baby stayed one year. Hellenes used to believe that Apollo was spending every Winter in Hyperborea.(***)

Another myth, still related to Apollo, connects the swan to music and singing : the myth of Kyknos, King of Liguria and friend to Phaeton. While he lamented his friend's tragic death, Apollo gave Kyknos a melodious voice and metamorphosed him into a swan.

The link between swan and music has certainly much to do with the North swan called cygnus musicus or ferus, because of his whistling ressembling the sound of a violin. This peculiar sound probably gave origin to the ancient belief that the mute swan (cygnus olor or mansuetus) is completely mute during its lifetime but sings beautifully just before he dies.

Sistrum is a percussion instrument merely associated with ancient Egypt. We find it used during all the ancien regime to symbolise music. At the same time simple, easy to recognise and meaningful, the sistrum had obvious decorative qualities, which may explain it became one of the recurring symbols in the neo-classic decorative arts.

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(***)Rameau's last opera, Les Boréades (1763-64), was based on the myth connecting Apollo to Boreas.
Plot : the tradition, for the queens of Bactria, is to marry descendants of Boreas, but Alphise is in love with Abaris, a man of unknown descent, brought up by Adamas, the high priest of Apollo... The whole opera shows the struggle between the 'Boréades', descendants of Boreas, Calisis and Borileas, the two suitors competing to be chosen by Alphise and to impose their right and the tradition upon her, and the resistance of Alphise and Abaris struggling for their love...
It was, long before Mozart's Enchanted Flute, a masonic opera about the fight between light and darkness, close, in the themes and in its approach, to Rameau's previous opera, Zoroastre (1756).

The Shock of the Elements....

"Between the noise of the hell and the celestial music, between the primitive instinct and the soul, the beating of the drum reveals the life's first attempt to free itself from the blind matter" (***)

When I read the phrase, Jean-Philippe Rameau's overture to Zaïs (1757) and his use of a muffled drum in his depiction of the Creation immediately came to my mind.
I checked my dictionnaries of symbols, which confirmed that the sound of the drum is associated with the emission of the primordial sound, but in the Indian, Chinese or African traditions. So, where did Rameau find the idea of drums in the depiction of life freeing itself from the matter ?

In the French tradition, the most famous example of a piece of music on the same theme is Les Éléments by Rebel, composed in 1748. It's very impressive piece of music using dissonances, and several instruments and musical lines to symbolize the emerging elements, but no drum was involved.

The drum used by Rameau is an illustration of his deep understanding of the musical language, or/and an evidence of his incredibly wide knowledge of the various musical traditions. His interest in all kind of musics, from the ancient Greek traditions to the contemporary oriental music is documented. Rameau owned a javanese gambang.

If you have never heard the overture of Zaïs, it's time now : here it is on YouTube .

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(***) Entre le bruit de l'enfer et la musique céleste, entre l'instinctualité primitive et l'âme, la batterie de tambour témoigne du premier effort de la vie pour se dégager de la matière aveugle.
(entry "Tambour", Georges Romey, Encyclopédie de la Symbolique des rêves).