While New York City and Washington D.C. have the biggest collections of outstanding museums in the United States, you can still find excellent institutions peppered across the entirety of the country. Since we've criss-crossed the country for ten years, and we've sampled many, many museums, I think I can attest to the accuracy of my belief. I won't bore you with a list. (My, my, aren't you glad about that.) This week, though, we made a visit to one of those wonderful museums which just happens to be in Phoenix. It's called the Museum of Musical Instruments. This is a fabulous museum containing not only musical artifacts, but also a small concert hall. We went to see a new exhibition called "Treasures, Legendary Musical Instruments".
This was a select group of sixty musical instruments from all over the world, from all different cultures, in many time periods of history. One of the first instruments we saw as we walked into the exhibition was the earliest known surviving violin (known as a 'bowed lute') constructed by Adolpho Amati, the person who devised and designed the instrument in 1559. Today, similar construction techniques he invented are still used by violin instrument makers today.
The violin wasn't the only oldest known instrument in existence we saw. Here's the oldest known guitar created in Baroque times (1590). It shows how the earliest guitars were constructed
A fascinating aspect of all the instruments was how lovingly and exquisitely each of these instruments was crafted. Each instrument was often intricately carved, etched or decorated. Sometimes, just the material itself was beautiful.
We also saw individual instruments which have become famous because of the owners who played them. One example was the 'black widow guitar' played by Jimi Hendrix, an acknowledged expert electric guitar player from the 1960's.
There was an additional exhibition of these types of 'famous instruments'. The one of these I liked the best was Pablo Casals's favorite cello.
Apparently, music and people go together like peanut butter and jelly. As more and more ancient ruins, are uncovered by archeological digs, musical instruments are continually found world wide. Music seems to be an integral part of what it means to be human. Drake's favorite instrument was this one: A carved, painted, Mayan conch shell trumpet from approximately 250-400 A.D.
One aspect of an outstanding museum is what I call 'above and beyond'. An above and beyond feature of this museum is the idea it's not enough to see an instrument, but the real value to the viewer is being able to hear its sound. The entire museum is filled with instruments divided into geographic regions with scattered flat screen televisions showing musicians playing the actual instrument you are viewing. The 'Treasures' exhibition had about ten of these screens tied electronically to individual headphones. As we wore the headphones and moved around the exhibition, we could hear the instruments being played by people who were acknowledged expert musicians on the instruments. Additionally, they would also discuss the unique qualities of each instrument. That's what I call 'above and beyond', and one aspect that makes the MIM such a great museum.
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