Musical instrument museums as source and resource in contemporary debate
Since 2021, Fañch Thoraval (MIM-RMAH/INCAL-UCLouvain) is carrying out the MaHiOn project that investigates the processes of acquisition, circulation and interpretation of non-European instruments during the long nineteenth century, taking as its starting point the collections of the former Musée instrumental of the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels.
The building of these collections involved many kind of actors (producers, intermediaries, collectors) whose respective status, interests, musical cultures and mindsets may have differed greatly. As a result, the selection of instruments, their...
Since 2021, Fañch Thoraval (MIM-RMAH/INCAL-UCLouvain) is carrying out the MaHiOn project that investigates the processes of acquisition, circulation and interpretation of non-European instruments during the long nineteenth century, taking as its starting point the collections of the former Musée instrumental of the Royal Conservatoire in Brussels.
The building of these collections involved many kind of actors (producers, intermediaries, collectors) whose respective status, interests, musical cultures and mindsets may have differed greatly. As a result, the selection of instruments, their identification and sometimes even their construction were significantly shaped by factors entirely unrelated to their original context. Likewise, the understanding of these instruments was conditioned by fragmentary and mediated information, by historically situated world conceptions, as much as by goals designed by scientific aspirations or exotic representations.
Through the study of musical instruments brought to Europe during the 19th century, the MaHiOn project does not only seek to document the history of musical traditions that have undergone major transformations or have even disappeared. Based on a methodology that combines archival research, organological observation and musicological investigation, it makes it possible to sketch out a history of international relations in which musical knowledge is elaborated in a field of force defined by commercial, diplomatic, ideological and scientific issues.
To this date, the project's main achievements include:
- a reassessment of Victor-Charles Mahillon's instrumental classification (1877) and its links with Indian traditions and research into acoustics;
- the discovery of a worldwide phonographic collection (1899), unique and contemporary with the major sound archive projects launched in Paris and Vienna, but which has remained in the shadows until now;
- the discovery of instruments collected by the Mission de Chine (1843-1845), which had disappeared since the return in 1846 of these agents sent to China to impose French commercial interests;
- the reconstitution of the Musée des échanges (from 1886 on), an unofficial collection designed to exchange instruments with other museums.
