COLLECTION OF HISTORICAL MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

The history of this collection begins in 1890 with the 60th birthday of Hans von Bülow, a friend of Johannes Brahms: Hamburg patrons of music gave the conductor 10,000 marks.
At the suggestion of Brahms Bülow passed this money to the musicologist Friedrich Chrysander, a researcher on Johann Friedrich Handel, who managed to acquire a number of valuable instruments by the lute and viol maker Joachim Tielke (1641-1719) for the Museum.

Today the Museum possesses some 400 European exhibits and about 30 instruments from other parts of the world. The emphasis lies on instruments which are particularly noteworthy in terms of their artistic quality, especially those made in Hamburg workshops. Apart from Tielke’s instruments, those by Christian Zell (active 1722-1741) and the Hass family, as well as the Venetian master Giovanni Celestini (active c.1583-1610) are particularly valuable.

The collection was enormously enriched in the autumn of 2000 by the addition of the more than 150 instruments belonging to the Hamburg collector Prof. Dr. Andreas Beurmann, most of them still in playable condition: harpsichords, spinets, virginals and clavichords from the 16th to 18th Centuries as well as hammerklaviere and square pianos and other forms of piano from the 18th Century up to the present day.
Photos by: © Angela Franke