Instrument Museum

The Instrument Museum is just around the corner from the KHM, and rounded out the "Music and Culture" part of the tour nicely. Many of the exhibits were paired with sound clips (via a portable audio guide) which meant that you could hear the instruments being played as you looked at each exhibit.

As with the KHM and Staatsopera, the building that houses the Instrument Museum is quite impressive, in and of itself. This picture shows the hallway leading into the museum. In this picture, the Armour and Weaponry museum is behind us.

One of the earliest instruments on display is the krumhorn, which was an alpine instrument.

I don't remember exactly what kind of horn this is. However, I would imagine that with the extra loops and twists, it would be about ten times harder to play than a modern trumpet! Also, with no valves, I assume that you could only get certain notes out of it, in regular intervals (tonic, dominant, octave, etc.)

Again, I have no idea what this is, but it seems to be some sort of precursor to an accordian/organ grinder, with large violin-style tuning pegs at the far left.

This is clearly a forerunner of the double-neck guitar favoured by modern-day rock bands! :)

This table served multiple functions: Not only was it a solid table around which you could gather, set your food and drinks on, etc., but it also contains numerous drinking songs, written in a circle around the outermost edge of the table, complete with music and lyrics!

An early piano (perhaps a harpsichord?), with somewhat less than 88 keys. The body of this piano is also significantly smaller than a modern version, which meant that the volume was much lower than what we are used to.

Here we are getting much closer to a modern piano, with the "right" number of keys, dimensions, etc. I especially liked the decoration on the bench and front of the piano.

Up next: Going round and round...