European, British, and America Musical Instrument Collectors, 1850-1940
Christina Linsenmeyer, ed. Routledge, 2026, 382 pp., 50 B/W illustrations. Hardback £137.59, e-book £38.39. ISBN 9781032105093 (hardback), ISBN 9781003216193 (e-book)
by Flaminia Ferlito
Why musical instruments, and not other objects? This question provides the starting point for C. Linsenmeyer’s edited volume European, British, and American Musical Instrument Collectors, 1850-1940, which examines the constitution of musical instrument collections by shifting attention from the objects themselves to the collectors, circumstances, and networks through which they acquired meaning and value. Rather than treating collecting as a self-contained activity, the volume situates it within the broader social, political, and cultural transformations of the second half of the nineteenth and the first decades of the twentieth century.
The question posed at the outset is more complex than it might initially appear. Why particular instruments were collected cannot be explained solely by their physical characteristics, rarity, craftsmanship, or aesthetic qualities. Their value was produced within specific historical contexts and evolved as those contexts changed. What an instrument meant to a collector in the nineteenth century may differ considerably from what it represents in a museum today. The history of a collection, therefore, does not end with its institutional acquisition. It also includes the processes through which objects were selected, used and displayed. This perspective is particularly relevant to musical instruments, whose meanings have often been detached from their original contexts of use and reduced, in museum displays, to those of visual and silent objects.
The book is organised into three main sections. The first two establish two important dimensions of the history of collecting: the relationship between objects and structures of power, and the role of knowledge and expertise in determining their value; while the third turns to individual collectors active between 1850 and 1940. The first chapter addresses colonialism, an aspect that has too often remained at the margins of the history of musical instrument collecting. The discussion of the Belgian Congo makes clear that the acquisition and circulation of musical instruments cannot be separated from the political structures within which European collectors encountered them. The categories through which instruments were collected, classified, and subsequently preserved were themselves shaped by unequal relations of power. In this sense, the chapter usefully challenges the idea of the collection as a neutral accumulation of cultural artefacts, showing instead how collecting was embedded in broader processes of ownership, appropriation, and cultural authority.
The second chapter turns to provenance, particularly in relation to instruments of the violin family, and shifts the focus from political structures to the systems of knowledge through which objects acquired value. Here, provenance is not treated simply as a matter of reconstructing an instrument’s ownership history, but as a field shaped by connoisseurship, expertise, questions of authenticity, and commercial interests. This is particularly significant for instruments whose value has historically depended upon attribution and the authority of specialists.
The third section focus on a series of studies of individual collectors, who they were, why they collected, how they acquired their instruments, and what they did with them once they became part of their collections. These questions allow collecting to emerge as a practice rather than simply an outcome, especially because the collectors operated within a period of rapid transformation. International exhibitions created new opportunities for objects to circulate across national boundaries, while developments in transportation and communication facilitated increasingly international networks. The 1851 Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace of London and the 1872 Exhibition of Ancient Musical Instruments at South Kensington are particularly revealing examples of the environments in which musical instruments became visible as objects worthy of collection. At the same time, the emergence of musical instrument collecting was also shaped by broader social and technological transformations. The technological change contributed to the creation of the category of the “obsolete” instrument. As new forms of manufacture, instrument design, and performance practice emerged, instruments that had once served practical purposes could acquire a different kind of value as antiquarian objects. Collecting thus developed alongside technological progress, but also in response to it. The desire to preserve instruments associated with a disappearing musical past could be linked to a form of nostalgia, while the instruments themselves became evidence of histories of making and performance that were no longer part of contemporary practice.
One of the most interesting aspects of the volume is its attention to what happened to instruments once they entered a collection. The case of the Finnish violin collector Harry Wahl is particularly revealing. The archival evidence discussed in the volume shows that instruments moved in and out of his possession throughout his collecting career. His collection was also selectively accessible to makers interested in studying the instruments and to musicians who performed on them in Finland and abroad. The instruments were not necessarily removed from circulation when they entered a collection; rather, collecting could create new forms of circulation and new communities of expertise around them.
A further aspect worth considering is the gender composition of the collectors examined in the volume. With the notable exception of Mary Elizabeth Adams Brown, all the collectors discussed are men. At first glance, this might suggest a gender imbalance requiring further explanation. Yet, for the chronological framework considered by the volume, a straightforward gender distinction may not be particularly productive. Women were a minority among nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collectors of musical instruments, and their relative absence from the volume reflects, to a significant extent, this historical reality. Moreover, women who did collect instruments often depended on male family members and wider family networks for financial, social, or practical support, making their collecting practices more difficult to distinguish from those of the men around them.
What becomes particularly clear is that entering a collection did not necessarily bring an instrument’s history to an end. Instruments could continue to be studied, played, exchanged, and discussed, acquiring new meanings and forms of value through these successive encounters.
The history of musical instrument collecting is therefore not simply a history of objects assembled by collectors, but of the changing relationships between objects, people, and institutions. By recovering those relationships, Linsenmeyer’s volume provides a productive framework for reconsidering how musical instruments acquired value in the past and, perhaps equally importantly, how their meanings continue to be constructed in the collections and museums in which they are preserved today.
