For week twelve I picked the slightly ambiguously named task 'Visit an unique museum'. What I meant when I added this to the list was it had to be a random, specialist museum, not the Natural History, or Science museum as I've visited them plenty of times before. I wanted to go somewhere that there's only one of them and where the contents were a little odd, somewhere like the Fan Museum, or the Museum of Brands. In the end I picked a location pretty close to where I live, The Musical Museum, which is by Kew Bridge.
I've cycled past this building the few times I've bothered to get my bike out to commute to work, and couldn't work out what it was all about; was it the history of musical theatre? Or a particular musical genre, or perhaps a instrument range? Without knowing what we were going to be greeted with we headed in early one Sunday to be met by Roy, who was running a tour of the museum.
After deciding to join the (free) tour we were led into the main room to see a whole range of strange looking contraptions. It turns out the Musical Museum is a collection of clockwork and self-playing instruments. Roy explained how the museum came together after a local man started to collect antique clockwork and motorised instruments from across the world. He stored them all at a local church, and when that started to get over run the Musical Museum was born. Starting with a small exquisite music box and ranging into large organs and self-playing pianos Roy demonstrated a few of the most interesting items.
My favourite one had to be the self-playing violin. After years of lessons as a child I could never get past the screechy beginners stage, so to learn there was a machine that could have played for me and saved me years of practice was a revelation. We were also able to have a go on a mechanical piano which was tougher than it looked to play, but a lot of fun.
Joining the tour was definitely a great decision. Without Roy, his fascinating stories and demonstrations we would have been left in a room looking at strange items, trying to figure out how they worked. The demos brought the items to life and let us imagine a time when these would have been displayed and shown off in the grandest of houses. Most of the items were born in the Victorian era and the newest was from the 1940's. After that date most houses would have had record players which quickly made these instruments obsolete. I think that they are so fascinating. They are a snap shot into a short flash of history and now I have seen and learnt a little about them I am glad some were saved and stored here.
Once we had wandered through the downstairs rooms Roy took us upstairs to see their Mighty Wurlitzer organ. This is one of a few of the Wurlizer's in the UK, and we were lucky enough to hear their organist Chris Barber play a few tunes for us.
This style of organ was from the 1920's and would have been used in cinemas during silent film screenings. The organist would have played along with the film enhancing the mood for the audience and adding atmosphere. I was pretty interested to hear that the Museum run monthly film nights where they play an old film with the organ accompanying it. I am definitely going to the January film night to check this experience out. It sounds like a one of a kind event and as a film geek I don't want to miss out. I definitely recommend a trip here, but make sure you join a tour so you can see some of these instruments brought to life!
I've cycled past this building the few times I've bothered to get my bike out to commute to work, and couldn't work out what it was all about; was it the history of musical theatre? Or a particular musical genre, or perhaps a instrument range? Without knowing what we were going to be greeted with we headed in early one Sunday to be met by Roy, who was running a tour of the museum.
After deciding to join the (free) tour we were led into the main room to see a whole range of strange looking contraptions. It turns out the Musical Museum is a collection of clockwork and self-playing instruments. Roy explained how the museum came together after a local man started to collect antique clockwork and motorised instruments from across the world. He stored them all at a local church, and when that started to get over run the Musical Museum was born. Starting with a small exquisite music box and ranging into large organs and self-playing pianos Roy demonstrated a few of the most interesting items.
My favourite one had to be the self-playing violin. After years of lessons as a child I could never get past the screechy beginners stage, so to learn there was a machine that could have played for me and saved me years of practice was a revelation. We were also able to have a go on a mechanical piano which was tougher than it looked to play, but a lot of fun.
Joining the tour was definitely a great decision. Without Roy, his fascinating stories and demonstrations we would have been left in a room looking at strange items, trying to figure out how they worked. The demos brought the items to life and let us imagine a time when these would have been displayed and shown off in the grandest of houses. Most of the items were born in the Victorian era and the newest was from the 1940's. After that date most houses would have had record players which quickly made these instruments obsolete. I think that they are so fascinating. They are a snap shot into a short flash of history and now I have seen and learnt a little about them I am glad some were saved and stored here.
Once we had wandered through the downstairs rooms Roy took us upstairs to see their Mighty Wurlitzer organ. This is one of a few of the Wurlizer's in the UK, and we were lucky enough to hear their organist Chris Barber play a few tunes for us.
This style of organ was from the 1920's and would have been used in cinemas during silent film screenings. The organist would have played along with the film enhancing the mood for the audience and adding atmosphere. I was pretty interested to hear that the Museum run monthly film nights where they play an old film with the organ accompanying it. I am definitely going to the January film night to check this experience out. It sounds like a one of a kind event and as a film geek I don't want to miss out. I definitely recommend a trip here, but make sure you join a tour so you can see some of these instruments brought to life!
No comments:
Post a Comment