MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS: COUNTRIES

Europe

The collections of instruments of traditional and popular music of the UK have constantly been updated since the outset of the museum's history. The earlier collections range from violins, clog dancers' jingles, dulcimers, zithers, and banjos to instruments of church gallery bands, brass bands and the Salvation Army bands. The Horniman Museum is one of the few in the UK with a remit to collect instruments of contemporary pop music.

Among the systematic collections of 19th century European instruments are the guitars donated by Terence Usher, Professor of Guitar at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester. These were collected in order to illustrate the principal lines of development of guitar design from the end of the eighteenth century until the mid-nineteenth century.

Another significant typological collection of European instruments is that of the bagpipes. They range from French instruments of the 18th century to late 20th examples century from Poland and Belarus. The last example was commissioned during the course of the curator's fieldwork in Minsk in 1999, with other examples of Belarusian traditional instruments, together with supporting documentation and video and audio recordings.