Muzeum Narodowe w Poznaniu

Instrumental for the layout and arrangement of the new exhibition of the Museum of Musical Instruments was the idea to show musical instruments via the context of the era, ensemble, place, and tradition. This initial concept was then mapped onto the resources of the Museum collection and the available exhibition space. As a result, when visiting the Museum exhibitions, we embark on a journey across centuries, places, phenomena, and cultures. This journey is marked by the structure of the interior, the history of the collection’s development and the subjective choice of the curators.

Each of the 16 galleries refers the viewer to an area or phenomenon which is its principal theme. Apart from this theme, additional contexts or complements often appear in a given gallery. The first two floors lead the visitor through selected issues from the history of European artistic music. The ground floor of the exhibition covers the period from the late Middle Ages to the end of the 18th century. Selected issues from the history of pan-European, Polish or local music, i.e. related to the city of Poznań, depict a world of emerging secular instrumental music and one of sacred vocal and instrumental music which dominates in the Baroque period. The first floor of the exhibition introduces visitors to court music, increasingly rare in the eighteenth century.
Visitors then continue their journey to get acquainted with concert halls, famous virtuosos, chamber music, salon music, and the avant-garde music of the twentieth century. The second floor, in turn, introduces the musical traditions of various cultures of the world. It reveals the richness of instrument forms and their functions in a given culture. It presents an extraordinary variety of ways of playing music, from the simplest pre-Columbian rattles and whistles to Indian music, very complex as to the sound pattern and structure.

The Museum of Musical Instruments was established in 1945 by Zdizsław Szulc. It is one of the few such museums in Europe, the only in Poland.

*Due to architectural barriers we prepare a reduced price ticket that allows to visit this part of the exhibition that is located at the ground floor of the museum.