19th Century Brass Instruments at the Shrine to Music Museum

Margaret Downie Brown, Curator
Photographs by Simon Spicer, Educational Media Center, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD, USA.

Outstanding collections, totaling more than 4000 musical instruments, may be found at The Shrine to Music Museum in Vermillion, South Dakota, U.S.A.

Vermillion, a small Midwestern university town, is located in the southeastern corner of the state, on the main tourist route to the Black Hills of South Dakota and its renowned “Shrine of Democracy”, Mt. Rushmore.

The Shrine to Music Museum & Center for Study of the History of Musical Instruments was established in 1973 as an academic support unit of the University of South Dakota, and offers the M.M. degree with a concentration in the history of musical instruments, the only such program available in the United States. In the 14 years since it was founded, the Museum has grown dramatically, and its comprehensive holdings now rank in size and importance with the great European collections.

Nationally-accredited by the American Association of Museums, The Shrine to Music Museum features six major galleries, a research library, a fully-equipped conservation laboratory, study-storage facilities, and, an intimate, 100-seat concert-lecture hall with superb acoustics. Managed by a staff of five, the Museum is open to the public seven days a week. Admission is free.

The Museum’s holdings include three primary collections — the Arne B. Larson Collection of Musical Instruments and Library, the Wayne Sorensen Collection of 19th-century woodwinds, and the Witten-Rawlins Collection of 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century Italian stringed instruments. In addition, numerous instruments continue to be acquired individually, as gifts or by purchase. The instrument collections are supported by an extensive library of books and periodicals, photographs, music, sound recordings, and related musical memorabilia.

Brass instruments comprise approximately 38 % (1540 instruments) of the Museum’s holdings. A particular strength are brass instruments made and used in American bands and orchestras between 1875 and 1950. An aggressive acquisitions program during the last five years has added significantly to the Museum’s holdings of European brass instruments dating from the 17th and 18th centuries. A recent inventory of the Museum’s brass instruments yielded the following statistics: 272 tubas, helicons, and Sousaphones; 260 trombones; 186 tenor horns, baritones, and euphoniums; 316 alto horns, mellophones, and French horns; 440 trumpets, cornets, and bugles; 37 keyed brass instruments; and, 29 non-Western and/or European folk brass instruments. A number of articles, catalogs, master’s theses, and doctoral dissertations have been written about the Museum’s brass instruments; these are listed in the bibliography at the end of this article.

Among the notable 17th- and 18th-century brass instruments at the Shrine to Music Museum are the following:

Zink

No. 3451. Tenor Zink made in Germany, mid-17th century. Ex. coll.: Canon Francis W. Galpin. Octagonal body of wood covered with leather; silver, open-standing fishtail key and cover; silver ferrule. Body length, along back curves, 96 cm. Bell diameter 7 cm. (Photo 1).

Trombone

No. 3592. Tenor slide trombone by Michael Nagel, Nürnberg, 1656. Ex. coll.: Bohland & Fuchs, Graslitz, Bohemia. Engraved on bell garland: MACHT MICHAEL NAGEL NVR 1656. Initials M N engraved above bird insignia, placed between first and last name in signature. Slide may be an early 18th-century replacement. Restored by Ursula Menzel, Munich, West Germany, 1984. Sounding length 267,4 cm. Bell diameter 10,5 cm. (Photo 2).