- Ringve Museum
Ringve Museum is
Norway 's nationalmuseum formusic andmusical instruments , with collections from all over the world.Background
The Ringve Museum is situated in a park on the
Lade peninsula just outsideTrondheim with a view over the Trondheimsfjord, the park forming botanical gardens run by NTNU (theNorwegian University of Science and Technology ). The first house on the site was built in 1521, but the current group of buildings dates from the 1850s onwards. When the estate was auctioned in 1878, it was purchased by the Bachke family and one of the sons, Christian Anker Bachke (1873-1946) acquired the estate in 1919.
In late 1919 he married Russian émigré Victoria Rostin (1896-1963); the couple had no children but put their considerable energies into their love of music and assembling a collection of historical musical instruments; the museum first opened in 1952. There are now around 1,500 instruments in the collection, alongside other artifacts associated with music – pictures, recordings.
Over the years many famous musicians visited Ringve, includingArtur Schnabel , Lilly Krauss,Ignaz Friedman ,Percy Grainger andKirsten Flagstad , as well asEdvard Munch .Exhibition
The public exhibitions are divided in two parts:
The Manor House
The period interiors of the Ringve Manor House provide the setting for themed rooms of working – mainly keyboard – instruments. In this section, open by guided tour only, the guides (often graduate music students) play an appropriate piece of music (or extract) as the tour proceeds.
The first room is called the Mozart room and contains aspinet ,clavichord and a domestic or house organ, from the 18th century. AMurano glasschandelier hangs from the ceiling.The next room is called the ‘Beethoven’ and contains a harp piano of 1870 by Dietz, and a piano of type favoured by Beethoven.A room dedicated toChopin comes next, with examples of the composer’s preferred pianos, as well as adeath mask and casts of his hands. There are also watercolours byGeorge Sand and memorabilia about Chopin andLiszt . A card table and sofa that came from Chopin’s Paris home, and which were inherited by his Norwegian pupil Thomas Tellefsen are on display.Upstairs there is a room based around singers Elisabeth Wiborg and Adelina Patti and includes a piano which Patti insisted on being accompanied. This is followed by a display ofHardanger fiddle s, a ‘Grieg ’ room, a room of instruments associated with church and worship, and finally a room of curiosities, including aCecilium , a Norwegian-madebarrel-organ , musical toys and a Janko piano.The Barn (Museet på Låven)
The collections on display in the Barn are divided in two parts:
Instruments mainly associated with western classical and popular music over four centuries. A Kirkman harpsichord of 1767, a Erberle viola d’amore of 1755, a five-octave Stein piano of 1783, a soprano saxophone by Sax (son) of 1907, along wide early electronic instruments and a 1948jukebox .
Folk instruments from all around the world, including a Runebomme (a type of Sami drum), a Tibetan zang-dang (horn), a nadomo (arched harp) from Congo and hardanger fiddles.Gardens
The 32 acre botanical gardens consist of an
arboretum (species from the Northern hemisphere) around a lake, a floral maze representing a systematic presentation of perennial plants, a Renaissance (herbal) Garden and, in front of the Manor House the historical ‘English’ garden of the 1800s.Reference
Guldahl AS, Guttormsen S, Kjeldsberg PA, Krouthén M. Ringve – a world apart. Trondheim, Ringve, 2005.
Link
* [http://www.ringve.com/english/index.html Homepage]
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