Musée de la Musique

Documentation

The museum’s documentation section is a vital component of the Musée de la Musique, gathering and organising information on the museum’s collections and the other collections of musical instruments throughout the world. It creates dossiers on all major instrument makers, including prices in major public auctions, and dossiers on all the works in the museum.

This documentation is freely accessible to the public on the mezzanine floor of the medie library in the Cité de la Musique.

Visitors can consult 1,100 full-scale technical drawings of instruments from the museum’s collections and major collections from around the world, and listen to recordings of early instruments belonging to the Musée de la Musique from nearly 100 sound recordings, including over 40 concerts given at the Cité de la Musique since 1996 on several dozen instruments from the museum. These range from famous French and Flemish harpsichords to 20th-century electric guitars, or from the famous Italian violins of Stradivari, Amati and Guarneri to prestigious Pleyel and Erard pianos. Visitors can also access a very rich collection of international books and magazines on instrument-making, organology, musical iconography and acoustics.

By appointment only, researchers may consult an original collection of archives of French instrument makers from the 18th century to the present day, including Chanot-Chardon and Caressa-Français, the correspondence of Gand, Bernardel and Sébastien Erard and the catalogues of Pleyel and Couesnon, built up since the museum was founded in 1861.

The catalogue of the museum collections, comprising nearly 5,000 musical instruments, 800 paintings, engravings and sculptures with musical subjects, and several hundred tools used in instrument making, can be found under "Collections" at the mediatheque portal. 15,000 photographs of these artefacts can be viewed online.

Contact: museemusique@cite-musique.fr