The Museum's collection of recordings consists of some 2,500 black discs (LPs and shellac records) and some 500 compact discs, primarily serving the purpose of documentation and research on musical instruments. Historicizing interpretations performed on "period instruments" are the focus of the collection. For example, there are many records bearing the DGG-Archiv Produktion and Teldec-Das Alte Werk labels - as well as foreign productions. The collection of recordings is a reference collection primarily serving in-house research purposes.
The collection also includes just under 250 Edison cylinders - with recordings dating from about 1900 - from the estate of the Adolf Rechenberg family. Recently it was considerably enhanced by tapes from the estate of the musicologist Helmut Haack with taped record copies and recordings of concerts belonging to the history of musical interpretation in the 20th century.

Contact: Dr. Martin Elste
Tel.: +49 (0)30 254 81-132
E-Mail: mim@sim.spk-berlin.de

The Library of the National Institute for Music Research is a specialized scholarly library. The collection of some 67,000 volumes reflects the requirements in the Institute's various research fields: music theory, music history, the study of musical instruments, and systematic musicology. Consecutive issues of nearly 170 periodicals are kept available. The collection also includes the 3,500-volume music library of the music critic and writer Hans Heinz Stuckenschmidt (1901-1988), consisting mainly of 20th century music literature, sheet music, and records. An
online catalogue is being built up. At the present, library acquisitions dating from 2003 on have been catalogued.
The library includes a manuscript archive with some 650 music manuscripts (of which 320 are autographs) and over 6,000 musicians' letters, acquired inter alia from the estates of Joseph Joachim and Franz Wüllner. The letters are catalogued in the Kalliope Portal; on advance application they can be used in the library reading room. Beginning in 1917, at the initiative of Max Seiffert (1868-1948) an extensive photocopy collection was set up on the base of the facilities existing before the present Institute (abbr. SIMPK). The purpose of this collection was to make available the greatest possible number of music sources in reproduced form for the heritage editions of German music. Timely application in advance is required for the use of this collection.

Tel.: +49 (0)30 254 81-155
E-Mail: sim@sim.spk-berlin.de

The picture archive of the Museum of Musical Instruments preserves extensive documentary material on the Museum's own collection of instruments. This includes photographs, reports of restoration, measurements and technical drawings; it is supplemented by photos of instruments not in the Museum collection and pictures of important figures in the history of music. In addition, historical instrument-building and performance practices are documented by numerous paintings, copper and steel etchings, lithographs and original drawings.

Contact: Bernd Wittenbrink
Tel.: +49 (0)30 254 81-153
E-Mail: mim@sim.spk-berlin.de

The Institute library houses the archive of the Berlin Philharmonic. It comprises a wide variety of materials (programmes, photos, writings, reviews, posters, recordings, etc.) on the history of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra since 1882. The documents are classified in several card indexes; the archive is available to the interested public; on advance application, the materials can be used in the library reading room.

Contact: Jutta March
Tel.: +49 (0)30 254 81-167
E-Mail: sim@sim.spk-berlin.de

At the National Institute for Music Research, there are two different kinds of bibliographical projects whose aim is to document international scholarly literature on music: the Bibliographie des Musikschrifttums (BMS) (Bibliography of Writings on Music) and the RILM Abstracts of Music Literature German national committee. Both bibliographies are aids in searching for literature on musicology. RILM focuses on musicological literature in the strict sense of the term, while the BMS includes more general writings on musical topics.

The special exhibitions put on by the Museum of Musical Instruments, like the permanent exhibition, make use of historical recordings or of new ones which are produced in the Museum's sound studio and which feature instruments from the Museum's collection. Using CD playing stations or PC terminals, visitors can obtain detailed information on musical instruments and select illustrative sound and film documents.
In the permanent exhibition of the Museum of Musical Instruments, you can see and hear numerous automatic instruments operated by binary sound storage systems: these range from musical boxes to the Welte-Mignon Reproducing Piano. Electro-acoustical musical instruments such as the Trautonium, the Neo-Bechstein piano and the Synclavier evolved in a kind of symbiosis with the electronic media.
The Museum issues two CD-series: Klingendes Museum and Klingendes Museum live ("Sounding Museum" and "Sounding Museum live"). Twice a year it shows a silent movie with live accompaniment on the Museum's Mighty Wurlitzer Theatre Organ.

The multimedia world opens up new and fascinating ways to communicate knowledge of music. This is pre-eminently true of musical analysis: the printing of illustrative music notation or the necessity of studying extensive scores in parallel with one's reading has in the past greatly limited the audience for scholarly analyses; and there are some sound dimensions that from the outset resist adequate conversion into writing. The integration of illustrative music notation or of "moving" scores which are synchronized with the music being played, or the highlighting of notation in colour to facilitate the lucid presentation of a given argument - such aids urgently suggest themselves. Ultimately the new ways of presentation will also have an effect on the content of musical analysis: frequently neglected aspects such as comparative interpretation, questions bearing on instruments, tuning etc. will move into the foreground. The Institute for Music Research is supporting this process and at the same time is setting its own accents. A pilot project based on a classic text of musical analysis, Alban Berg's thematic analysis of the symphonic poem "Pelleas and Melisande" opus 5 by Arnold Schönberg, was developed as a multimedia presentation and introduced for discussion - in exhibitions, seminars and workshops - both to a professional and a wider audience.

© 2002-2008 Netzwerk Mediatheken / Network of Multimedia Resource Centres