Guitar by Joachim Tielcke, Hamburg, Germany, 1703. Photo: Alex Contreras

With nearly 1,000 objects ranging from antiquity to the present, Yale’s Collection of Musical Instruments is one of the world’s finest assemblages of rare and historical instruments. The Collection began in 1900 with the gift by New Haven piano manufacturer Morris Steinert of his collection of historical instruments, primarily piano forerunners.

Today, holdings encompass an unsurpassed group of nearly 100 keyboard instruments, as well as a wide selection of European stringed instruments that contains a violin by renowned seventeenth-century Tyrolese master craftsman Jakob Stainer, a precursor of Stradivarius. Also included are an important group of eighteenth-century French guitars, as well as wind instruments that feature major examples by nearly all of the leading nineteenth-century European and American makers.

While the principal focus of the Collection is on objects documenting the history of Western European and American music, recent years have seen notable acquisitions of Asian, African, and South American instruments.

Selections from the Collection’s holdings are on display in a two-story museum, open to the public throughout the academic year. Many of the instruments have been restored to playing condition, and can be heard in concerts, open to the public, played by artists from around the world.

 

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