Korea’s First Museum Affiliated in MIMO

15 07 2019 - National Gugak Center

At the end of 2018 a collection of Korean musical instrument was uploaded in MIMO website. The Website provides description and image of Korean musical instruments owned by and kept in Gugak Museum and Stage Management Division of the National Gugak Center which is located in Seoul, the capital city of Korea. 133 names for Korean instruments are added to MIMO thesaurus, and 113 kinds of instruments are introduced in the website with their image and detailed descriptions. The NGC will provide audio examples and video clips in the future. In addition, terms and names of foreign musical instruments which were already listed in MIMO website were translated into Korean language. So the 2,374 terms for musical instrument in the world are now shown in Korean language and Koreans can search information on them by typing Korean language.

Preparing the contents which would be exhibited in MIMO, for the first time as a museum in Korea, Gugak Museum of NGC paid special attention to the translation and Romanization of the terms listed in MIMO thesaurus after serious discussion and several meetings. Three ethnomusicologists participated in translating the terms and the names of different types of instruments in the world into Korean language. Also, names of Korean instruments are Romanized and their features are described in English. The rules and standards applied to the translation are as follow. 1) The terms and names that have been already widely used among Koreans are accepted as they are understood easily, whether the terms are phonetic or semantic translation. 2) In most cases, phonetic translation is applied to the terms adhere to the pronunciation system close to its original language. 3) In the case of uncertainty, the translation followed loanword orthography system. Nevertheless, some technical terms designating family and group of instruments, as necessary, were Koreanized following semantic translation. The Romanization for Korean instruments, Gugak Museum followed the Romanization system enacted by the Korean government, and thus some corrections were made for the terms already listed in MIMO thesaurus but incoherent with this Romanization system. In some cases, the main titles of the instruments were replaced, and they were switched to the synonyms. We hope that the visitors of this Website enjoy exploring the world of Korean traditional music instruments. Also, we are open and ready to accept your comment for better translation. We will appreciate your suggestion as well.

Gugak Museum and Gugak Archive in the National Gugak Center

The National Gugak Center (NGC) of Korea acts as the headquarter of traditional Korean performing arts. As a national institution, the history of NGC can trace back to Eumseongseo institution which was opened in the 7th century during the Silla Dynasty. Later in the 10th century, it became Daeakseo of the Goryeo Dynasty, and then changed its name to Jangakwon during the 15th century Joseon Dynasty. Since then Jangakwon administrated the nation’s music and musical events, and became the ground of the NGC today.

NGC tries to preserve and transmit various types of the nation’s cultural artifacts and artistic properties from the performing arts of the royal court to the folk and contemporary music. With the motto “creating the new based upon the old” on the ground, NGC not only continues to cultivate Korean music but also aims to contribute in making greater culture for the people in the world.

Gugak Museum opened in 1995 at one site of NGC plays multiple roles by collecting, preserving, researching, exhibiting and educating in covering important areas that the Division of Music Research puts emphasis on.

Gugak Museum possesses various collections of musical relics and instruments so that the visitors can overview the history and culture of Korean traditional music in a glance. In addition, it has organized various programs and special exhibitions, such as, introducing Korean instruments possessed in foreign museums overseas. Also, special exhibitions comparing European instruments with Korean Instruments and presenting newly invented instruments modified by the Research Center for Music Instrument were held.

Among the Museum’s 6,000 listed items, each of which is again sorted in detail into 18,000 pieces in total, for example, Daeakhubo, a 18th century music score which was designated to the National Treasure No. 1291, is included. There are 1,245 musical instruments in the Museum, including not only musical instruments for concerts and rituals but also indigenous instruments in daily life. Some of them also include foreign instruments. And the Museum is widening the types of instruments in its collection. Now the Museum extends its boundary of types of collections toward wider range of musical items.

And the Gugak Archive, which was established in 2007, also collects a wide range of traditional music-related materials from individuals to local or overseas institutions. Some materials are output of NGC’s programs, including concert, research project, and academic service. The types of its collections are vary from audio visual basis to text basis, for example audio and video recordings, image files, and the written materials including music scores, books, letters, notes, and newspaper clips. The concert posters, leaflets, brochures, and tickets are also a unique type of collections in the Archive. At the end of 2018, the Archive owns approximately 390,000 items. Among them, 380,000 are now input in the data system, and 280,000 items are already digitized. Some items cleared with copy right issues have already been provided to the public online (archive.gugak.go.kr).

The Collection of the Museo del Paesaggio Sonoro di Riva presso Chieri

24 04 2019 - Universita Degli Studi di Torino

Part of the collection of the Museo del Paesaggio Sonoro in Riva presso Chieri has been recently integrated into the MIMO website. Founded in 2005 and completely renovated in 2011, thanks to Guido Raschieri and the Municipality of Riva presso Chieri, the Museo del Paesaggio Sonoro (Soundscape Museum) is located in Riva presso Chieri (Torino). It hosts the collection of musical instruments and sound devices gathered in Riva and neighbouring areas by Domenico Torta, a traditional musician, a teacher and a composer. The word Soundscape in this Museum refers to the relationships between humans and non-humans and between humans and the environment that – until not many decades ago – were constantly recreated in Riva presso Chieri through the act of making and playing musical instruments.

Moreover, it refers to the possibility of living a musically organized life, in continuity with local traditions of singing and of making use of sound, as well as through the knowledge of the sonorous properties of materials and the sounds of animals. Divided into seven sections, the Museum displays flutes, reed-pipes and horns made of bark and vegetal stems, the zither or musical bow called torototela (whose resonator is made with an inflated pig bladder or with a gourd), clay whistles, hunting calls, bells, noise makers for the rituals of the Holy Week and musical toys. A special section is dedicated to the instruments intended for dance: clarinets, accordions, brass instruments, mirlitons, violins, harmonicas, together with the idiophonic voice disguiser made of two valves of gourd called the cusa, and the wooden scraper called the fruja. A section with mechanical instruments and sound reproduction devices introduces the last one, dedicated to musical instruments (both industrial and hand-made) made of plastic, renovating the traditional morphologies of flutes and other sound devices.

Thanks to Domenico Torta, who considers the traditional practices documented in the Museum a never ending source of inspiration for his works as a composer) and his musical activities, the Museum collaborates with the local band I Musicanti di Riva presso Chieri and with the local school Istituto Comprensivo Chieri I, where an innovative teaching methodology is being tested in collaboration with Guido Raschieri (External link.). With its great variety of typologies, the Museum is the ideal place to test the Hornbostel-Sachs classification and more generally the terminology used for musical instruments, from the names in local dialect to more technical typological definitions. It is also thanks to the musical instruments collection of the Museo del Paesaggio Sonoro that Febo Guizzi achieved his translation and revision of the Hornbostel-Sachs classification (forthcoming in the proceedings of the conference Reflecting on Hornbostel-Sachs Versuch a century later, Venezia, Fondazione Levi), which was used for the cataloguing process, together with the MIMO’s revision of Hornbostel-Sachs. The catalogue of the Museum’s musical instruments has been undertaken within the project Sound Archives and Musical Instruments Collection, based at the University of Torino, realized by Ilario Meandri, Cristina Ghirardini and Giorgio Bevilacqua.

The collection of the Musée de la musique in Ouagadougou and of the Musée Panafricain de la musique in Brazzaville

10 02 2017 - Muziekinstrumentenmuseum

Recently the collections of two African musical instruments museums have been integrated in the MIMO website: the collection of the Musée de la musique in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and of the Musée Panafricain de la musique in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo. The publication of their inventories was the outcome of a close collaboration between both the African museums and one of the MIMO consortium member (MIM-BE), focusing on a continuous exchange of information and know how in the fields of (ethno)musicology, conservation and restoration, musical heritage, linguistics and digital collection management.

As a result 129 new African keywords are added to the MIMO thesaurus, most of them not appearing in reference works such as The new Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments (London, 1984/R2014; www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/). The actors’ list is augmented with nearly one hundred new names of African makers, collectors, musicians, donors and sellers. In addition, worldwide publication of the objects of the concerned collections with photos and detailed metadata will help to better protect against theft and loss. Should the collections physically disappear, source material will remain available thanks to MIMO which then serves as a digital archive.

The Musée de la musique in Ouagadougou, inaugurated in 1999 as an offspring of the Ouagadougou Musée national, is a dynamic museum focusing on dissemination of Burkinabe patrimony through exhibitions and workshops for children. Efforts have been made to considerably improve the conditions of conservation. The museum houses 232 musical instruments, which have been gathered from the early 1960s onwards, in order to offer a survey of musical culture in Burkina Faso. Up till now 26 out of the sixty ethnic groups of Burkina Faso are represented. Instruments are gathered during collecting forays into the countryside. Data on builders, musicians, terminology, localization, population and function are carefully assembled. A central register lists the objects with their metadata.

The Musée Panafricain de la musique in Brazzaville has a collection of 188 instruments from all over Africa. In 1976 the initiative was taken by several African ministers of culture to organize a biennial African music festival (FESPAM), hosted by the Republic of Congo. One of the objectives of the Festival was to create a museum in charge of the conservation and promotion of African musical instruments. It was said that ‘the constitutive elements of African musical patrimony were threatened with disappearance and deterioration’ and that ‘action was needed’ (Kouloufoua 2012 : 23). Shortly after its foundation in 2000, national missions took place, aimed at collecting items from the 73 different ethnic groups. During the biennial festival, delegates of participating African countries donate instruments that are representative of their culture. A card-index system contains information on makers, users (musicians), sellers, terminology, function, dates and places. However, due to a difficult organizational situation and unfavorable conservation circumstances, this unique and valuable heritage is under threat.