Exhibition of Musical Instruments

In 1958, after the completion of the earlier Handel exhibition, a new exhibition of musical instruments was housed on the second floor. Almost all the exhibits were displayed closely together in glass cases fixed to the walls and systematically grouped according to types. An exception was the early pianos, which - although hardly half of them were on show - were presented in chronological order. Storage space had to be found for the rest of them. But this exhibition was only a temporary solution. The experiment with tours guided by tape recordings led after 1967 to a leap in the number of visitors (especially classes of schoolchildren). Sheer lack of space made it difficult to cope with these demands. In 1970 the upper floor had to be cleared in order to carry out structural repairs, as a result of which it was decided not to install the instrument exhibition there again. Instead the City Council made available in 1975 a whole floor of the handsome renaissance building on the market square, the so-called “Marktschlösschen”, for this purpose. First of all a large number of the early pianos were put on public display and later selected specimens of other types of instrument were added.