violin

If managing a unique collection of musical instruments is one of your goals, it stands to reason that there is significant overlap with a museum that has a similar objective. The Hague Municipal Museum also has a very special collection of instruments in its holdings, including a number of string instruments by the most important early Dutch makers. But the overlap with the Musical Instrument Fund turns out not to be that great after all, because the museum’s string instruments haven’t been on display for decades, and only a single instrument has been played even once in all those years. We at the Musical Instrument Fund naturally shudder at the thought, as does every musician and violin maker who knows how important it is for an instrument to continue to be played in order to preserve its tonal qualities. But the museum’s curatorial mission is different; its primary responsibility is to preserve and conserve the instruments in as close to their original condition as possible. That mission is difficult to reconcile with allowing the instruments to be played, let alone lending them to a musician. That task is also important and must be respected, because by carefully protecting a number of unique instruments from any external influences, examples will always be preserved for future generations. The question we asked ourselves, however, was whether it was justifiable that even the less unique instruments would never see the light of day again. At the initiative of the Musical Instrument Fund, discussions were held in early 2011. Marjolein de Jong, The Hague’s alderwoman for culture, strongly advocated for exploring the possibility of breathing new life into a small number of the instruments by taking them out of storage and allowing them to be used for the purpose for which they were originally made: to be played by a musician. In 2012, the Musical Instrument Fund succeeded in convincing the board of the Gemeentemuseum to allow it to take over the care of three exceptional instruments. These include two violins by Johannes Theodorus Cuypers (The Hague, 1768 and 1786) and a viola by Jean Baptiste Levèbvre (Amsterdam, 1762). With this loan from the Gemeentemuseum to the Musical Instrument Fund, we have taken the first step toward a collaboration with the Gemeentemuseum that, if we have our way, will be expanded in the future. In 2013, the violin was loaned to Wiesje Nuiver.