National Music Museum an instrumental attraction in Vermillion, S.D.
02:38 PM CDT on Monday, June 30, 2008
VERMILLION, S.D. – One visitor may be drawn to the six-string Spanish guitar on which Bob Dylan composed some of his earliest songs.
Another may gaze in awe at one of just a handful of Stradivarius violins still with an original neck, or a 1767 Portuguese grand piano considered one of the earliest, best-preserved pieces known to survive.
Each is important to the National Music Museum, which focuses on a piece's place in musical history rather than just its beauty.
"When you think of other collections, especially other collections in the United States, they are in art museums," says Sarah Richardson, curator of musical instruments.
"And so a lot of times when the instruments are collected, they're collected for their artistic value rather than their musical value."
The 800 instruments on display at the museum in the small university town of Vermillion make up a fraction of the more than 13,500 items in its collection.
"This is the only place really where you find all these things brought together: American, European and non-Western," museum director Andre Larson said of the venue, which he established in 1973.
Asked whether it's odd that such a vast, worldwide collection is in the middle of the Midwest rather than in New York, London or Paris, Mr. Larson uses a line coined by his father, who collected instruments:
"It's no farther from New York to Vermillion than it is from Vermillion to New York."
Visitors can use personal digital assistants and earphones to take a self-guided tour with video and audio clips of the instruments on display.
There are many places to stop and stare: a towering 1808 Dieffenbach pipe organ, a 1643 Andreas Ruckers harpsichord that's as much a work of art as an instrument, Civil War-era fifes and drums, a collection of saxophones built by Adolphe Sax, and a 1902 black and wood-grained guitar built by Orville Gibson.
Antonio Stradivari is best known for his violins, but the famed Italian craftsman also created other stringed instruments such as guitars and mandolins.
The museum also houses the world's oldest known surviving violoncello (commonly known as a cello). Nicknamed "The King," the bowed string instrument was crafted in Europe in 1545 and played by King Charles IX of France in 1562.
Contact: National Music Museum, 414 E. Clark St., Vermillion, S.D.; 605-677-5306; www.usd.edu/smm. Suggested admission donation (includes free audio tour) $7 adults, $3 students.