HANDBOOK OF THE COLLECTION OF MUSICAL 



INSTRUMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES 



NATIONAL MUSEUM 



By Frances Densmore 



Collaborator, Bureau of American Ethnology, Smithsonian Institution 



INTRODUCTION 



The collection of musical instruments in the United States National 

 Museum, in its history and development, is closely associated with 

 two interesting personalities. The founder of the collection was Dr. 

 G. Brown Goode, Assistant Secretary of the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion, in charge of the United States National Museum, who himself 

 was an amateur musician. He included musical instruments in the 

 classification of the branches of the Museum on its reorganisation 

 in 1879. Musical instruments were regarded by Doctor Goode as 

 sound-emitting devices and to be grouped for exhibition by the 

 manner in which sound was produced. To Doctor Goode's personal 

 interest and to his scientific viewpoint the collection of musical 

 instruments owes its start in the right direction, and it received an 

 impetus which it has never lost. 



The man most intimately connected with the present collection, 

 however, is the late Edwin H. Hawley, who gave his best thought 

 and strength to it from 1884 until his death in 1921. His prepara- 

 tion for the work consisted of two and a half years' museum work 

 under Prof. A. E. Verrill of the Yale Peabody Museum. Previous 

 to Mr. Hawley's time the musical instruments had been given acces- 

 sion numbers, but had not been classified as a separate section. He 

 devised a system of classification based upon careful study of the 

 classifications of similar collections in the museums of this country 

 and Europe. This system was adopted by the Museum and forms 

 the basis of the present work. Mr. Hawley went to the Paris Expo- 

 sition in 1900, and visited London, Brussels, and other cities, in order 

 to inspect the museums and confer with European authorities con- 

 cerning the instruments needed to enrich and complete the collec- 

 tion in the National Museum. To this contact and subsequent cor- 



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