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The subtitle of this little article could read "An Unusual Solution" or "A Particularly Fortunate Solution" - unusual because the museum director is not an art historian or museologist, but rather a concert artist (to be sure one with a doctorate in musicology); and fortunate for the excellent community support offered to the museum in a rather unconventional organizational setting - but for this, see below.
First, please allow me a few personal remarks, as one of the newest members of CIMCIM. They will also place the fortuitousness of the Trumpet Museum in its proper perspective.
During the April 1988 CIMCIM meeting in Berlin, I became more closely acquainted with my colleagues in the instrument museum profession and, incidentally, with their own professional situations. I have observed that although we of the profession are dealing with objects of the highest spiritual value, our daily lives often seem to offer a marked contrast. There seem to be the rigid hierarchical structure and a chain of command from top to bottom, presumably from board of directors to the janitor, with the curator somewhere in the middle. If, according to New Age philosophy, everything is interconnected then we do not seem to be in a good position. As a concert artist, I cannot function with rigid structures; if I am to provide others with spiritual nourishment, I need to have the freedom to receive the same from my surroundings. In my own case I am fortunate that all of my employers (simultaneously the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and the Conservatory in Basel, the Musikhochschule in Karlsruhe, and the city of Bad Säckingen) allow me maximum freedom to carry on a full-scale international concert schedule at the same time as I have the responsibility for the instruction of my pupils or the care of the Trumpet Museum on an irregular but intensive schedule. Some of the unfortunate manifestations of the rigid power game: Laurie Libin's struggles with renovation of his department, Bob Barclay's director failing to support him in his efforts to save a grand piano which was once the favourite of Glenn Gould, a concert artist offering a special Berlin performance to CIMCIM on our one free evening but it being neglected, or Frances Palmer's plight: the disappearance of adequate political support for the Horniman Museum.
My wish for my CIMCIM colleagues is that there may be as close an interconnection as possible between the values they represent and the nature of the structures within which they work.
Back to Bad Säckingen, here is how our little museum functions. First, a quick look at its situation and a brief history. The city of Bad Säckingen has some twenty thousand inhabitants and lies on the Rhine River which forms the boundary between Germany and Switzerland, incidentally with the oldest still-existing covered wooden bridge over the Rhine. It is also the home of a legend about a trumpeter: the "Trompeter von Säckingen" is the title of an epic poem from 1856 by the well-known Romantic poet Victor von Scheffel (1826-86), who actually once lived in Säckingen for a short period. In 1884 it was made into an opera, with text by Rudolf Bunge and music by Victor Nessler (1841-90). The opera enjoyed enormous success in its time; it is said that there were nine hundred performances in 1888 in North Germany alone! Combined, the poem and the opera have given Bad Säckingen ("Bad" was added to the name in 1978) an indelible and instantaneously recognizable reputation in the German-speaking world as the home of the legendary trumpeter: street and restaurants are even named after some of the poem's and opera's characters.
It was therefore understandable that the mayor Günther Nufer jumped at the chance in 1984 to purchase the private collection of Ernst W. Buser from Binningen near Basel, Switzerland, a mere half hour's train ride away. Room was made for the collection - at that time numbering some fifty instruments and another fifty graphic works - on the first floor (seven rooms and a large central hall) of the former Schönau Castle (seventeenth century), which is popularly known as the Trumpeter's castle and is located in a beautiful large park one minute's walk from the pedestrian area in the heart of the old town. The opening ceremony took place on the 27th October 1895, with John Henry van der Meer pronouncing the main address.
The museum director is directly responsible to the mayor, has the use of the mayor's secretary, and his contract calls for him to work on an average of eight hours a week at his own discretion. A caretaker, constantly present, also looks after the other collections exhibited in the castle (clock museum and Black Forest living room on the ground floor, archaeology and local history displays on the second and third floors). The director also works closely with the town Cultural Officer, organizing exhibitions in the museum's rooms (after the opening exhibition, two so far, both dealing with centenaries: of Scheffel's death in 1986 and of Yamaha's founding in 1987), and chamber-music concerts in the 200-seat concert hall on the second floor. A more ambitious Trumpet Festival, featuring both international artists and ensembles as well as younger talent, is to be inaugurated with city and state funds in 1989.
Not only the director's working schedule but also his budget is unconventional. Up to now the operating budget came out of a freewill "offering" extracted annually by the mayor from the operator of the local gambling casino, but since this establishment has been shut down as the result of a police raid half a year ago, there is no longer a clear-cut budget. However, for acquisitions and restaurants there seems to be enough money; in any case, standard procedure has always been to go directly to the mayor when an interesting instrument turned up. In this way, since the museum's opening it has been possible to supplement the Buser collection by the acquisition of some important items, including an original 1795 edition of the Altenburg trumpet treatise, a unique manuscript of 1688-89 containing trumpet duets by Bartolomeo Bismantova, a natural trumpet by Anton Kerner (supplementing the two Kerner trumpets already owned, which were made by his two sons), a rare trumpet banner from the Victorian epoch, the valve-slide trumpet by Pace auctioned by Sotheby. Obviously, in a small town there must be some limit to available monies, and so we feel ourselves fortunate not to be in the harpsichord-collecting business.
The advantages of a small town and limited (or non-existent) hierarchical structure were also apparent in the matter of a catalogue. One was desired for the museum opening, and so I prepared one in two months, learning to use the museum computer at the same time. The catalogue was given a very attractive graphic presentation in the shortest possible period of preparation, it contains an unusually small number of typographical errors and (according to John Webb's kind review in the 1987 Galpin Society Journal), a maximum of desired information; it contains a photo of every object in the collection. My sympathies go out to colleagues in more important collections who have not been able to bring out catalogues in years. In some cases I feel they may be victims of their own Utopian ideas as to what a catalogue might contain; but a little will-power plus a culturally aware and benevolent mayor, can turn ideas into deeds.
Read at the CIMCIM Meeting, Berlin, 11-17 April 1988.
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© CIMCIM 1989.
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