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The musical instruments collection of César Snoeck as source of "facsimiles"
Event date: 02/11/2026
Location: Seminarraum SIM, 3 p.m.
Emanuele Marconi, director of the SIMPK Musical Instrument Museum, discusses the important collection of Belgian César Snoeck as the source of the first known museum reproductions.
Belgian collector César Snoeck (1834–1898) assembled one of the largest and most important musical instrument collections of the 19th century. A notary by profession, he devoted much of his life to collecting. Preserved and displayed in his house and documented in two printed catalogues, the collection comprised around 2,150 instruments at the time of his death. It was then sold and, being too large for a single institution, divided among three buyers: 1,145 objects were acquired by Emperor Wilhelm II for the Hochschule für Musik in Berlin (today the Musikinstrumenten-Museum in Berlin), 363 pieces were purchased by Baron von Stackelberg, director of the Imperial Chapel in Saint Petersburg, on behalf of Tsar Nicholas II (now in the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music), and the remaining part went in 1908 to the Museum of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels (today the Musical Instruments Museum).
The talk focuses on the role of Snoeck’s collection as a source for the earliest known museum reproductions, commissioned by the musical instruments museums in Brussels (Belgium, late 19th century) and in La Couture-Boussey (France, between 1888 and 1896).
Start 3 p.m.
Duration 60 minutes
Free admission