Variations on a theme

Architectural Review, The, May, 1997 by Charlotte Ellis

The new national Musee de a Musique (Museum of Music) in Paris forms part of the Cite de la Musique built at La Villette from 1986 to designs by Christian de Portzamparc (AR March 1986 and May 1995). Franck Hammoutene was appointed to design the museum interior following a competition held in the aftermath of the bicentenary of the French Revolution.

The museum was created to house a collection that owes its origins to the Revolution and the seizure of property from absentee aristocrats: over 300 antique and foreign musical instruments from this booty were assigned to the Conservatoire National de Musique (National School of Music) to found a study collection in 1796. Many were later damaged, lost or sold but, during the Second Empire, the Conservatoire acquired a valuable collection of musical instruments (bought in 1861 by the Minister of State) from M. Clapisson, an eminent composer. At that time, the public was allowed to see the instruments 'on application to the porter'.(1) A century later, the study collection at the Conservatoire had grown and was still growing, modern curatorial methods had been adopted and it was open to the public on one and a half days a week (except in summer).(2) Its transfer to a new museum at La Villette was decided soon after the creation of the Cite de la Musique was first announced as a presidential grand projet in 1982.

One of several public facilities 'federated' along the 'musical promenade' in the second-phase eastern sector, the museum occupies the symbolically fractured dome slice crowning Portzamparc's urban composition and four interlinked pavilions bounding Parc de La Villette.

But opinion was long divided on how the musical instruments should be presented in the new museum - par for the course; for Portzamparc's entire project was beset by numerous vicissitudes.(3) Although Hammoutene's appointment was confirmed in 1991, the museum brief remained in a state of flux until 1992. Once the legal status of the museum had been established in 1993,(4) tenders were received and the fitting out was begun, but faults in the super-structure delayed completion until 1996. Somewhere along the line, the need to protect the musical instruments from sunlight was made a technical priority.

Hammoutene's strategy was to dramatise these difficulties by treating the inside of Portzamparc's buildings as a wild and inhospitable place, a Piranesian ruin prey to the elements, where his own pristine interventions afford solace and protection. Windows, when not actually blocked up, are shielded from the pernicious rays of the sun by grey-painted trellis screens, or by fixed translucent panels overlaid with a layer of grey paint, or otherwise baffled. Inner wall linings and false ceilings cocoon exhibits and the visiting public from contact with the primitive structure. And, in the cavernous void beneath Portzamparc's dome segment, where the dramatically distressed stain-scarred concrete carapace is left exposed, one of Hammoutene's gleaming showcases resembles nothing so much as a free-standing bus shelter (albeit a very stylish one).

Floor levels in the two main ranges are interlinked and articulated round a vertical circulation core in a manner Jean-Claude Garcias has compared to the various blades and corkscrews, tin-openers and hoof-picks of a Swiss army knife.(5) To reach successive exhibition spaces, a prodigious number of supplementary staircases have to be negotiated in near darkness - a disorienting experience doubtless intended to sharpen perceptions of the exhibits.

In line with the revised brief, 900 instruments (from the 4500 in the present collection) are on show, in a chronological sequence of thematic displays. The music of specific periods is evoked by three-dimensional models of places or performance spaces (the Marble Court at Versailles in 1674, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus in 1882) and by some other exhibits (such as portraits of composers). Visitors are supplied with head-sets programmed to dispense bursts of music and commentaries in French or English at points in the circuit and which crackle most horribly on entering and leaving each zone. Supplementary information is provided by interactive VDUs and some of the historic instruments, and reproductions of them, are to be played at live demonstrations planned both in the main exhibition spaces and in a small auditorium. There is also a space for temporary exhibitions, a bookshop and a lift for disabled people.

The new museum was opened to the public on 18 January but access to it was blocked 12 days later by a sit-in staged by professional musicians and other performance artists in protest against planned government measures which, they claim, would leave them no better off than the sans-culottes. It had not re-opened at the time of writing.

1 Galignani's New Paris Guide, 1863.

2 Paris Blue Guide, 1968 edition.

3 Cf 'Cite de la Musique: le Parcours du Combattant', in d'Architectures, No 52, Jan/Feb 1995.

4 Legislation creating the National Museum of Music was passed in 1993; the formal transfer of the musical instrument collection from the Conservatoire took place in 1995.