Sensitising Music Museum Visitors to the World of Tuning

The present paper explores the role of tuning and temperament in shaping the sonic experience of music museum visitors. It aims to raise awareness of these concepts among both specialist audiences (such as music students) and non-specialists (including music enthusiasts and cultural tourists) through curatorial practices which would enhance the narrative surrounding the listening experiences. The proposed solutions of guided analyses of single sounds and intervals of different frequencies and musical performances of contrasting temperaments, a detailed historical contextualisation of musical composition and performance provided by means of innovative multisensory techniques (virtual, augmented and mixed reality, 360-degree video), as well as viewing related contemporary world composers’, performers’ and tuners’ perspectives will help visitors appreciate the complexity and richness of tuning in an accessible way while also considering the popularity of the 432 Hz standard tuning pitch (Tuis, 2010). The research will concentrate on the musical heritage present in the Gallery of Musical Instruments at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin, reinterpreted as part of a doctoral project. Visitors should be able to listen to the most musically and historically relevant repertoire performed, where possible, on original instruments or their most faithful modern copies thanks to advanced technologies for sound display. The collection features instruments of all Hornbostel-Sachs categories, predominantly of European origin, dating from the late seventeenth century to the second half of the twentieth century. What is more, some of the string instruments are kept in playable conditions and are on loan to Conservatory students. Lastly, the paper may provide a foundation for best practices in tuning narration within musical instrument collections of different organological, cultural and historical focus.