Collezione Tagliavini

The complex of St. Columba, one of the oldest churches in Bologna, founded in 616 by Bishop Peter, disciple of the Irish monk Colombano, now houses the collection Tagliavini and a library specialized on music, donated by the heirs of Professor Mischiati Oscar.

 The Collection consists of about seventy ancient musical instruments, all in perfect working order, which span across the sixteenth and the twentieth century, and includes rare and unique pieces, such as ‘harpischord with hammers and feathers” by Giovanni Ferrini (1746) and a folding harpsichord of the early eighteenth century.

 The instruments were subjected to gentle but effective restorations, mostly in Bologna by the ‘Masters of wood’, Arnaldo Boldrini and Renato Carnevali, who made the collection a perfect combination of living ‘sound monuments’

 The Collection includes many Italian and European schools. Among Italian schools the Bolognese and Neapolitan excel, the first for the organs and harpsichords from the seventeenth and eighteenth century and nineteenth century pianos, the second with harpsichords and spinet of XVI, XVII e XVIII centuries.

 The Roman school is represented by two harpsichords and a small ‘spinet’ of the seventeenth century, the Venetian school by two ‘harpsichords’ of sixteenth cent. and the Florentine school displays one of the last Italian harpsichords, by Vincenzio Sodi (1791-92) and the above-mentioned instrument by Giovanni Ferrini. The most important instruments come from the major European capitals. To be worth mentioning an ‘Italian’ spinet by Louis Denis from Paris (1681), two pianos ‘on the table’ built respectively in London and in Amsterdam in 1786, two Viennese grand pianos of the early nineteenth century, a tiny ‘demi-inclined’ piano bench made in Paris in the middle of the century and a grand piano made in Berlin in 1866.

 There are also unique musical instruments, such as the ‘crystal piano’ by Josesph Bisogno (Naples, 1860), the aforemonetioned piano bench, the ‘Dulcitone’ where they are beaten ‘pitch fork’ (Glasgow, Thomas Matchell, c. 1910). Finally, a group of automatic instruments, organs, pianos, musical box.

 In brief this is a collection that continues to be enriched by new pieces, and thanks to the donation of the Foundation Cassa di Risparmio in Bologna may be permanently exhibited in the renovated complex of St. Columba.

 Collezione Tagliavini is part of the cultural, artistic and museum itinerary Genus Bononiae. Musei nella Città.