Victor-Charles Mahillon (March 10, 1841 in

Brussels Brussels (french: Bruxelles or ; nl, Brussel ), officially the Brussels-Capital Region (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) (french: link=no, Région de Bruxelles-Capitale; nl, link=no, Bruss ...

– June 17, 1924 in

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (; oc, Sant Joan de Cap Ferrat; Italian: ''San Giovanni Capo Ferrato'') is a commune in the Alpes-Maritimes department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region in Southeastern France. In 2017, it had a population of 1,57 ...

, France) was a Belgian musician, instrument builder and writer on musical topics. He was the founder and first curator of the Musée instrumental du Conservatoire Royal de Musique, known today as the Musical Instrument Museum. He built, collected, and described more than 1500

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who pl ...

Biography

Early life and family

Born in a family of instrument makers and music publishers, son of Charles Mahillon (1813-1887), and brother of Joseph-Jean Mahillon (1848-1923, Adolphe Désiré Mahillon (1851-1906) and Ferdinand-Charles-Eugène Mahillon (1855-1948). His uncle Barthelemi and his son Fernand-Charles-Henri had the same profession. Partly self-taught, Mahillon studied

Musical Acoustics Musical acoustics or music acoustics is a multidisciplinary field that combines knowledge from physics, psychophysics, organology (classification of the instruments), physiology, music theory, ethnomusicology, signal processing and instrument build ...

and

Organology Organology (from Ancient Greek () 'instrument' and (), 'the study of') is the science of musical instruments and their classifications. It embraces study of instruments' history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how i ...

and started working at his father's factory of musical instruments in 1865. In 1869, he started the musical journal ''L'Echo musical'', which ran until 1886.

Brussels Royal Music Conservatory

He was the first

curator A curator (from la, cura, meaning "to take care") is a manager or overseer. When working with cultural organizations, a curator is typically a "collections curator" or an "exhibitions curator", and has multifaceted tasks dependent on the parti ...

of the instrument collection at the Brussels Royal Music Conservatory from 1879 and contributed many of his own instruments to the collection. He had a deep interest in the acoustical science but especially that pertaining to wind instruments. While his work in acoustics was advanced for the time, and has some historical interest, it has been largely supplanted. In addition to gathering a large number of historically interesting European wind instruments, he collected many ethnologically interesting specimens from around the world and prepared a three volume catalog of these (in French). His various articles that appeared in the ''

Encyclopædia Britannica, ninth edition An encyclopedia (American English) or encyclopædia (British English) is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles ...

'', are still of interest. In 1885 he provided instruments to Alfred James Hipkins for use in a series of concerts at the International Inventions Exhibition in London. In 1890 he collaborated with Brian Greene to develop much of the more in-depth classifications of

idiophone An idiophone is any musical instrument that creates sound primarily by the vibration of the instrument itself, without the use of air flow (as with aerophones), strings ( chordophones), membranes ( membranophones) or electricity ( electroph ...

s. His classification of instruments was later adopted by Erich von Hornbostel and

Curt Sachs Curt Sachs (; 29 June 1881 – 5 February 1959) was a German musicologist. He was one of the founders of modern organology (the study of musical instruments). Among his contributions was the Hornbostel–Sachs system, which he created with Er ...

, and is still in use today.

Honours

* 1919 : Commander of the Order of Leopold. RD of 14.11.1919

Works

*1874
''Les Éléments d'acoustique musicale et instrumentale''
*1889: contributor to ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Ninth edition *1910: contributor to ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' Eleventh edition

References

External links

* * 1841 births 1924 deaths Belgian musical instrument makers Musicians from Brussels {{Belgium-musician-stub