Victor-Charles Mahillon (March 10, 1841 in

Brussels Brussels, officially the Brussels-Capital Region, (All text and all but one graphic show the English name as Brussels-Capital Region.) is a Communities, regions and language areas of Belgium#Regions, region of Belgium comprising #Municipalit ...

– June 17, 1924 in

Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat (; ; Italian language, Italian: ''San Giovanni Capo Ferrato'') is a Communes of France, commune in the Alpes-Maritimes Departments of France, department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur Regions of France, region in Southe ...

, 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 Music, 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 ...

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 buil ...

and

Organology Organology (; ) is the science of musical instruments and their classifications. It embraces study of instruments' history, instruments used in different cultures, technical aspects of how instruments produce sound, and musical instrument classi ...

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 , 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 particular ins ...

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 is a reference work or compendium providing summaries of knowledge, either general or special, in a particular field or discipline. Encyclopedias are divided into articles or entries that are arranged alphabetically by articl ...

'', 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 The International Inventions Exhibition was a world's fair held in South Kensington in 1885. As with the earlier exhibitions in a series of fairs in South Kensington following the Great Exhibition, Queen Victoria was patron and her son Albert Edw ...

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 ( electrophone ...

s. His classification of instruments was later adopted by

Erich von Hornbostel Erich Moritz von Hornbostel (25 February 1877 – 28 November 1935) was an Austrian ethnomusicologist, comparative musicologist, and scholar of music. He is remembered for his pioneering work in the field of ethnomusicology, and for the Sachs� ...

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 Eric ...

, and is still in use today.

Honours

* 1919 : Commander of the

Order of Leopold Order of Leopold may refer to: * Order of Leopold (Austria), founded in 1808 by emperor Francis I of Austria and discontinued in 1918 * Order of Leopold (Belgium), founded in 1832 by king Leopold I of Belgium * Order of Leopold II, founded in Congo ...

.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