Join us for a visit to the museum of sound in Vienna. What is today a very interesting specialised museum, was originally a club for tape recorders with a clubhouse in Vienna.
In 1983, the Vienna District Museums Association started looking for suitable premises for a phono museum and eventually, the museum was set up at its current location where the main hall is entitled "Edison's legacy - when machines learned to speak - phonographs and gramophones from 1877 to 1939”. The room sports, among others, tin foil phonographs that were used to record and reproduce the human voice for the first time in 1877.
A very special exhibit is an Edison Peerless Motor Phonograph from 1894. The first song recorded with such a device was “Mary had a little lamb” - something that truly got people understand the idea of using phonographs for entertainment purposes.
The museum got a very generous donation of a phonograph collection of professor Bruno Fritscher in 1986 that made the museum a truly interesting site for all those interested in sound. A further merger with the collection of Dr. Kurt Krapfenbauer resulted in one of the largest collections of phonographs and gramophones in Europe - now fully covering the development of speaking machines from 1877 to 1938.
Today, the museum has 1000 exhibits, of which some 300 are on display. At the entrance to the first showroom there is a detailed documentation of the development history of the phonograph and gramophone, the electro-acoustic revolution, high fidelity stereophony and finally the digital present. The adjoining rooms are each dedicated to a section of music technology.
Interestingly, the majority of the exhibits on display in the museum can actually be put into operation and are sometimes also demonstrated to the public, check possible demonstration times with the museum management! Period-accurate orchestral recordings and chansons, as well as jazz singing, create an authentic atmosphere, so that the devices are perceived not only visually but also aurally. The change in the recorded music, from genre to genre, is just as important as the change in the devices themselves.
There is no loo, café or museum shop in the museum but you might need to walk up to Mariahilfer Straße, the centre of the Bezirks entertainment or take U4 from Pilgramgasse back to the centre to wash your hands and sip a cup of coffee or a refreshing Gespritzter.
Unfortunately, the Phonomuseum is not good for handicapped persons or persons with a pram. Although there is a pretty narrow lift that might just take your chair, you still need to take about a dozen stairs before getting to the lift.
Vienna Phono Museum
1060 Vienna
Mollardgasse 8/2/16
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