The intangible cultural heritage associated with musical instruments and the music sector is rapidly eroding and faces an imminent risk of being lost.

Musikk Instrument Akademiet received project funding to identify and collaborate with partners who hold the knowledge, practices, and traditions that form the intangible cultural heritage commonly described as the House of Musical Instruments.

The partners we seek will participate in a Creative Europe project under the Horizontal Europe strand. Together, we will examine how the negative developments currently affecting the sector can be reversed — particularly the rapid disappearance of educational institutions and professional knowledge environments dedicated to musical instrument making across the Nordic countries and Europe.

Urban and regional ecosystems supporting the repair, restoration, tuning, construction, and sale of musical instruments — consistent with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals on sustainable communities and local value creation — are now in severe decline. 

Since 1688, the town of Markneukirchen in Germany has been a major centre of musical instrument making and for several centuries was widely regarded as ‘the source of musical instrument craftsmanship for the world.’ After the town became part of East Germany, significant elements of its intangible cultural heritage were undermined, leaving the instrument-making sector in a state of long-term decline.

After 1990, the city initiated a systematic reconstruction of its intangible cultural heritage. In 2014, musical instrument making in Markneukirchen was inscribed on UNESCO’s List of Intangible Cultural Heritage. As part of this revitalisation, the musical instrument makers’ school, originally founded in 1836, was reopened, and the Institute of Musical Acoustics in Zwota was re-established. Today, Markneukirchen is home to approximately 130 companies, ranging from small two-person workshops to firms employing more than 120 people. Many craftspeople returned to the city to re-establish their workshops. In parallel, a vibrant ecosystem of festivals, music days, guilds, a music grammar school, a music museum, a symphony orchestra for instrument makers, wholesalers, and related cultural and professional institutions has emerged.

Markneukirchen is participating as a project partner and will contribute its experience in demonstrating how this revitalisation of intangible cultural heritage has been achieved. 

The city is participating as a project partner, having successfully halted the negative development.

Project status:

Completed and approved.