The contributors to this volume examine musical instrument collectors and their reasons and means for collecting: Who were they professionally and personally? Why did they collect musical instruments? How did they acquire their objects? What were their collecting criteria and aesthetics?

Following a critical introduction, two chapters on historically overlooked yet essential themes – provenance and collecting in the context of colonialism – lay the foundation for nineteen chapters, each focusing on an individual collector, telling personal and individual stories of collecting and collections. These narratives illuminate a rich contextual history, including the factors that shaped each collector's acquisition and use of objects. Because many private collections later became the mainstay of institutional ones, this volume holds that it is essential to understand these collectors and historical collecting practices, in order to understand our museum collections today.

The book will be of interest to scholars working in material culture, collecting and museum studies, music history, and organology.