Mahillon, Victor-Charles (EN)

Mahillon Victor-Charles, *10 March 1841 Brussels, †17 June 1924 St-JeanCap-Ferrat, Belgian builder of instruments, acoustician and instrumentologist, son of Charles. From 1865, a co-owner of the company, the management of which he took over in 1887. He introduced several improvements to the instruments produced by the company. In 1870, he constructed a metal contrabassoon, in 1905 – a new type of piccolo trumpet in B, facilitating the performance of Baroque clarino parts, and also produced (from 1874) the forgotten oboe d’amore. In 1877, he was commissioned to create a museum of musical instruments at the Brussels Conservatory and became its first curator. Out of a small collection (177 pieces), he created one of the most significant centres of this type in the world (at the time of his death, the collection contained 3,500 pieces). He made copies of rare wind instruments (Roman lituus and buccina, whole families of 16^th– and 17^th-century wind instruments), which were used at concerts he organised. His lifetime achievement is a monumental Catalogue descriptif et analytique…, in which he described around 3,300 European and non-European musical instruments, justifying the scientific foundations of instrument systematics in the introductory article, Essai de classification méthodique de tous les instruments anciens et modernes. He based it on the acoustic criterion, although not always consistently, and divided instruments into four groups determined by the type of the vibrator (aerophones, chordophones, membranophones, autophones), making further divisions (branches, sections, subsections) based on terminology by C. Linnaeus from 1735. Victor-Charles Mahillon’s taxonomy has retained its general outlines (after modifications by E. v. Hornbostel and C. Sachs 1914 and H.-H. Dräger 1948) to this day, with great relevance. He wrote numerous scientific works, mainly in the field of wind instrument acoustics and playing techniques, as well as many encyclopaedia entries.

Literature: E. v. Hornbostel, C. Sachs Systematik der Musikinstrumente. Ein Versuch, “Zeitschrift für Ethnologie” XLIII, 1914; E. Closson Victor Mahillon, “Bulletin de la Société Union Musicologique” IV, 1924; F.A. Drechsel Kompendium zur Akustik der Blasinstrumente nach Victor-Charles Mahillon, Leipzig 1927, reprint Celle 1979; E. Closson La facture des instruments de musique en Belgique, Brussels 1935; M.J. Kartomi On Concepts and Classifications of Musical Instruments, Chicago 1990; M. Haine N. Meeùs Dictionnaire des facteurs d’instruments de musique en Wallonie et à Bruxelles, Liège, 1986; H. Vereecke, S. Carter Mouthpieces for Brasswinds in the Writings of Victor–Charles Mahillon: A Historical and Analytical Review, “Historic Brass Society Journal” 26 (2014).