Year 5 Musical Museum Visit

As part of the ‘history of music’ focus this term, Year 5 embarked on an exciting trip today to the musical museum which happens to be over the road in Brentford! The visit was a morning exploration tour that looked at various instruments that have been collected over time. To name a few, this included self-player rolling pianos, a twin piano, a large-scale organ, a theremin (used in Doctor Who!), record players, a gramophone, and the vast array of Steinway pianos.

There were too many instruments to name them all, and it was clear that the year group had never seen so many grand pianos clumped together in one space before. The challenge for the trip was to find all the instruments and identify them through a ‘music detective passport’ which was provided by the museum.

All groups successfully managed to do this, and it was nice to see some healthy competition across the year group whilst on this instrumental hunt. The main room could not have looked more different to what we are used to when we do our end of year show there. The ‘stage’ was covered in different pianos, most being over 100 years old and rare antiques. It was lovely to see this space as it was set up to be- a museum of collected instruments that reflect the wonderful changes in classical music history.

The Year 5s were a credit to themselves and representing the school. They all gained a wealth of knowledge from this visit to the museum, and I hope our young musicians now feel even more inspired to play classical music for concerts and assemblies.