Keyboard instruments

THE COLLECTION OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

The Collection of Musical Instruments in Ptuj Castle is of national importance. With over 300 musical instruments for playing art and folk music, it is the most extensive collection of its kind in Slovenia. The collection also includes sheet music and instrument making tools. A Roman double flute from the 2nd or 3rd century is especially noteworthy, as it is a rarity of global importance.

This exhibition presents the Ptuj Civic Guard Band, the younger Ptuj Brass Band, wind instruments, plucked and bowed string instruments, and keyboard instruments. The instruments were made by renowned instrument makers from Vienna, Graz, and Prague, as well as by local masters.

Musical instruments from Archaeological Heritage

One of the most important exhibits of the Ptuj museum is a tibia, a rare archaeological find dating from the 2nd or 3rd century AD. The ancient double flute, artfully crafted from bone coated with thin layers of bronze and brass sheeting, must have already been a treasure in the time of Roman Poetovio. The Romans believed that the tibia possessed magical powers; its music would chase away evil spirits and invoke the good ones. Finds of ancient musical instruments are very uncommon, which is why the pieces of the tibia excavated by archaeologists in Ptuj in 1988 are a rarity of global importance!

Ptuj Brass Band

A civic brass band was founded in Ptuj in 1855. The band performed at town festivities, promenade concerts, and performances in the Ptuj City Theatre. The brass band soon evolved into the Brass Orchestra, which is still active today.
The musical instruments on display date from the second half of the 19th century to the mid-20th century.

Heritage of the Ptuj Military Band

Ptuj has a long tradition of having city musicians. In the late Middle Ages, the town already had a Civic Guard with instrumentalists.
The oldest depiction of the Civic Guard Band, which shows five musicians playing around a table, dates from 1815. A copy of the relief can be seen as part of the recreated beer hall in the left-hand corner of the room. The life-size soldier is a drummer of the military brass band from around the same time.
The displayed instruments were made by renowned masters from Vienna and Graz in the 18th and 19th centuries.
An especially noteworthy instrument is the bass horn, a curious instrument used mainly in military brass bands. Its lower part resembles a bassoon and its upper part a horn.
The military snare drum from 1759 features a German inscription on the edge of the lower membrane. It reads that in 1809, the sounds of a French march from this drum drove the Austrian troops from the Croatian border.

The subtle sounds of solo and chamber music

Bowed String Instruments

Between the 16th and 18th centuries, many forms of bowed string instruments called violas were in use. They differed in shape, size, tuning, number of strings, and the way they were played. In a separate display case on the right, we have a viola d’amore, a product of the great Prague instrument maker Johannes Udalricus Eberle from 1732. It has sympathetic strings tuned an octave higher under the playing strings, which resonate when played, creating a characteristically romantic sound. The Ptuj collection includes many bowed string instruments by Slovenian luthiers, including a number of donated objects from the workshop of violinist, pedagogue and luthier Maksimilijan Skalar, who worked in various Slovenian towns, including Ptuj.

Wind Instruments

The woodwind instruments from the Ptuj collection also include examples made by great European masters, such as Johann Schell from Nuremberg and the Viennese masters Friedrich Hammig and Stephan Koch. Among the most versatile makers of wind instruments was Simon Unglerth, who probably trained in Vienna but worked in Ljubljana. His instruments, distinguished by their excellent mechanics and the use of first-class materials, have been preserved in New York, Copenhagen, and Ptuj. In the 19th century, special instruments such as the csakan, a flute embedded in a walking stick, were made to play lighter music. The csakan is displayed in a separate showcase to the right of the wind instruments.

Plucked String Instruments

A lute from 1694 with a preserved original case by the great Viennese master Andreas Berr came from the nearby Dornava mansion. Only two lutes survive from Berr’s workshop; the other, dating from 1699, is in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
The featured plucked string instruments also include two diatonic harps, played by travelling musicians, and the double-action pedal harp, which gained popularity in orchestral and chamber music.

All keyboard instruments have a keyboard, a row of levers that are pressed by the fingers, but they differ in their mechanics.
The clavichord has mechanics with tangents, which give it a gentle, quiet sound. The clavichord of the Ljubljana organ builder Johann Georg Eisl from 1757, so far the only known clavichord maker in Slovenia, testifies to the manufacture of this type of instrument in Slovenia.
Like the harpsichord, the spinet on display belongs to a group of instruments with a mechanism that features quills and produces a sound similar to plucked string instruments. The spinet was made in 1936 in a Baroque style.
The other instruments displayed in this room are pianos of various shapes: two table pianos, a pyramid piano, and a children’s piano. The pyramid piano was made between 1871 and 1878 by Martin Ropas from Vransko.
In the 18th century, the piano with hammer-action mechanics was invented. Within a few decades, it completely eclipsed the clavichord and harpsichord. The development and refinement of mechanics in the 18th and 19th centuries gave it excellent expressive possibilities and established it as the most widely used solo and accompanying instrument.
Feel free to try out the didactic aids on display – they demonstrate how the mechanics of different keyboard instruments work.

Keyboard instruments

The oldest hammer action piano in this room is an instrument made by Karl Benedickt of Graz between 1785 and 1790. The piano by the great Viennese master Ferdinand Hofmann, made around 1795, also belongs to the golden age of Viennese classical music. To the left of them is an early 19th-century grand piano, one of the few surviving pianos made by Ignaz Bösendorfer, the founder of the famous Viennese workshop.
Since the end of the 18th century, 11 piano makers have been known in Slovenia, including master Andreas Wittenz of Ljubljana. His 1856 piano is a fine example of the Viennese school.
Player pianos are mechanical devices that automatically play melodies written on metallic rolls or on perforated paper. They were particularly popular from the second half of the 19th century until the Second World War. On the left is a Phonola, which attaches to the piano keys with wooden levers. On the right, you can see a piano automaton with mechanics already built into the piano body.

The skills and secrets of pipe organ builders

This didactically designed exhibition provides an insight into the craft of the Celje Baroque pipe organ builder Joannes Franciscus Janeček. The Czech-born master worked at a time when churches were being equipped with organs, and the nobility was commissioning salon positives for castle chapels and homes. Janeček created around 150 organs, a third of which are still preserved today in Croatia and Slovenia.
On display are Janeček’s salon positive from 1745 and church positive from around 1730, while a positive from 1748 can be seen in the castle’s chapel.
You can produce the sounds of the individual pipes and the model organ yourself! Turn on the main switch and move the wooden levers under the pipes to the left.

TOMBSTONE OF FRIEDRICH IX, LORD OF PTUJ

The tombstone with a relief depiction of Knight Friedrich IX, born around 1403 and died in 1438, once stood above the tomb of the Lords of Ptuj in the church of the Dominican Monastery in Ptuj.
Friedrich IX of Ptuj was the last male heir of the Lords of Ptuj, a noble family which established itself in the early 12th century in the service of the archbishops of Salzburg, and at the time of Friedrich IX was second only to the Counts of Celje in power, influence, and importance in Styria.
During their three hundred years of residence in Ptuj, the Lords of Ptuj had a decisive influence on the appearance of the town and its surroundings with the foundation of the Dominican and Minorite monasteries and the building of the pilgrimage church at Ptujska Gora.

THE COLLECTION OF ARMS

THE COLLECTION OF ARMS at Ptuj Castle is of national importance, as it comprises more than 500 pieces of various cold weapons, firearms, hunting and sporting weapons, and protective equipment dating from the 15th to the 20th centuries. Most of the exhibited items come from the nearby Vurberk Castle, while some pieces were collected by members of the Ptuj Museum Society.

Pole weapons

On the left side of the armoury, pole weapons are displayed: spears and lances, halberds, corseques, partisans, spontoons, battle axes, and maces.
The pole increased the power of a soldiers swing and stab. Lances were mainly used by cavalrymen, while spears were used by the infantry when trying to stop a cavalry charge. These weapons also protected marksmen during the time-consuming reloading of their rifles.
The halberd evolved from the battle axe, to which a hook and spike were added. It was used from the 14th to the 16th century for hacking, stabbing, and catching with the hook. In the second half of the 16th and in the 17th century, it was mainly a weapon of guardsmen and trabants. Many halberds from this era are decorated with beautiful ornamentation.

Cannons

The cannons from the Ptuj collection are among the oldest preserved artillery weapons in Slovenia: the oldest is a wrought-iron light bombard, a typical representative of field artillery from the mid-15th century. The forge-welded iron field cannon is a generation younger, dating from the end of the 15th century. Both of these late medieval cannons fired stone cannonballs, while the other three early modern cannons fired cast-iron cannonballs.

Hook guns or arquebuses

Hook guns, or arquebuses, are named after the hook on the underside of the barrel, which was hooked to a wall to prevent the strong recoil from injuring the shooter. The weapons on display were made at the end of the 16th century. Only the barrels are preserved, without the mechanism and the stock.

Provincial mercenaries’ armours

The provincial mercenaries’ armours were used by foot soldiers and cavalrymen in the 16th and 17th centuries in defence against the Turks. They protected the soldiers from blows and shots from the enemy.
Their use was accelerated by the increasing penetrating power of projectiles. In the second half of the 16th century, the Styrian Estates ordered large quantities of protective equipment from the German city of Nuremberg, one of the most important and powerful centres of arms manufacture at the time. Many pieces of armour are stamped with the Nuremberg coat of arms, a seal of quality.

Bladed weapons

The bladed weapons on display include swords, sabres, pallasch swords, rapiers, and yatagans.
For centuries, swords were the principal weapons of warriors; they were used by both infantry and cavalry. Swords have a straight, double-edged blade. The two-handed sword displayed on the table is from the 16th century.
Sabres have a curved single-edged blade. They came to our region with the Turks in the 14th century.
Pallasch swords have a broad, straight blade. From the 17th century onwards, they were used by heavy cavalry instead of swords.
Rapiers have a characteristic narrow blade.
Yatagans can be seen on a stand along the right wall of the armoury. These are long knives with curved, single-edged blades that originated in Central Asia. They came to our region with the Turks. Most of the yatagans in the Museum’s collection bear Arabic inscriptions giving the year of manufacture according to the Islamic calendar, the name of the maker and owner, and the religious motto.

Muskets

The muskets from the 17th century have a fuse cord ignition mechanism. They had to be propped against a support when firing. According to Herberstein family lore, they were used in the Battle of Saint Gotthard with the Turks in 1664.

Flintlocks

The flintlocks originate in the Balkans and are inspired by oriental designs. They have a flint ignition mechanism.

Replica of the ceremonial armour

This high-quality replica of the ceremonial armour of the Visconti dukes of Milan, based on an original from six centuries ago, captures the romantic spirit of the 19th century, when bloody conflicts and cruelties were forgotten and weapons were admired for their craftsmanship and ornamentation. Collections intended for viewing started being put together in castles. In the absence of original items, replicas were often used.