Sigal Music Museum

Introduction

The Sigal Music Museum celebrates music through the ages by entertaining and informing audiences through interactive exhibits, educational programs and intimate concert performances. The following are a selection of publications from the museum.

Sigal Music Museum Website: https://sigalmusicmuseum.org

Featured Items

Albert R. Rice

Four Centuries of Musical Instruments

The Marlowe A. Sigal Collection

Captured in this volume in more than 700 striking color photos are many historically significant musical instruments created by some of the most important and iconic makers of the last 400 years. Six hundred instruments are presented, including keyboards, flutes and whistles, woodwinds, strings, and percussion. Each instrument is described in the text, including unusual characteristics, rarity, number of known instruments by the same maker, historical provenance when known, former ownership, citations of relevant patents, and bibliographic citations with more information and associated photos. Early and historically significant instruments made in Italy, England, France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and other parts of Europe are examined. Several world cultures are also represented by instruments. Indexes by maker, city, and country are provided for easy reference.

Thomas Strange and Patrick Hawkins

Facing South

Keyboard Instruments in the Early Carolinas

Facing South: Keyboard Instruments in the Early Carolinas was the inaugural exhibit of the Carolina Music Museum, now Sigal Music Museum, located in the Heritage Green—Greenville, South Carolina’s cultural heart of the city’s downtown. Featuring harpsichords and pianos that were in the Carolinas from the eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, the exhibit tells the stories of the people who sold, bought, repaired, played, taught on, and listened to these instruments, interweaving information gleaned from newspaper advertisements, personal accounts, and material artifacts. In doing so, the exhibit demonstrates how the various historical factors shaped the development and cultivation of music in the Carolinas.

Thomas Strange

“A Respectable Inhabitant of This City”

John Geib and Sons, Organ Builders & Piano Forte Manufacturers

Once a footnote in keyboard history, John Lawrence Geib emerges here as a pivotal—and misunderstood—figure in the rise of the modern piano. Drawing on newly digitized letters, business records, newspaper notices, and surviving instruments, this richly illustrated study reconstructs the life, work, and ambitions of Geib and his sons from late‑eighteenth‑century London to early America. It challenges long‑held assumptions, clarifies myths, and places Geib’s innovative escapement mechanism and workshop practices in their proper historical context. Written for historians, organologists, instrument makers, and serious music enthusiasts, the book offers a fresh, evidence‑based portrait of a family whose craftsmanship and adaptability helped shape the piano and organ industries on both sides of the Atlantic.