Royal College of Music Museum

The Royal College of Music Museum houses a remarkable artifact that predates the colonization of the Americas. Among its collection is a clavicytherium, a rare upright harpsichord built in southern Germany around the year 1480. It stands as the oldest surviving stringed keyboard instrument in the world. Because the instrument is too fragile to be played, researchers and museum staff commissioned a precise acoustic replica in 1973 to hear the sounds that would have echoed through European halls over five centuries ago.