Geophone (musical instrument) Geophone (musical instrument) The geophone is a percussion instrument, invented by the French composer Olivier Messiaen for use in his large composition for piano and orchestra entitled "Des canyons aux étoiles…" ("From the canyons to the stars…"). It consists of a drum filled with thousands of small lead pellets, and is played by swirling it around slowly so that the noise of the pellets resembles the sound of dry shifting earth. Messiaen commissioned a Parisian instrument maker to construct one to his design, and he carried this instrument worldwide to early performances of the piece (which was given its first
Berlin Musical Instrument Museum 1984, the museum has been located in a Wisniewski-designed building at the Kemper Platz, next to the Berlin Philharmonic on the Kulturforum. Today there are over 3,200 instruments in the collection and about 800 exhibits are presented in permanent exhibition. Those instruments that are still playable are played regularly. Today the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) is part of the State Institute for Music Research, under the auspices of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation. The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) and the State Institute for Music Research (SIM) form a unit in Berlin. Their common building was constructed between 1979 and 1984