Sure, the City of Music has its limitations. Instead of being about the whole history of music, it’s almost exclusively about European music from the origins of the opera to the very early 20th century, with just a couple of cases attempting to cover things like jazz, electronic music, and, say, music from anyplace else in the world.
But given that, this museum is one of the very best in Paris. They do a great job of educating the visitor through a combination of logical organization, clear signage, a workable audio guide with illustrative music, and, what’s best, an almost continuous presence of demonstrators who lecture and play instruments in areas where you can wander in and out when you get enough of a middle-aged French woman perhaps-overly-soulfully demonstrating the Buddhist flute. What’s even better (for me) is the way in which the museum gives not just technical details but rather the social history of music, which includes entertainingly bizarre aspects such as 18th century music boxes used to teach birds how to sing (META) and 19th century exercise kits for the fingers of pianist-wannabes. Go!
