Swiss Music Awards: Honors for SMEM’s electronic treasure

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Published on 05/23/2024

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It is an archive that resonates in the present, and whose rich harmonics have reached the ears of the Federal Music Jury. Among the personalities of the Swiss sonic landscape designated Thursday by the Federal Office of Culture is an immense collection of dusted keyboards preserved in the basements of Bluefactory, in Fribourg. Founded in 2016, the Swiss Museum and Center for Electronic Musical Instruments (SMEM) is the winner of a Special Music Prize, a prestigious distinction worth 25,000 francs, which recognizes the work of the guardians of this sanctuary where the history of modern music.

“It’s a very nice surprise, which rewards the thousands of hours invested to bring this collection to life. This will allow us to continue testing, repairing and restoring the instruments, because there are still ten years of work to do…” reacts Christoph Allenspach, president of the SMEM association. A small structure of around thirty volunteers which operates with a budget of 200,000 francs per year and attempts to bring back into play a treasure of nearly 5000 untraceable synthesizers, drum machinestube amplifiers, organs, sequencers and other effects modules riddled with potentiometers, a true vintage Holy Grail of today’s music.

These priceless pieces, patiently collected by the Basel specialist Klemens Trenkle in those decades when digital had made analog obsolete, were piled up in the warehouse of a carpentry before being lent permanently to SMEM. Forty moves later, these sometimes unique models arrived in Fribourg, where they continue to be inventoried. “We sorted through everything that didn’t really fit into the collection, like radios and televisions, before starting to document the pieces when we managed to gather enough knowledge, because information is often lacking,” notes Christoph Allenspach . Currently, 2600 objects are published on the SMEM website and 20% of the collection is briefly documented. It will take us another 3 or 4 years to do everything.” Because in the meantime, some 500 instruments have been added to the collection, often donated by their owners. “And it continues to arrive every week! The latest was yesterday, a portable Lipp organ, very small but very heavy, which came to us from the depths of Bavaria!”

“There are still ten years of work to go”
Christopher Allenspach

Double the surface

Because if the SMEM is a museum with a heritage vocation, which welcomes some 1500 to 2000 curious people each year, it is also a center of technological resources whose digital aura goes beyond borders. And above all, it has become a platform for experimentation, a workshop open to sometimes very experienced artists who come to connect their recorders to the audio outputs of these unusual or rare instruments, like this Hammond Novachord organ from 1938, just restored. In the playroom inaugurated in 2018, the French electro musician Thylacine came to refine the soundtrack of a series for Canal+, the Young Gods came to draw sampled sounds for their album In C, the figures of drone Stephen O’Malley or techno Legowelt have played new sound atmospheres. An influence also nourished by international residencies supported by Pro Helvetia, as well as by collaborations with various institutions, including the Philharmonie de Paris.

But if the aura like the collections continues to grow, the walls do not move… and the 650 m² are now crammed from floor to ceiling with instruments. “Every square millimeter was used,” notes Christoph Allenspach. We want to stay at Bluefactory because the spaces are ideal for our project and because we are supported by the city. But ultimately, we will have to be able to double the surface area.” The history of electronic music continues to be written.