It is, perhaps, a paradox: that a thing designed specifically to make a beautiful sound should be suspended in silence, housed in humidity-controlled, sealed glass cabinets. Look but don't touch. See but don't hear.

Last week South East London’s marvellous Horniman Museum announced details of its new keyboard display - called 'At Home With Music', and opening in January – which will focus on domestic keyboard instruments from the past five centuries.

The Horniman, a fascinating cabinet of curiosities writ large, demonstrates exactly why instrument collections are vital, offering a well-contextualised home to, among others, the Dolmetsch Collection of early instruments, and the Boosey and Hawkes collection of wind instruments. There is an obligation - and challenge - for curators of collections of instruments to bring them to life, a test the Horniman passes well; it aims to collect sound and video recordings for each new instrument it acquires, and ‘sound benches’ in front of the displays help illuminate what you're looking at.  

The Horniman is also about to introduce live musical performances as a regular feature in its instrument gallery, using a newly restored 1772 Jacob Kirckman harpsichord. Not a new idea, but very much to be welcomed. Both the recent (and very shortly to close - so hurry!) exhibition at the National Gallery exploring Vermeer and 17th century Dutch musical life, and the Ashmolean's Stradivarius summer exhibition, rightly incorporated performances as part of the exhibitions. Visitors to Hampstead's Fenton House can hear, and watch, the Benton Fletcher collection of early keyboard instruments being played. Instruments should, where possible, be heard.

But sometimes however, they can't, and perhaps even shouldn't, be played. Sometimes we need objects from the past to reach posterity pristine – as the alternative is often that they don't reach anyone all. Each generation is merely the custodian of artefacts, with a duty of responsibility to our descendants which must override our own desires to touch, handle and hear.  

Yet even then we can still admire them as items of exquisite (or, for that matter, functional) craftsmanship, or as ingenious items of engineering. Properly contexualised they can cast characterful light on the lives, leisure and social mores of ancestors far and near. The genteel banter of a domestic drawing room rarely feels closer than when a virginal is standing in the corner, as if about to fill the room with music at any moment.

From the grand to the quirky, here are ten musical instrument collections to explore.

Horniman Museum, London
Home to more than 8000 instruments, from a pair of ancient Egyptian bone clappers to modern synthesizers, as well of some of the V&A’s instruments.

Ashmolean, Oxford
Home to the Stradivarius (and not to be heard) 'Messiah', among many important instruments.

Bate Collection Oxford
A fascinating contrast to the Ashmolean – 2000 items trace the development of instruments from Renaissance and Baroque times until today (including Theremins), some of which you can even bang and bow.

Musical Museum, Brentford
A delightful – and quite possibly unique – collection of pianolas, player pianos and other self-playing musical instruments.

Edinburgh University Collection of Historic Musical Instruments
View this important collection of instruments – and hear 18th-century instruments played in the 18th century concert hall.

Cité de la Musique, Paris
The Conservatoire de Paris’s 4000-strong instrument collection, ranging from the 17th century to the present day.

Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
An important collection of renaissance and baroque instruments.

Musical Instrument Museum, Phoenix
From Chinese Opera to big band jazz – instruments from around the world.

Musical Instruments Museum in Brussels, Belgium
Four floors of instruments, including – as is only appropriate for Belgium – those by Adolphe Sax.

Museum of Musical Instruments, Leipzig
Almost 5000 instruments from Europe and beyond, as well as 3500 piano rolls.