A Dictionary of Music and Musicians/Mahillon, Charles & Co.
MAHILLON, Charles & Co., wind-instrument makers. This firm was founded at Brussels by C. Mahillon (born 1813, died 1887), in 1836. Three of his sons are now in the business, Victor (see below), Joseph, who conducts the Brussels business, and Fernand who manages the London branch established in 1884, in Leicester Square, and removed in 1887 to Oxford Street.
Mahillon, Victor, of the firm of wind-instrument makers, above mentioned, a writer of important works on acoustics and musical instruments, and the honorary and zealous custodian of the Museum of the Brussels Conservatoire, was born in that city, March 10, 1841. After studying music under some of the best professors there, he applied himself to the practical study of wind-instrument manufacture and was taken into his father's business in 1865. He started a musical journal 'L'Echo Musical' in 1869 and continued it until 1886, when his time became too much occupied to attend to its direction. In 1876 he became the honorary curator of the museum of the Conservatoire, which, begun with Fétis's collection of 78 instruments, has been, through his special knowledge and untiring energy increased (1888) to upwards of 1500! An important contribution to it, of Indian instruments, has been a division of the fine collection of the Rajah Sir Sourindro Mohun Tagore, between the Brussels Conservatoire and the Royal College of Music, London. Mr. Victor Mahillon has published two very important works, besides three synoptical tables of harmony, voices and instruments. The first is 'Les Eléments d'Acoustique musicale et instrumentale,' an octavo volume published in 1874, which gained for him at Paris in 1878 the distinction of a silver medal. The other is the catalogue of the Conservatoire, which has appeared in volumes annually from 1877, and is of the highest interest. As well as these noteworthy works he has contributed to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica several historical and technical articles of great value upon wind instruments, both wood and brass. As soon as Mr. Victor Mahillon could introduce a workshop into the Conservatoire he did so, and he has there had reproductions made of many rare instruments which, through their antiquity, or the neglect of former owners, had become too much deteriorated for purposes of study. Among these reproductions the Roman Lituus and Buccina in the Music Loan Collection at Kensington, in 1885, will be remembered as prominent objects of interest in the fine selection contributed under Mr. Mahillon's auspices by the Brussels Conservatoire. He intends to reproduce from authentic sources, if he has not already fulfilled that intention, the complete families of wind-instruments that were in use in the 16th and 17th centuries.
Mr. Victor Mahillon's services to the Inventions Exhibition of 1885, in the above-named contribution of instruments to the Loan Collection, and the historical concerts under his direction performed by professors and students of the Brussels Conservatoire, at which several rare instruments were actually played upon in contemporary compositions, were so highly appreciated by the Executive Council of that Exhibition that a gold medal was awarded to him.