Introduction

Making music

For making music you need two things. You need a musical instrument and a player. For many thousands of years the player and his musical instrument formed an inseparable unity. More than six hundred years ago there was an important improvement: the first automatic musical instruments played their music without the help of a performer. The music was programmed on a cylinder with hundreds of iron pins. When the cylinder rotated, the pins caused a number of hammers to strike on bronze bells. This was called a carillon.
Already more than five hundred years ago many Dutch towers of churches and town-halls had such a carillon. After the bell music the largest bell would strike the hour so that the citizens would know the time, day and night.

Bell playing clocks

Wealthy people might have their own small house-carillon. The Jacquemarts clock of 1480 (cat. nr. 1) is a good example of such an early domestic clock with bell music. The musical cylinders in chamber clocks can be quite large. The diameter of the drum of the Valerius bell-playing clock (cat. nr. 2) is over 20 cm., the large drum of the Utrecht Dom Tower is more than two meters!
18th century Amsterdam, at the time one of the wealthiest cities of the world, was an important production centre of bell-playing clocks. Perhaps the most famous type was the so-called Amsterdam long case clock, of which the Schultz clock (cat. nr. 3) with its delightful sea-scape of ships rocking on the waves is a fine example. There is even a big whale between the rolling waves, indicating that the owner of the clock earned his money in the whaling industry.
London was also an important centre for the production of musical clocks. Especially the bell-playing items were very popular in China. Thousands of Dutch and English bell-playing clocks, often combined with automata such as sailing ships, turning windmills, birds flapping their wings, rotating flowers, etc., were exported to China.
Towards 1800 an outstanding London clockmaker was James Cox whose bell-playing products were so popular in the Far East that he even established a branch office in Canton.

Cylinder organs

Perhaps the smallest self-playing organ is the so-called serinette or bird organ. It is made almost entirely of wood and its ten little flutes play their simple bird song melodies from a small wooden cylinder with tiny brass music pins.
The serinette (cat. nr. 9) and the larger cylinder organs in this exhibition, such as the Ignaz Bruder organ (cat. nr. 44) with its automata, and the Bagicalupo cylinder organ (cat. nr. 45) are all hand-cranked. The “player” has to turn a handle or a wheel. Especially with the large organs this can be quite a heavy job.
There are also cylinder organs in clocks. They were generally of a high quality and great composers such as Handel, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote music especially for organ clocks.
The Engeringh clock (cat. nr. 6) with its delicate cylinder organ can play eight different melodies. The repertoire of this kind of clock consists mainly of merry folk songs and dance music. You must realize that the famous composer Beethoven was just a small boy when these clocks were made!
The simple bird song melodies of the serinette could be imitated by live birds in cages. Especially finches and canaries were excellent performers. Cylinder organs, turned by hand, were even used in churches to accompany the singing of the congregation. The reason is simple. Instead of a skilled organist anybody could play the organ by turning the handle. Of this type of self-playing instrument the Bryceson cylinder organ (cat. nr. 8) is a good example.
But the cylinder organs played their most important part in the streets and market places. The organ-grinder with his portable organ was a common sight in Western Europe during the 19th century. He might be accompanied by a monkey, dancing dogs or acrobats. He might even sing comic or tragic songs to the accompaniment of his instrument.
The main reason for the organ-grinder to make music in the open air was to attract the attention of the passers-by and earn a bit of money for his performance.

Cylinder musical boxes

A cylinder musical box plays its music on a row of tuned steel teeth. The brass cylinder has hundreds of tiny metal pins by which the teeth of the so-called comb are plucked.
It was invented in Geneva in Switzerland towards the end of the eighteenth century. Over the past two centuries millions of musical boxes have been made. They came in all shapes and sizes. Simple wooden boxes with a comb-playing musical movement. Luxury boxes with drawers to house a number of interchangeable music cylinders. Silver and gold snuff boxes with a compartment for the snuff tobacco and another for the tiny musical movement. Thousands of small comb-playing mechanisms were incorporated in children’s toys such as the rabbit (cat. nr. 23).
The smoking dandy (cat. nr. 26), the Japanese Lady and the Chinese gentleman (cat nr. 28 and 29) and the Vincent van Gogh automaton(cat. nr. 31) are fine examples of the more sophisticated and expensive type of toys with a comb-playing mechanism. Their delicate movements and music enchant young and old alike.
Practically all comb-playing musical instruments have a mechanism with a spring that has to be wound with a key or a handle. In the past Switzerland was the chief producer of musical boxes. After the second World War there has been a rapidly increasing production in Japan. In recent years China has become a serious competitor in the field of musical box production.

Disc musical boxes

Around 1890 a new type of musical box hit the market. The space consuming, vulnerable and costly cylinders with their limited repertoire were replaced by steel discs in which the musical programme was stamped out in the form of projections that could pluck the teeth of one or more musical combs. The birthplace of this type of self-playing instrument was Leipsic in Germany.
In the relatively short period of their production (1890-1914) hundreds of thousands of disc players have been made with discs measuring 10 cm to more than 60 cm in diameter. The Leipsic factories of Symphonion, Polyphon and Kalliope (to name just a few) provided thousands of melodies for each type so that one could build up a large repertoire.
Two Kalliope musical boxes (cat. nr. 33 and 35) represent the most popular type and size ; the table model and the large standing model. The upright disc musical boxes could be coin-operated as well so that they could play the hits of the day “for a cent” in waiting rooms and cafés. The most spectacular examples with coin operation are the disc changers, such as the Polyphon M5 (cat. nr. 34). These “jukeboxes” allowed one to choose from ten different discs.

Automatic music on strings

There are four string-playing instruments in this exhibition. Like the cylinder organ, the cylinder piano was mainly used to play its music in the open air. The piano-grinder could play one of ten melodies that were programmed on a large wooden music cylinder with hundreds of steel pins. The self-playing street piano was a product of the 19th century. In comparison with the street organ it was much simpler and cheaper in construction. The Italian street piano (cat. nr. 37) is a good example of the “poor man’s street organ”.
The Steinway Duo-art (cat. nr. 38) can be played by hand, but it can also play its music from a perforated paper roll. Through a complicated system with variable wind pressures the instrument can reproduce the live performance of great pianists such as Debussy, Rachmaninov, Paderevski and Gerschwin. The great years of the self-playing piano lasted from 1900 till 1930.
Next to the string music the Weber pianola (cat. nr. 40) has a xylophone and a mandoline for a greater variation in sound. When playing, the xylophone in the top of the instrument is illuminated.
The most spectacular string-playing instrument in this exhibition is the world-famous Violinplayer (cat. nr. 41). This combination of a pianola and three real violins is a marvel to behold. In the years 1910-1930 a number of Hupfeld Phonoliszt Violinas (the official name of the instrument) was built in the large Hupfeld Factory in Leipsic.
The violin strings are played by a rotating horsehair bow and the rows of little fingers take care of the correct notes. In 1910 the instrument was presented as “the eighth wonder of the world” at the world exhibition in Brussels.

The book-playing organ

The Netherlands are world famous for their street organs. More than a century ago the first organ renting business of Warnies was opened in the heart of old Amsterdam.
The renting out of lavishly decorated well-tuned organs with a large repertoire of music books was an instantaneous success. As a demonstration model a small Perlee book organ (cat. nr. 46) is included in the collection.
It is fascinating to see how children from five or six years on can produce lovely music by carefully turning the small organ wheel.
Of the many well known names in the Dutch street organ world the name of the Amsterdam organ builders Perlee is justly famous.
As a contrast, the WBS Fairground organ (cat. nr. 49) has been brought along as well. It may be less melodious and less romantic then a street organ but by its powerful sound of strident melody pipes, trumpets, bass pipes, trombones and percussion it is sure to attract attention far and wide.
The “Seventy keys” street organ (cat. nr. 48), was originally built by A. Bursens of Antwerp for a Rotterdam organ renting company. This beautiful instrument, now more than a hundred years old, has recently be restored back to its original state
by the restoration department of the museum.
Finally, there is the Huyskens dance hall organ (cat. nr. 50). It was built in Breda, The Netherlands in 1923. It had been commissioned for a large dance hall owned by the Dutch Huyskens family in Breda and played there until it fell into disrepair in the nineteen-sixties.
In 1978 the widow P.C.Ch. Huyskens donated the instrument to the museum where it was restored in 1989-1990. This spectacular instrument, the largest of this exhibition, has been brought to China as a fitting tribute to the present mutual approach of two historic cultures: those of The Netherlands and China.