A musical instrument which is enabled to play music automatically from a predetermined and repeatable mechanical programme. Some mechanical instruments operate without human participation (beyond setting the instrument in motion); others require some degree of manual or pedal control (turning the playing mechanism, working bellows or operating expression devices). This definition excludes sound reproduction machines such as the gramophone.
2. History to the early 19th century.
ARTHUR W.J.G. ORD-HUME
The most important part of a mechanical instrument is the device for regulating the musical sounds. The oldest and most common form is a close-grained wooden (traditionally poplar) cylinder, the surface of which is provided with projections representing the particular note sequence to be played. In organs metal pins are driven into the barrel for short notes, and staples of various lengths for longer ones (see fig.1). The pipes sound when levers controlling the valves of the pipes are lifted by the pins or staples. In non-sustaining instruments (carillons, musical boxes, player pianos, etc.) only studs or pins are needed (see figs.2, 3 and 4). Metal cylinders are commonly used for large church carillons, and for small musical clocks and musical boxes. The technique of noting music onto the barrel, though mentioned in texts from the 9th century onwards (see §2 below), was first described in detail in the 18th century by M.D.J. Engramelle and F. Bédos de Celles (see Engramelle, Marie Dominique Joseph).
The disadvantage of cylinders is that they are of limited duration, and instruments with exchangeable cylinders tend to be subject to damage during the change-over process. Later musical boxes used interchangeable steel discs with projections or slots (see fig.5; see also Musical box). Strips of card or paper can, of course, be of any length, and are easily exchangeable. In his Antiphonel of 1846, designed as an automatic player of pianos and organs, the French instrument maker A.-F. Debain used, instead of a cylinder, planchettes: lengths of wooden board studded with pins.
Programming in the form of perforations in zig-zag folding strips of card had been used in mechanical looms since the early 19th century. Perforated cardboard books or paper rolls were adapted to mechanical instruments in two ways: with mechanical or pneumatic action. In 1852 Martin Courteuile took out a patent for a perforated cardboard strip in which the jacks of the instrument were operated by a linkage controlled by the holes in the strip. A later development of this system was invented for the ‘Cartonium’, an instrument made in 1861 by J.A. Testé of Nantes, and was adopted in many mechanical instruments using free metal reeds (see Organette and Player organ). In this system, shown in fig.6, levers controlled the valves that allowed wind to reach the free reeds (see Free reed). At the other end of the levers jacks were placed in a row protruding slightly above the lid of the box. In this position the valves were open, and if the pedals operating the bellows were pumped all the reeds would sound simultaneously. The jacks fitted into grooves in a round metal ledge (not shown in fig.6). If a strip of cardboard was passed between the ledge and the jacks, the latter would be forced down, closing the valves. Jacks could only open the valves when so permitted by a hole passing in the strip above. An instrument using this system is shown in fig.7.
In 1842 Claude-Félix Seytre of Lyon adapted the pneumatic perforated card system of the Jacquard loom (invented 1801) to a pneumatic piano called the Autophon. The holes were linked with pipes which conducted compressed air from the pedal bellows to the small cylinders attached to each of the keys of the instrument. In each of the cylinders there was a small air-driven piston which moved a jack, which in turn made the hammer strike the string from below. It was not until the 1880s that pneumatic systems were systematically applied to mechanical instruments, firstly to organettes, then to larger player reed organs. By 1890 pneumatically operated mechanisms using paper music rolls were being used in the push-up Piano player and facilitated, after the turn of the century, the development of the Player piano with its internal mechanism. The most sophisticated application of this technology was in the Reproducing piano, first introduced by Welte in 1904, on which the performance of the pianist, with all its nuance of expression, could be recorded on the music roll and then played back. Pneumatic systems, usually powered by electricity (hence ‘electro-pneumatic action’), were also applied to many varieties of orchestrion and piano-orchestrion (see §3(iii) below); the technology made possible the creation of piano-orchestrions combined successfully with violins played by pneumatically-operated mechanical ‘fingers’.
In 1892 the Parisian firm Gavioli patented a folding cardboard book playing organ with a pneumatic action to replace the cumbersome wooden barrel, and soon afterwards the majority of makers of fairground and dance organs used this kind of action; it shares with the paper roll an unlimited length of playing time but has the advantage, for instruments designed for outdoor and heavy-duty use, of the greater durability of cardboard over paper. Electro-pneumatic action was the ultimate development of automatic musical movement before the application of digital technology in the late 1970s (see §4 below).
The endeavour to create sound by mechanical means can be traced to the remote past. At first these efforts had practical purposes (e.g. for signalling) or religious connotations (e.g. to create voices as of the dead). On the Indonesian paddy fields water currents in the irrigation channels are still used to set in motion tuned bamboo tubes, which strike rhythmically against stones and produce repeating musical phrases.
The earliest mechanical instruments seem to have been flutes or organs driven by continuously flowing water and often attached to automata such as singing birds. They were first described in texts originating in Greek sources of the 3rd century bc, particularly those of Philo of Byzantium and Apollonius of Perga. (For discussion of these instruments and sources see Hydraulis; Organ, §IV; and Water organ.) Hero of Alexandria (On pneumatics, 1st century ce) described various applications of the water organ, including automaton singing birds and ‘trumpet-playing’ temple doors. He also described how the bellows of a hydraulis could be pumped by a windmill rather than by hand.
The first description of a mechanical instrument with a musical programme was written between 812 and 833 by three brothers, Muhammad, Ahmad and Al-Hasan, known as the Banū Mūsā, then leading organizers of Arab science in Baghdad. They described a hydraulically-blown flute to which they added a rotating cylinder on the surface of which were projecting pegs to lift levers which uncovered the apertures in the body of the flute. Also in the first half of the 9th century two automata with artificial trees and singing birds were devised by Leo the Mathematician for the Emperor Theophilus of Byzantium (for a 12th-century drawing of this, see Organ, fig.24). A similar device appeared in western Europe in about 1250, mentioned by the poet Konrad von Würzburg.
Rotating cylinders were first applied to church-clock chimes (see Chimes, §2; and Musical clock) in the early 14th-century; the simple chimes were developed into fully chromatic carillons in the 16th and early 17th centuries (see Carillon). From the 15th to the 17th centuries the principal forms of mechanical instrument were the carillon and the Barrel organ. Elaborate out-door water organs also enjoyed a renewed vogue among the nobility (see Water organ). In the late 15th century Leonardo da Vinci proposed a spinet and two drums apparently played from a cylinder; a century later spinets that could be played either manually or by a clockwork-driven pinned barrel were being made, especially in Augsburg by the Bidermanns (see Bidermann family) and Viet Langenbucher. Mechanical organs and spinets were built into elaborate cabinets and musical clocks, complete with automata.
The Thirty Years War (1618–48) put an end to this industry, and it was not until the beginning of the 18th century that mechanical instrument manufacture flourished again. The period 1720–1820 is sometimes regarded as the ‘Golden Century’ of mechanical instruments. Elaborate organ- or flute-playing musical clocks (so-called – they were clockwork-driven, but may or may not have a timepiece attached) became fashionable, especially in London, Vienna and Berlin (where they were known as Flötenuhr), and attracted compositions by many major composers, including Handel, C.P.E. Bach, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Extant barrels from these instruments preserve important musicological evidence of contemporary performance style, regarding, for example, tempos and ornamentation.
Until the end of this period, apart from large carillons and occasionally barrel organs at churches, mechanical instruments were expensive novelty items for the wealthy – gifts exchanged between rulers (e.g. the musical clock containing a carillon, barrel organ and singing-bird automata given to the Sultan of Turkey by Elizabeth I in 1599), or magnificent creations for the aristocracy to surprise and delight their friends. Little expense was spared, and there was no limit to the ingenuity of makers. Late 18th-century examples include small organs built into decorative urns, and even a musical settee. The Royal Palace in Madrid holds a chandelier with two separate barrel organs concealed in its lustres. By the end of the ‘golden century’, however, musical clocks were being heard playing popular music in fashionable public places such as cafés and pleasure gardens. In the early 19th century portable barrel organs and barrel pianos had been developed (see Barrel piano), and by the 1830s they had become widely popular; in 1834 The Penny Magazine estimated that four-sevenths of the music heard by people in the majority of towns and cities came from mechanical instruments played in the streets by itinerant musicians.
Since the 14th century tunes have been played automatically on stationary hanging bells in church towers, called chimes (see Chimes, §2), using a large drum of iron or later of bronze. In the 16th and early 17th centuries fully chromatic carillons were developed which could either be played by hand or with a barrel. Attempts to replace the barrel with perforated-card playing mechanisms (as installed but no longer used at Bourneville, Birmingham) began in the 1950s. Modern carillons, such as the one in Leicester Square, London (1988), use solid-state electronics and solenoid-driven bell hammers. (See Carillon.)
Smaller chimes or carillons were also used in musical clocks and boxes, although from the end of the 18th century they were often replaced by the more compact musical comb (see §3(ii) below). Bells or chimes, as well as glockenspiels or xylophones, are often incorporated in all kinds of mechanical organs and pianos.
The steel-comb-playing Musical box was developed at the end of the 18th century in Switzerland, where miniature mechanisms with 15 to 25 tuned teeth (lamellae) were built into various luxury articles such as clocks, watches, seals, walking-sticks, jewel caskets and snuff boxes. Good tone, small size and reasonable price made the musical box available to the wider public in a way that other mechanical instruments perhaps were not until the great popularity of the player piano in the early 20th century. Some models were sold in their thousands. Later models were made with interchangeable cylinders or, by the late 1880s, steel discs (see fig.5); and the most sophisticated music could be reproduced, including hymn tunes, popular songs and dances, and operatic overtures and arias.
Many automatic instruments are simply attempts at adding a self-playing mechanism to ordinary, familiar manual instruments. Some aim simply to reproduce automatically a fine performance on an instrument, such as an organ or piano, in the absence of a competent player; in the days before the wide availability of radio and gramophone these instruments were able to disseminate all sorts of music to a wide population who would otherwise not have been exposed to it. Larger barrel organs were often used in poorer churches from the mid 18th century, where they replaced the manual organ in leading the congregational singing; they were still being offered for sale by organ builders in 1860. Barrels could also be built into manual organs, or alternatively an external mechanism enclosed in a box (a ‘dumb organist’) could be placed on the organ console to play the keyboard by means of wooden fingers operated by the barrel. The earliest piano players were of the ‘push-up’ type. Some instruments, such as the Hupfeld ‘Phonoliszt Violina’, seem to revel in their own stunning technological wizardry.
Other automatic instruments aim to imitate other sounds, such as whole bands of different instruments. From the early 17th century, small barrel organs (‘serinettes’) were designed to imitate birdsong (see Bird instruments, §1). These became particularly fashionable in the second half of the 18th century and the first half of the 19th. The larger and more complex barrel organs were developed in two directions: the Orchestrion, which was intended to be capable of imitating and reproducing the music of an entire orchestra (orchestral voicing was also a concern of manual-organ builders in the 19th and early 20th centuries; see Organ, §VI); and the fairground or dance organ (see fig.8; and see Fairground organ), which was designed to perform popular music and dances, often in the open air. Both instruments continued to evolve with the advances of technology (see §1 above), and at various times were made to read metal discs, perforated cardboard strips or paper rolls using mechanical or pneumatic actions. Both could also incorporate varieties of imitative organ pipes, bells, xylophones and other percussion effects, and sometimes piano actions. But orchestrions, being intended exclusively for indoor performance (many were designed for domestic use, albeit usually by wealthier families), tended to have more sophisticated voicing and use lower wind pressures than fairground organs. In addition to organ-based orchestrions, many varieties (called piano-orchestrions) were made centred on a mechanical piano (which could also, in turn, incorporate ranks of organ pipes). Some makers in the early 20th century successfully added as many as six self-playing violins to the mechanical piano (see Violin player, automatic).
The zenith of popularity of mechanical instruments was from about 1890 to the early 1930s. During this period they could be found in all kinds of public places and also in the home. Coin-operated instruments of all kinds could be found in cafés and restaurants. In 1920, 70% of the 364,000 pianos manufactured in the USA were player pianos. Mechanical organs, orchestrions and pianos also found a home in the theatre and the cinema where, cheaper to run than a real orchestra, they could be used to provide interval entertainment or accompaniment to a silent film. The very large and complex automatic theatre orchestra or ‘fotoplayer’ could be played by hand or from one or two special music rolls, and included a variety of sound effects such as sleigh bells, locomotive whistles, pistol shots and horses hooves in addition to the full piano and pipe organ (see Sound effects, fig.1).
The player piano attracted works from many composers, including Stravinsky, Casella, Goossens, Hindemith, Howells and Malipiero.
Almost all kinds of instruments have had mechanical versions made of them at one time or other, including the trumpet (actually a reed or free reed instrument), many kinds of zither, and in the USA in the 1890s electric-driven roll-playing mechanical banjos (Encore Automatic Banjo) and harps (invented by Whitlock in 1899 and manufactured by Wurlitzer).
The gramophone was also incorporated into mechanical instruments. Player pianos were made with gramophones built into the upper part of the case, and the Phonopectine was a disc-playing musical box that could also play gramophone records.
In the 1930s the mechanical instrument industry began a near terminal decline, hit by the increasing availability of radio and gramophone and by the Depression, then by World War II. Most of the old firms closed. Starting in the 1960s, however, there has been a growing revival of interest both in the restoration of old instruments and in building new ones. Music rolls, books and discs continue to be manufactured, especially in America, Australia, Japan, Britain and the Low Countries, including re-cuts of old ones and new arrangements of the most up-to-date music. One American company, QRS Music Rolls, Inc., has continued to produce new and traditional piano rolls since it was established in 1900 by Melville Clark, one of the pioneers of the player piano with an internal mechanism. The composer Conlon Nancarrow was devoted, from the late 1940s until his death in 1997, to writing music exclusively for the player piano (about 50 studies).
After the War the Swiss musical box industry consisted of a number of makers making small, mass-produced items for the tourist market. The majority of these small firms either went out of business or were amalgamated. The surviving Reuge firm has embraced modern manufacturing processes for its mass-produced items, while at the same time continuing to produce some high-quality limited-edition musical boxes for the collectors' market. A larger musical box industry built up in Japan starting in the 1950s, ranging from the mass-producing Sankyo Seiki to a number of small firms making both traditional disc machines (with high-quality new musical arrangements) and new models.
In the 1960s a number of American piano makers launched small, so-called ‘spinet’ player models, and several styles of key-top player to mount onto an ordinary piano; but their compact size could not generate enough operating power and they were not successful. Digitally-operated self-playing mechanisms have given the player piano a new lease of life. The first of these, initially operated from cassette tapes and offering live recording and playback facilities, was the Superscope Marantz ‘Pianocorder’, launched in the USA in 1978. Piano players operated by solid-state electronics with pre-recorded programmes on floppy disk are now produced by such manufacturers as Yamaha and Baldwin.
Street organs continue to be manufactured, particularly in the Low Countries, mostly using paper rolls or digital programming to operate otherwise fully mechanical organ actions.
See also Apollonicon; Bruder; Calliope (ii); Componium; Debain, Alexandre-François; Hooghuys; Limonaire; Maelzel, Johann Nepomuk; Metronome (i); Niemecz, Joseph; Panharmonicon; Polyphon; Ruth; and Winkel, dietrich nikolaus.
S. de Caus: Les raisons des forces mouvantes (Frankfurt, 1615, 2/1624)
A. Kircher: Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650/R)
G. Schott: Magia universalis naturae et artis (Würtzburg, 1657–9)
G. Schott: Technica curiosa (Nuremberg, 1664)
A. Kircher: Phonurgia nova (Kempten, 1673/R; Ger. trans., 1684, as Neue Hall- und Thon-Kunst)
J. Vaucanson: Le mécanisme du fluteur automate (Paris, 1738/R; Eng. trans., 1742, as An Account of the Mechanism of an Automaton)
J. Adlung: Musica mechanica organoedi, ed. J.L. Albrecht (Berlin, 1768/R); ed. C. Mahrenholz (Kassel, 1931)
M.D.J. Engramelle: La tonotechnie, ou L’art de noter les cylindres … dans les instruments de concert mécaniques (Paris, 1775/R)
E.T.A. Hoffmann: Die Automate (Berlin, 1819)
J.H.M. Poppe: Geschichte aller Erfindungen und Entdeckungen (Stuttgart, 1837/R)
L. Hupfeld: Dea-Violina (Leipzig, 1909)
A. Chapuis: Automates, machines automatiques et mécanisme (Lausanne, 1928)
A. Chapuis and E. Gélis: Le monde des automates (Paris, 1928)
H.G. Farmer: The Organ of the Ancients, from Eastern Sources (Hebrew, Syriac and Arabic) (London, 1931)
A. Protz: Mechanische Musikinstrumente (Kassel, 1939)
A. Chapuis: Les automates dans les oeuvres d’imagination (Neuchâtel, 1947)
A. Chapuis and E. Droz: Les automates: figures artificielles d’hommes et d’animaux (Neuchâtel, 1949)
A. Buchner: Hudební automaty (Prague, 1959; Eng. trans., 1959/R as Mechanical Musical Instruments)
E. Simon: Mechanische Musikinstrumente früherer Zeiten und ihre Musik (Wiesbaden, 1960)
Q.D. Bowers: A Guidebook of Automatic Musical Instruments (Vestal, NY, 1967–8)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Clockwork Music: an Illustrated Musical History of Mechanical Musical Instruments (London, 1973)
J.S. Tushinsky: The Pianocorder Story (Chatsworth, CA, 1978)
D. Fuller: Mechanical Musical Instruments as a Source for the Study of ‘notes inégales’ (Cleveland Heights, OH, 1979)
A.W.J.G. Ord-Hume: Joseph Haydn and the Mechanical Organ (Cardiff, 1982)
J. Brauers: Von der Äolsharfe zum Digitalspieler: 2000 Jahre mechanische Musik, 100 Jahre Schallplatte (Munich, 1984)
R. Maas and J. van Witteloostuijn: Muziek uit Stekels en Gaten (Buren, 1984)
J.J.L. Haspels: Automatic Musical Instruments: their Mechanics and their Music, 1580–1820 (Den Haag, 1987)
H. Jüttemann: Mechanische Musikinstrumente (Frankfurt, 1987)
B. Hiltner: ‘Pièçen aus “La Clemenza di Tito” von Wolfgang Amade' Mozart im Repertoire mechanischer Musikinstrumente nach Berichten musikalischer Fachzeitschriften zwischen 1800 und 1850’, Mitteilungen der Internationalen Stiftung Mozarteum, xliii/3–4 (1995), 70–77
For further bibliography, see articles on individual mechanical instruments.