MUSICBOX HISTORY

Jura region (Summer)

The origin of Musical Boxes can be traced back to 1796, to Antoine Favre, the watchmaker from Geneva, who fathered nearly over two centuries of mechanical dreams. At first merely a gadget incorporated in watches, perfume bottles, pendants, etc., the musical movement was the glory of the village of Sainte-Croix (Jura region, Switzerland) during the second half of the 19th century.

At the time this industrial activity represented 10% of the total volume of Swiss exports and was a source of delight to the high and mighty of this world, from Europe to China.

Edison and his phonograph, the First World War, as well as the crisis of 1928, hit the music box industry very badly, so much that it nearly disappeared.

After the Second World War, thanks to the American army stationed in Europe, Swiss music boxes were given a new lease on life.

In 1960, a Japanese company started mass-producing small movements, competing with the thirty or so Swiss manufacturers. Later, chinese makers entered the market.

As a result, most of the Swiss companies stopped business, as the production costs in Asia were a fraction of the movements produced in Switzerland.

Unfortunately, this also resulted in a much narrower range of available tunes for the customers.

Ste-Croix + Bernese Alps

Today, the Swiss musical box manufactury "Reuge" offers the widest range of musical movements, from small 17-note movements used in Musical Watches to the exquisite Musicboxes with interchangeable rolls, and a tonal range of up to 144 notes.

Mechanical Music

Ever since musical instruments were invented, people have attempted to turn them into self-playing instruments. It was not so much a delight in technical gadgetry, but rather people's desire for music which was the motivating force behind this development.

The oldest surviving mechanical musical instruments are the glockenspiels in the monumental clocks of the late Middle Ages. During the Renaissance Augsburg craftsmen created valuable music machines and self-playing spinets which were driven by means of pinned barrels.

In the 18th century the flute clock was invented, for which Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven wrote original compositions. The demands made on the technical and musical capabilities of self-playing instruments increased steadily, and at the beginning of the 19th century "mechanical musicians" such as Johann Nepomuk Mälzel created whole self-playing orchestras, the "orchestrions".

At about the same time in Switzerland the musical-box was invented, consisting of a rotating brass barrel with pins which plucked the teeth of a sound-comb to make them sound. In the course of the Industrial Revolution it later became possible to manufacture devices more cheaply, thus making them accessible to everyone: the sales of the instruments called "Ariston" and "Herophon", which worked on the hurdy-gurdy principle and were controlled by perforated sheets of cardboard, ran into hundreds of thousands. They were succeeded around 1890 by disc musical boxes, the best-known makes being "Polyphon", Symphonion" and "Kalliope".

With the introduction of pneumatic techniques at the end of the 19th century it became possible for the first time to manufacture self-playing pianos which allowed a satisfactory dynamic graduation. The pedal-driven "Phonolas" and "Pianolas" found a place in every respectable middle-class household.

Electric pianos and giant pneumatic orchestrions were constructed for guest-houses and dance-halls, and a self-playing violin hailed as the eighth wonder of the world sent music-lovers into raptures. The hand-driven barrel organ which was invented around 1700 was developed further into a fairground and dance organ with a considerable volume of sound.

In 1904 the firm Welte & Sons manufactured and sold the piano-playing device "Mignon", which made it possible for the first time to reproduce a pianist's playing, including all dynamic and agogic details. Many significant pianists and composers at the beginning of the century, among them Eugen d'Albert, Ferruccio Busoni, Ignaz Padarewski, Claude Debussy and Richard Strauss, made use of this medium in order to propagate their piano-playing as well as to reproduce and preserve for posterity interpretations of their own works. Since the 1920's composers have also recognized the boundless possibilities of self-playing pianos: Stravinsky, Hindemith and Toch created original compositions which were impossible to play by normal manual techniques. With the spread of the gramophone and the radio, mechanical musical instruments fell more and more into oblivion. However, the highly individual compositions of the Mexican hermit Conlon Nancarrow led to a Renaissance of the self-playing piano, which today can be heard once more at many festivals of contemporary music.

(Copyright text "Mechanical Music": GSM, Germany)

Singing Bird Box History

Approximately 10 years before the birth of mechanical music, Messrs. Jaquet-Droz of La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland), manufacturers of complex clocks, perfected a singing bird automaton and miniaturised its movement, which they subsequently incorporated in their high-class clocks.

It is this extraordinary mechanism, with its bellows and piston whistle, which imitates bird-song so beautifully.

In the 19th century, singing birds were very popular in China. It is said that the Chinese lords used them to teach real birds how to sing! At the time, singing bird competitions were a common occurence, even in Europe.

The technique was transferred to Reuge by the Bontems company in Paris, established in 1840, and by Eschle in Germany. These enterprises were purchased by Reuge in the 1960s in order to safeguard the tradition and to be able to offer you exquisite examples of this extraordinary art.