Music machines

Music machines

In conjunction with an exhibition of music machines from its own collection and others in Europe and the United States, Utrecht's Nationaal Museum van Speelklok tot Pieremont has celebrated its 50th anniversary by issuing a volume for the general reader about these instruments, with transcriptions of their music. Dating from the late 16th to the early 19th century, the 21 machines use sound sources such as organ pipes, strings, bells and a musical toothed comb. Most employ a cylinder on which pins are inserted to trip the sound source as the cylinder revolves. Pitch is determined by a pin's placement on the width of the cylinder. The book's chronological arrangement of machines charts the extension of range and increasing technical sophistication of the mechanisms.

The first of the book's three sections describes briefly (in Dutch and English) the machines' music and the technique for pinning a cylinder; the second section offers a vivid colour photo of each instrument, together with a short description; and the third transcribes into notation some or all of each instrument's contents. The machines themselves are exquisitely crafted works of art. Many have moving parts, such as the 1582 automaton by Hans Schlottheim in which trumpeters appear on the balcony and move in time with the regals; the 17th-century clock by Samuel Bidermann with its commedia dell'arte figures dancing around; or the c.1774 organ by Pierre Jaquet-Droz, in which la musicienne's fingers play the 12 keys assigned to each hand. In a spinet by Bidermann 36 keys can be played manually and 20 of them automatically via a cylinder containing four pieces. In the Chronos clock by Roentgen & Kinzing (1785) organ pipes play the melody while a dulcimer mechanism provides accompaniment. Certain other machines, too, are beautifully constructed clocks, some of monumental size, and two are watches, one of which produces 23 notes by means of an ingenious playing mechanism of a flat disc and fan-type comb.

Of interest to the scholar is the fact that some of the later instruments transpose: the Charles Clay clock (1738) up a major 3rd and the Chronos clock (1785) down a major 2nd; the Arakcheyev clock by Huwé/Hémon (1826–8) and Column clock by Roentgen & Kinzing (1783) both transpose down a semitone. This implies equal temperament, for transposition could not otherwise be accomplished.

It is not known who composed the music on most of the instruments, although the Column clock includes Gluck's 'Dance of the blessed spirits' (with bald parallel octaves in bar 12) from Orfeo ed Euridice and the Clay clock has two pieces by Handel which are not included in the 18 pieces (HWV587–604) that he wrote for a musical clock. The Jacob Ottsen clock with a dulcimer mechanism (c.1770) offers a large collection of popular dances, marches and other pieces.

Musically speaking, the most interesting machine is the one constructed in Vienna (1793) by Joseph Niemecz, who played in the orchestra under Joseph Haydn. It has 29 4'-foot pipes under the cylinder and contains 12 pieces ostensibly by Haydn. According to Sonja Gerlach (preface to Joseph Haydn Werke [JHW], ser. 21 (Munich, 1984)), seven pieces are corroborated by Haydn's autograph, another three are probably authentic, and two are doubtful. She observes (p.65) that rhythmic irregularities occur because of cracks in the cylinder cover (now in Utrecht, it was 'meticulously copied' in 2003). For the most part, the small notes in the written sources were left unchanged in the JHW transcription because it could not be determined whether they fell on or before the beat, or were joined together with the main note (p.66), a fact indicating that their value is virtually...