Haydn, etc: Musical Clocks (Candide)
Purchased at Jerry's Records dollar sale
I hope anyone reading this has taken the opportunity to visit the Bayernhof Museum. If you haven't permit me a brief description:
The Bayernhof was a highly customized home built for a late wealthy local businessman. He never married (though had a long-term girlfriend), and it shows. The house itself could maybe be described mega-bachelor pad meets Pee-Wee's Playhouse. There are two secret passages, a cave for wine, secret board and game rooms, and an indoor pool.
That in itself is interesting but not enough to pique my interest. Much of the appear of the museum and its tour is the world-class collection of mechanical (and related) instruments. There are of course player pianos (baby grands no less), but also self-playing violins, banjo, harp, music boxes of a variety of sizes and styles. There are a couple of mechanical band organs, and a large Edison cylinder jukebox. My favorite is among the smallest of these: a music box with a mechanical automaton bird, which moves and "sings" (using pipes) with the song. Charming.
What puts the Bayernhof over the top weird would be the other items in the collection of complete kitsch. A six figure valued instrument is not too far from a set of Franklin Mint "collectors" plates of The Sound of Music or The Andy Griffith Show, for example. No actual value.
So much effort, and for that matter technology, was put into these devices that are curiosity pieces now. Maybe I enjoy the anachronism of them.
While I'm at it, I should should mentioned the DeBence Antique Music World museum in Franklin, PA. It's an even larger collection of self-playing instruments. Bayernhof just happens to be much closer to my location.
I think Karlheinz Stockhausen credited himself as being the first composer to write specifically for music boxes. If I'm correct about that, it wouldn't be the first time he gave himself too much credit. The first side of this collection is a series of miniatures written by Haydn specifically for a musical clock, which sounds something like a cross between an ocarina and a calliope.
There is some history of composers writing for mechanical players, including (though not on this collection) a work by Beethoven. I read elsewhere it's considered by some to be Beethoven's "worst" piece. But how do you even judge such a thing? What's interesting to me is that somebody, especially such significant composers, would compose original works for the medium.
The second side of this collection starts with more pipe-like sounds similar to the first side, but then plays through other antique music players: street organ, glass glockenspiel, bird clocks, and such.
I have a small collection of mechanical instrument records. Some are pretty easy to find, but the best ones are nice European pressings on Decca of mostly street organs. High fidelity recordings of sometimes egregiously out of tune instruments. But I love it. And the fact of this recording having original compositions for the medium gives it special interest.
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