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Panharmonikon
The Panharmonicon was a musical instrument invented in 1805 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a contemporary and friend of Ludwig van Beethoven, Beethoven. Beethoven composed his piece "Wellington's Victory" (Op. 91) to be played on Mälzel's mechanical orchestral organ and also to commemorate Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley's victory over the French at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813. It was one of the first automatic playing machines, similar to the later Orchestrion. The Panharmonicon could imitate many orchestral instruments as well as sounds like gunfire and cannon shots. One instrument was destroyed in the Landesgewerbemuseum in Stuttgart during an air raid in World War II. F. T. Kaufmann, Friedrich Kaufmann copied this automatic playing machine in 1808, and his family produced Orchestrions from that time on. One of Mälzel's Panharmonicons was sent to Boston 1811 and was exhibited there and then in New York City and other cities. Mälzel toured with thi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollonicon
The Apollonicon was presented to the public the first time in 1817 built by the English Organ builders Flight & Robson in London. It was an automatic playing machine with about 1,900 pipes and 45 organ stops with a technic familiar to the barrel organ. It was inspired by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel's Panharmonikon. It also had five keyboards, one of them used as the pedal keyboard A pedalboard (also called a pedal keyboard, pedal clavier, or, with electronic instruments, a bass pedalboard) is a keyboard played with the feet that is usually used to produce the low-pitched bass line of a piece of music. A pedalboard has long ..., so the instrument could be played by a few persons in manual mode as well. A very detailed description with drawings can be found in the ''Mechanics Magazine'' from 1828. A notice about it is to be found in ''Polytechnisches Journal'', 1828, with the Germanized name ''Apollonikon''. References External links Description at the British Institute of Organ Studi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Instrument
A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person who plays a musical instrument is known as an instrumentalist. The history of musical instruments dates to the beginnings of human culture. Early musical instruments may have been used for rituals, such as a horn to signal success on the hunt, or a drum in a religious ceremony. Cultures eventually developed composition and performance of melodies for entertainment. Musical instruments evolved in step with changing applications and technologies. The date and origin of the first device considered a musical instrument is disputed. The oldest object that some scholars refer to as a musical instrument, a simple flute, dates back as far as 50,000 - 60,000 years. Some consensus dates early flutes to about 40,000 years ago. However, most historians be ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Johann Nepomuk Mälzel
A metronome by Maelzel, Paris, 1815. Johann Nepomuk Maelzel (or Mälzel; August 15, 1772 – July 21, 1838) was a German inventor, engineer, and showman, best known for manufacturing a metronome and several music-playing automatons, and displaying a fraudulent chess machine. He worked with Beethoven to compose a piece of music for one of his inventions. Life and work Maelzel was born in Regensburg. The son of an organ builder, he received a comprehensive musical education.German Wikipedia He moved to Vienna in 1792. After several years of study and experiment, he produced an orchestrion instrument, which was publicly exhibited, and afterward sold for 3,000 florins. In 1804, he invented the panharmonicon, an automaton able to play the musical instruments of a military band, powered by bellows and directed by revolving cylinders storing the notes. This attracted universal attention; the inventor became noted throughout Europe, was appointed imperial court-mechanician at Vienna, an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ludwig Van Beethoven
Ludwig van Beethoven (baptised 17 December 177026 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. Beethoven remains one of the most admired composers in the history of Western music; his works rank amongst the most performed of the classical music repertoire and span the transition from the Classical period to the Romantic era in classical music. His career has conventionally been divided into early, middle, and late periods. His early period, during which he forged his craft, is typically considered to have lasted until 1802. From 1802 to around 1812, his middle period showed an individual development from the styles of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and is sometimes characterized as heroic. During this time, he began to grow increasingly deaf. In his late period, from 1812 to 1827, he extended his innovations in musical form and expression. Beethoven was born in Bonn. His musical talent was obvious at an early age. He was initially harshly and intensively tau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wellington's Victory
''Wellington's Victory'', or the ''Battle of Vitoria'' (also called the ''Battle Symphony''; in German: ''Wellingtons Sieg oder die Schlacht bei Vittoria''), Op. 91, is a 15-minute-long orchestral work composed by Ludwig van Beethoven to commemorate the Marquess (later Duke) of Wellington's victory over Joseph Bonaparte at the Battle of Vitoria in Spain on 21 June 1813. It is known sometimes as "The Battle Symphony" or "The Battle of Vitoria", and was dedicated to the Prince Regent, later King George IV. Composition stretched from August to first week of October 1813, and the piece proved to be a substantial moneymaker for Beethoven. Composition, premiere and reception After the Battle of Vitoria, Beethoven's friend Johann Nepomuk Maelzel talked him into writing a composition commemorating this battle that he could notate on his 'mechanical orchestra', the panharmonicon, a contraption that was able to play many of the military band instruments of the day. However, Beethoven ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke Of Wellington
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, (1 May 1769 – 14 September 1852) was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is among the commanders who won and ended the Napoleonic Wars when the coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Wellesley was born in Dublin into the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. He was commissioned as an ensign in the British Army in 1787, serving in Ireland as aide-de-camp to two successive lords lieutenant of Ireland. He was also elected as a member of Parliament in the Irish House of Commons. He was a colonel by 1796 and saw action in the Netherlands and in India, where he fought in the Fourth Anglo-Mysore War at the Battle of Seringapatam. He was appointed governor of Seringapatam and Mysore in 1799 and, as a newly appointed major-general, won a decisive victory over the Maratha Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Battle Of Vitoria
At the Battle of Vitoria (21 June 1813) a British, Portuguese and Spanish army under the Marquess of Wellington broke the French army under King Joseph Bonaparte and Marshal Jean-Baptiste Jourdan near Vitoria in Spain, eventually leading to victory in the Peninsular War. Background In July 1812, after the Battle of Salamanca, the French had evacuated Madrid, which Wellington's army entered on 12 August 1812. Deploying three divisions to guard its southern approaches, Wellington marched north with the rest of his army to lay siege to the fortress of Burgos, away, but he had miscalculated the enemy's strength, and on 21 October he had to abandon the Siege of Burgos and retreat. By 31 October he had abandoned Madrid too and retreated first to Salamanca then to Ciudad Rodrigo, near the Portuguese frontier, to avoid encirclement by French armies from the north-east and south-east. Wellington spent the winter reorganizing and reinforcing his forces to attack King Joseph in Madr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orchestrion
Orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music. The sound is usually produced by pipes, though they will be voiced differently from those found in a pipe organ, as well as percussion instruments. Many orchestrions contain a piano as well. At the Musical Museum in Brentford, London England, examples may be seen and heard of several of the instrument types described below. It is confused by some with the steam-powered calliope, which was also used to produce music on period carousels. It used steam whistles rather than organ pipes to produce its principal sounds. See also the similar fairground organ. Types of orchestrion The name "orchestrion" has also been applied to several musical instruments: Chamber organ A chamber organ, designed by Georg Joseph Vogler (''Abbé Vogler'') in 1790, incorpora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stuttgart
Stuttgart (; Swabian: ; ) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. It is located on the Neckar river in a fertile valley known as the ''Stuttgarter Kessel'' (Stuttgart Cauldron) and lies an hour from the Swabian Jura and the Black Forest. Stuttgart has a population of 635,911, making it the sixth largest city in Germany. 2.8 million people live in the city's administrative region and 5.3 million people in its metropolitan area, making it the fourth largest metropolitan area in Germany. The city and metropolitan area are consistently ranked among the top 20 European metropolitan areas by GDP; Mercer listed Stuttgart as 21st on its 2015 list of cities by quality of living; innovation agency 2thinknow ranked the city 24th globally out of 442 cities in its Innovation Cities Index; and the Globalization and World Cities Research Network ranked the city as a Beta-status global city in their 2020 survey. Stuttgart was one of the host cities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis powers. World War II was a total war that directly involved more than 100 million personnel from more than 30 countries. The major participants in the war threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role in the conflict, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and deploying the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II was by far the deadliest conflict in human history; it resulted in 70 to 85 million fatalities, mostly among civilians. Tens of millions died due to genocides (including the Holocaust), starvation, ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wolfgang Von Kempelen
Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen de Pázmánd ( hu, Kempelen Farkas; 23 January 1734 – 26 March 1804) was a Hungarian author and inventor, known for his chess-playing "automaton" hoax The Turk and for his speaking machine. Personal life Von Kempelen was born in Pressburg, today's Bratislava (Slovakia), part of the Kingdom of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire, the last child of Engelbert Kempelen (1680–1761), and Anna Theresa Spindler. Contrary to some reports, he did not hold the title of "Ritter" or "Baron." This misconception may stem from historical confusion with one of his older brothers, Johannes Nepomuk Joseph, who attained the rank of general within the Habsburg Empire, and who was granted the title ''Kempelen von Pázmánd'' after purchasing a former Jesuit estate in Pázmánd, a village south of Budapest. Von Kempelen studied law and philosophy in Pressburg, and attended the Academy in Győr, Vienna and Rome, but mathematics and physics also interested hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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