Orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an

orchestra An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, c ...

or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a

music roll A music roll is a storage medium used to operate a mechanical musical instrument. They are used for the player piano, mechanical organ, electronic carillon and various types of orchestrion. The vast majority of music rolls are made of paper. Othe ...

and less commonly

book music A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this physical arr ...

. The sound is usually produced by pipes, though they will be voiced differently from those found in a

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

, as well as percussion instruments. Many orchestrions contain a

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

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 In Greek mythology, Calliope ( ; grc, Καλλιόπη, Kalliópē, beautiful-voiced) is the Muse who presides over eloquence and epic poetry; so called from the ecstatic harmony of her voice. Hesiod and Ovid called her the "Chief of all Muses" ...

, which was also used to produce music on period

carousel A carousel or carrousel (mainly North American English), merry-go-round (List of sovereign states, international), roundabout (British English), or hurdy-gurdy (an old term in Australian English, in South Australia, SA) is a type of amusement ...

s. It used

steam whistle A steam whistle is a device used to produce sound in the form of a whistle using live steam, which creates, projects, and amplifies its sound by acting as a vibrating system (compare to train horn). Operation The whistle consists of the fo ...

s rather than

organ pipe An organ pipe is a sound-producing element of the pipe organ that resonates at a specific pitch when pressurized air (commonly referred to as ''wind'') is driven through it. Each pipe is tuned to a specific note of the musical scale. A set of ...

s to produce its principal sounds. See also the similar

fairground organ A fairground organ (french: limonaire) is a French pneumatic musical organ covering the wind and percussive sections of an orchestra. Originated in Paris, France, it was designed for use in commercial fairground settings to provide loud music ...

Types of orchestrion

The name "orchestrion" has also been applied to several

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 pl ...

Chamber organ

chamber organ Carol Williams performing at the United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel.">West_Point_Cadet_Chapel.html" ;"title="United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel">United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel. ...

, designed by

Georg Joseph Vogler Abbé Vogler Georg Joseph Vogler, also known as Abbé Vogler (June 15, 1749 – May 6, 1814), was a German composer, organist, teacher and theorist. In a long and colorful career extending over many more nations and decades than was usual at the t ...

(''Abbé Vogler'') in 1790, incorporated 900 pipes, 3 manuals of 63 keys each and 39 pedals in a space of

Pianoforte with organ pipe

pianoforte The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

with

s attached, invented by Tomáš Antonín Kunz (1756–1830) of

Prague Prague ( ; cs, Praha ; german: Prag, ; la, Praga) is the capital and largest city in the Czech Republic, and the historical capital of Bohemia. On the Vltava river, Prague is home to about 1.3 million people. The city has a temperate ...

in 1791. This orchestrion comprised two manuals of 65 keys and 25 pedals, all of which could be used either independently or coupled. There were 21 stops, 230 strings and 360 pipes which produced 105 different combinations. The

bellows A bellows or pair of bellows is a device constructed to furnish a strong blast of air. The simplest type consists of a flexible bag comprising a pair of rigid boards with handles joined by flexible leather sides enclosing an approximately airtigh ...

were worked either by hand or by machinery.

Player piano

The

player piano A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern i ...

automatically played by means of revolving cylinders, and was invented in 1851 by F. T. Kaufmann of

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth larg ...

. It comprised a complete

wind orchestra A concert band, also called a wind band, wind ensemble, wind symphony, wind orchestra, symphonic band, the symphonic winds, or symphonic wind ensemble, is a performing ensemble consisting of members of the woodwind, brass, and percussion famil ...

, with the addition of kettle-drums,

side drum The snare (or side drum) is a percussion instrument that produces a sharp staccato sound when the head is struck with a drum stick, due to the use of a series of stiff wires held under tension against the lower skin. Snare drums are often used in ...

cymbal A cymbal is a common percussion instrument. Often used in pairs, cymbals consist of thin, normally round plates of various alloys. The majority of cymbals are of indefinite pitch, although small disc-shaped cymbals based on ancient designs soun ...

tambourine The tambourine is a musical instrument in the percussion family consisting of a frame, often of wood or plastic, with pairs of small metal jingles, called "zills". Classically the term tambourine denotes an instrument with a drumhead, though ...

and

triangle A triangle is a polygon with three Edge (geometry), edges and three Vertex (geometry), vertices. It is one of the basic shapes in geometry. A triangle with vertices ''A'', ''B'', and ''C'' is denoted \triangle ABC. In Euclidean geometry, an ...

Panharmonicon

The

panharmonicon The Panharmonicon was a musical instrument invented in 1805 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a contemporary and friend of Beethoven. Beethoven composed his piece "Wellington's Victory" (Op. 91) to be played on Mälzel's mechanical orchestral organ a ...

is the earliest known automatic orchestrion. It was invented in 1805 by

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 displayin ...

and

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 ...

composed ''

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 comm ...

'' (or ''Battle Symphony'') in 1813 specifically for it. Friedrich Wilhelm 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 Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

, in 1811 and was exhibited there and then in

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States New York may also refer to: Film and television * '' ...

and other cities. Mälzel also was on tour (with interruptions) with this instrument in the United States from 7 February 1826 until he died in 1838. In 1817 Flight & Robson in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

built a similar automatic instrument called

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 org ...

and in 1823 William M. Goodrich copied Mälzel's panharmonicon in

, United States.

Welte

Michael Welte & Sons of

Freiburg Freiburg im Breisgau (; abbreviated as Freiburg i. Br. or Freiburg i. B.; Low Alemannic: ''Friburg im Brisgau''), commonly referred to as Freiburg, is an independent city in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. With a population of about 230,000 (as o ...

and

manufactured orchestrions, organs and

reproducing piano A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern im ...

s, from 1832 until 1932. In 1883, Emil Welte (1841-1923), the eldest son of Michael, who had emigrated to the United States in 1865, patented the paper roll method (), the model of the later piano roll.

Welte Philharmonic Organ

From 1911 organs branded Welte Philharmonic-Organ were produced. The largest philharmonic organ ever built is at the Salomons Estate of the Markerstudy Group.''WELTE restored''. Royal Academy of Music, 2011 This instrument was built in 1914 for Sir David Lionel Salomons to play not only rolls for the organ but also for his Welte Orchestrion No. 10 from about 1900, which he traded in for the organ. One of these organs can also be seen in the

Scotty's Castle Scotty's Castle (also known as Death Valley Ranch) is a two-story Mission Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style villa located in the Grapevine Mountains of northern Death Valley in Death Valley National Park, California, US. Scotty's Castl ...

museum in Death Valley, where it is played regularly during museum tours. An organ built for the HMHS ''Britannic'' never made its way to Belfast due to the outbreak of the First World War. It can currently be heard playing in the Swiss National Museum in Seewen.Christoph E. Hänggi: Die Britannic-Orgel im Museum für Musikautomaten Seewen So. Festschrift zur Einweihung der Welte-Philharmonie-Orgel; Sammlung Heinrich Weiss-Stauffacher. Hrsg.: Museum für Musikautomaten Seewen SO. Seewen: Museum für Musikautomaten, 2007.

References

* Herbert Jüttemann: ''Orchestrien aus dem Schwarzwald'': Instrumente, Firmen und Fertigungsprogramme. Bergkirchen, 2004. (Orchestrions From The

Black Forest The Black Forest (german: Schwarzwald ) is a large forested mountain range in the state of Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany, bounded by the Rhine Valley to the west and south and close to the borders with France and Switzerland. It is t ...

). * Q. David Bowers: ''Encyclopedia of automatic musical instruments: Cylinder music boxes, disc music boxes, piano players and player pianos... Incl. a dictionary of automatic musical instrument terms''. Vestal, N. Y., the Vestal Press, 1988. * * Q. David. Bowers: ''Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments''. . Lanham, Maryland, USA, Vestal Press, 1972. * W. J. G. Ord-Hume: ''The Musical Box: A Guide for Collectors''. . Atglen, Pennsylvania, USA, Schiffer Publishing, 1995. * W. J. G. Ord-Hume: ''Barrel organ, the story of the mechanical organ and its repair'', South Brunswick, Barnes, 1978. * W. J. G. Ord-Hume: ''The musical box: a guide for collectors, including a guide to values'', Atglen, Pennsylvania, USA, Schiffer Publishing. . * W. J. G. Ord-Hume: ''Clockwork Music — An illustr. history of mechanical musical instruments from the musical box to the pianola, from automation lady virginal players to orchestrion'', London, Allen and Unwin, 1973. . * Arthur A. Reblitz: ''The Golden Age of Automatic Musical Instruments''. . Woodsville, New Hampshire, USA, Mechanical Music Press, 2001. * Arthur A. Reblitz: ''Treasures of Mechanical Music''. . New York, the Vestal Press, 1981. * Stanley Sadie (Ed. ): ''Musical Box''. ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians''. . MacMillan, 1980. Vol. 12. P. 814. * Smithsonian Institution: ''History of Music Machines''. . New York, Drake Publishers, 1975.

External links

www.mechanicalmusicalpress.comOriginal orchestrion catalog viewsPat Metheny's Orchestrion Project
{{Authority control Mechanical musical instruments Pipe organ