Panharmonicon-L'Illustration 25 mai 1846

The Panharmonicon was a

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 ...

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 ...

, a contemporary and friend of

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 ...

. Beethoven composed his piece "

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 ...

" (Op. 91) to be played on Mälzel's mechanical orchestral organ and also to commemorate Arthur Wellesley's victory over the French at the

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 ...

in 1813. It was one of the first automatic playing machines, similar to the later

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 us ...

. 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 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 ...

during an air raid in

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 opposin ...

. Friedrich Kaufmann copied this automatic playing machine in 1808, and his family produced

s 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 this instrument in the United States from February 7, 1826, until his death in 1838. In 1817 Flight & Robson in London 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 ...

. In 1821

Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel (1777 – 28 September 1826) was the inventor of the first successful metronome. He also invented the componium, an "automatic instrument" that could make endless variations on a musical theme. Winkel was born in Lipp ...

copied some features of the Panharmonicon in Amsterdam for his instrument, the

Componium The componium is a mechanical musical instrument constructed in 1821 by Diederich Nikolaus Winkel (Lippstatt, Germany, 1777 - Amsterdam, Netherlands, 1826) that composes novel music. It is an automatic organ consisting of two barrels that revolve ...

, which was also capable of aleatoric composition.Urania: Musik-Zeitschrift für Orgelbau, Orgel- und Harmoniumspiel, vol 12, 1855, p. 20
/ref> In 1823, William M. Goodrich copied Mälzel's Panharmonicon in Boston, MA.

References

* Hans-W. Schmitz: ''Johann Nepomuk Mälzel und das Panharmonicon. Von den Anfängen der Orchestermaschinen''. In: Das Mechanische Musikinstrument, 7. Jahrgang, No. 19, März 1981

External links

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