The Magic of the Machine

PraguePost: Czech Museum of Music showcases music boxes to the digital era

The creation of music has long been the realm of both inventors and composers, and both have long fascinated themselves with the idea of creating objects that, when set in motion, would play music of their own accord. There was a mystical fine line, too, between the magical and the musical, and the use of both illusions for public entertainment by conjurers, traveling showmen and musicians was as sensational as it was technologically revolutionary.

The race to invent the most sophisticated and intricate self-playing devices peaked in the days of the Industrial Revolution, and the songs these machines played serve today as a soundtrack to eras long gone. A current exhibition at the Czech Museum of Music, "Monarchy - Magical Music Machines," walks visitors through the journey of self-playing instruments, also known as automatophones, with the chance to not only see firsthand the incredibly detailed mechanisms but also to hear their songs.

The exhibit, curated by the museum's Peter Balog, runs through the end of January, and Balog says he hopes it shows how these special instruments - more than 80 in total, most of which come from the National Museum's own collections - are a part of Czech, and European, history.

"We would like to show that automatophones like carillons, flute clocks, music boxes, automatons, barrel organs, orchestrions and other instruments were and still are part of our cultural heritage," he says.

According to Balog, the lineage of progressively more technically intricate devices has shaped our collective understanding and appreciation for music. The exhibit includes sheet music, for example, composed by the likes of Beethoven, Mozart and Haydn, specifically for the flute clock; Haydn alone wrote 35 pieces for it. The flute clock was popular in the first half of the 19th century and was able to play opera arias, overtures and minuets.

"We created self-playing instruments, and there were new arrangements of composition made for them or a new genre of music invented for them," he says. "Nowadays, we accept the structure and content of music that would be unthinkable without automatophones. The living proof is electronic dance music, which has its own complex culture."

Displays include video recordings of instruments in action, where visitors can listen through headphones to the music. At other parts of the exhibit, the staff turns on the actual instruments, and the sound is incredible: booming enough to imagine it being heard over a roaring ballroom or carousel. Visitors can even take a turn operating the pedals of a player piano, which feels straight out of a spaghetti western.

The first item of the exhibit is the collection's oldest, a Trauttmansdorff clock with carillon that dates to the 16th century and belongs to the National Library. Several others over the eras hail from the Netherlands and Germany, and there are quirky novelty items incorporating music boxes and devices such as a musical Christmas tree stand from 1900, a musical goblet from the mid-1800s and a photo album with an imbedded music box from 1895.

The exhibit explains how interest in automatophones waned with the invention of the phonograph but rose slightly again after World War II, when it became popular to collect the instruments, especially polyphons and symphoniums. Part of the exhibit will be of particular interest to fans of Martin Scorsese's 2011 film Hugo, which features a writing automaton. The museum's exhibit includes several texts and photos about the popularity of automatons, as well as video samples of musical and nonmusical automatons from the workshop of Michael Start, who worked as a technical consultant on Hugo.

In the film, Hugo's father explains to him, "Magicians used machines like this when I was a boy. Some walked, some danced, some sang, but the secret was always in the clockwork." It is this "secret" that lends the intricate technology such a magical quality; indeed, the magic being the very extent of human accomplishment.

Because of the size and age of many of the instruments, "Monarchy - Magical Music Machines" will not be traveling on after it closes at the end of January.

"Now is the best time to see all the best pieces in one place," Balog says.

Fiona Gaze