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February 20, 2006
All Hail the Orchestrion
Prelude to this entry:
"In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock ..."
This is a quote spoken by Orson Welles' character Harry Lime from an excellent old movie we watched recently - The Third Man.
Today Joanna and I did a tour of the Henry Frick mansion (Clayton House). Frick ("The King of Coke") was an entrepreneur in the late 19th century/early 20th century who made his fortune running coal mines and selling the coal to Andrew Carnegie to fuel the latter's steel mills. Frick (who became a millionaire by age 30), liked to spend his money on nice things; nice things such as Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings, a 1914 Model T Ford, a 1914 Rolls Royce, a fabulously ornate mansion, and (my favorite) a Swiss-made Welte Orchestrion. Some people have little wind-up music boxes that sit quaintly upon their dressers. Imagine having an 11 feet high, 8 feet wide (and LOUD) "music box" dominating your parlor room! Mr. Frick would amuse his guests by saying "would you like to hear my own private orchestra?" He then would rev up the orchestrion and the guests would have themselves a chuckle.
The orchestrion grew out of the musical box which grew out of the Swiss peoples' expertise at clockmaking. They are a combination of a music box and a player piano and are a precursor to the jukebox. The monstous contraption in the Frick mansion is a wonder to behold, and hear! It generates music that brings together so many "worlds" of sound. Circus music, carousel music, marching band music, German beer hall oom-pah music, French accordian music, Polish polka music and Jewish klezmer music. The music seeps into the subconscious, welling up images of little Austrian kids riding on carousels, organ grinders standing outside French cafes churning out popular tunes, and people going to the World's Fair in Chicago or New York to see these magical new machines. Contrary to what Mr. Welles said, the Swiss are famous for much more that just the cuckoo clock!
music stuff | By Tim and Jo | 9:11 PM