Mechanical music collection at Musical Mystery House in Wiscasset, Maine
Some time ago, I did a short post about the Musical Wonder House in Wiscasset, Maine. Though the video shown here is a little dated, the House is open and alive with the sound of mechanical music.
This museum has a collection of over 500 machines representing nearly every form of mechanical music. Among the collection are a number of player pianos, assorted disc music boxes, cylinder music boxes, musical clocks, musical toys, and automata.
A guide is on hand to provided a personal tour, which includes playing many of the instruments and explaining their history and unique qualities.
If you will be in New England this summer, a visit to the Musical Wonder House is a must. It is an amazing collection of machines, each one expertly restored, and beautiful to hear.
If you want to do some research ahead of time to enhance your experience, Encyclopedia of Automatic Musical Instruments
by Q. David Bowers is the definitive reference on this subject. The book has over 1,000 pages with hundreds of black-and-white photographs, advertisements, and reproduction company brochures. All you will need to complete the experience is to hear the machines in person at the museum!
Address for the Musical Mystery House:
Musical Wonder House
16-18 High Street
Wiscasset, ME 04578
Hours:
Memorial Day Weekend through Halloween
Monday through Saturday, from 10AM - 5PM and Sunday Noon - 5 PM
Web site: http://www.musicalwonderhouse.com/
Labels: clocks, collections, disc music box. cylinder music box, mechanical music, museums, music box, musical clocks, Musical Mystery House, New England, player piano, tours
posted by Dug North on 7/12/2012
3 Comments:
Hi Dug, you mentions the Bowers book as a reference book. Surely for collectors yes, but for understanding - Jüttemann is better, because you can find some hundreds of engineering drawings about the innerlife of these machines, unfortunately only in german. Why doesnt exist a translation ?
http://www.amazon.de/Mechanische-Musikinstrumente-Herbert-J%C3%BCttemann/dp/3936655650/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1342115288&sr=8-2
18 months ago I wrote a review in my blog:
http://kugelbahn.blog.de/2011/01/20/neuerscheinung-herbert-juettemann-mechanische-musikinstrumente-10401665/
And today I discovered that review in the publisher info about the Jüttemann book with the added fact that Jüttemann got the David Bowers Literary Award (!!)for his books about mechanical music in the year 2000.
http://www.dohr.de/autor/juettemann.htm
Thanks, Falk! As always your are a wealth of information on all things mechanical!
Best,
-Dug
How come no one can see the video??
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