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The Sultan’s pipe organ
In 1599 the English organ builder Thomas Dallam personally accompanied to Istanbul an instrument he had built for the Ottoman Sultan Mehmed III at the behest of Queen Elizabeth. The gift was intended...
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The Hindenburg piano
The first piano ever to be carried on a passenger aircraft was created by the Julius Blüthner Pianofortefabrik for the ill-fated Hindenburg airship. The lightweight aluminum alloy grand piano weighed...
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The Hill bow
In 1892 Alfred Hill, of the London violin-making firm W.E. Hill & Sons, got into an argument about Irish Home Rule with one of his employees. The argument escalated until the employee became...
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Glass harmonica horrors
Although it was championed by the likes of Mozart and Benjamin Franklin, in its heyday the glass harmonica was also the object of considerable trepidation. In the 18th century music was regarded by...
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Violins and fungi
In the late 17th and early 18th century the great violin maker Antonio Stradivari used a special wood that had grown in the cold period between 1645 and 1715. In the long winters and the cool summers,...
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The woodwind hotel
“For our first breakfast on the sunny forecourt our host…brought us croissants, brioches, and six metal clarinets!” So begins “Surrounded by woodwind in Normandy” by John Playfair (Clarinet &...
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17th-century Persian music
“Fifteen musicians sat in a crosswise position on both sides, and thus in a broken row divided into two groups; these in turn sounded together a strange tune with reed-instruments, cymbals and various...
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Accordion jokes
Jokes about accordions often involve their destruction. (The difference between an accordion and an onion: People shed tears when they chop up an onion.) Presumably this is due to their sound. (The...
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Marquis Yi’s instrumentarium
Dating from the 5th century B.C.E., the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng in Suizhou, Hubei, furnished some of China’s oldest musical instruments and earliest reliable musicological writings. The...
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Flower world/Mundo florido
Ēkhō Verlag issued the first volume of the series Flower world: Music archaeology of the Americas/Mundo florido: Arqueomusicología de las Américas in 2012. This bilingual series aims to raise the...
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Canary pedagogy
The serinette (after the French serin, canary) is a very small barrel organ that was used to teach repertoire to pet songbirds in the 18th century. These instruments were made in England, France, and...
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Historic Balinese gamelans
In August 1928 representatives from the German record companies Odeon and Beka were sent to Bali; their efforts resulted in 98 recordings on 78 rpm discs of a wide variety of examples of Balinese...
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The Wonder violin
Although the Conn firm is best known as a maker of brass instruments, it produced violins, violas, and violoncellos for 30 years. In 1897 Charles Gerard Conn engaged the Italian violin maker William...
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Grieg and recording
Grieg was intensely interested in sound recording, which was in its infancy in his day. His works were first recorded on Edison rolls in 1899 by Alfred Grünfeld. This technique of recording sound on...
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Tut’ankhamūn’s trumpets
Among the “wonderful things” that Howard Carter saw when he entered the newly discovered tomb of Tut’ankhamūn in 1922 were two trumpets—one made of silver, and one made of bronze. Seeing the potential...
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Ikonografia muzyczna: Studia i materiały
In 2012 the Instytut Sztuki Polskiej Akademii Nauk launched the series Ikonografia muzyczna: Studia i materiały, edited by the team of the Katalog Źródeł Muzycznych led by Paweł Gancarczyk. The first...
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The chromochord
The chromochord is a bioelectronic musical instrument that is driven by protein expansion and contraction. Linked to a laptop computer, the device holds 12 vials, each paired with a different sound....
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Jack Casady’s signature bass
In a 2006 interview, Jack Casady recalled the development of the Epiphone Jack Casady Signature Bass: “When I first started playing, I ran across a short scale semi-hollow bass. Despite lacking some...
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The world’s largest water-powered cuckoo clock
The world’s largest water-powered cuckoo clock, built by Richard Pim for his Westbury Mill water gardens in Herefordshire, features a birdsong barrel organ from the W & A Boggis organ building...
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The Pied Piper and his clarinet
The German town of Hameln continues to re-enact the legend of the Rattenfänger, known in English as the Pied Piper, each weekend during the summer. A number of musicians have assumed the role of the...
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