History Of The Haydn Musical Clock - Holmberg Clockworks C-17 Owner's Manual

The Haydn Musical Clock
The mechanical reproduction of music reaches far
back in musical history.
known at least as early as the fifteenth and sixteenth
centuries—a period that took delight in curiosities
of all kinds. The feature that distinguishes these
mechanical instruments from our modern record-
player is the fact that there were not restricted to
reproducing as faithfully as possible the playing of
actual musicians, but also performed works which,
in the case of Hans Leo Hassler or Christian Erbach,
for instance, were specifically written for them and
took into account their intrinsic musical character.
The same applies to the most important mechani-
cal instruments of the later eighteenth and early
nineteenth centuries,
pieces by the greatest composers of the time—
Mozart, Beethoven and, above all, Joseph Haydn.
The original instruments which have survived give us
the invaluable opportunity of hearing these works
performed, even now, exactly as the composer in-
tended, enabling us to make significant discover-
ies with regard to ornamentation and tempo.
The present collection, which first appeared in 1931,
on the eve of the Haydn centenary year, gathers
60
Musical automata were
whose repertoire included
figure The Haydn Musical Clock of 1792
Model C-17 Owner's Guide