Music Box

Went to Leavenworth this past weekend. Now I really don't like shopping but we passed a few stores that seemed interesting so we walked in. One of them was a store that had music boxes.

The very nice lady played for us what appeared to be her favorite music box, at least of those within her immediate reach. Ha!

It was a Swiss music box (Reuge, I think) in a crystal box with a rosewood base (the material many violin soundboards are made of and obviously that produce high-quality resonance). It looked something like the below.






If you placed your hand on the table it sat upon, you could feel the vibrations as it played, sort of like my feet on the floor by my piano or by a speaker. This box was a 144 note machine. It played 3 different parts of Pachelbel's Canon in D for a duration of 30 minutes before starting the routine over. All the pins were handset and tuned individually.

I was enthralled. The sound was astounding. I had no idea such amazing music boxes existed. I now can understand why people might collect them as I now covet this particular music box. I wish I was more apt to drop that much money for something so frivolous! :)

Some history on music boxes here and there or somewhere else. I found it very interesting how the history of the automaton relates.