Music Boxes, Record Players of Yesterday

( Article orginally published December 1960 )

Dinner guests at the Lazy Susan Inn at Woodbridge, Virginia, invariably stop in the foyer with an exclamation of delight. "Listen to the music box."

Harold Gates is owner-proprietor of the Inn, famous for its open fires and background of colonial implements and utensils as well as excellent country fare. Mr. Gates usually has one of his music boxes playing a tuneful welcome to his guests. Few visitors can resist delaying to hear the silver thread of nostalgic melody unwind to the very end.

Listeners who yield to the charm of the music box often wonder about the history of these delightful musical instruments. Music boxes had their origins centuries back in the bell towers of the 14th century when bells sounded the passing hours as part of the clock mechanism. Soon lifesize bell-ringers called jacks, in the form of knights or mythological figures appeared to strike the bells.

Clockmakers then began to transfer their art to more private timekeepers, and developed the repeater watch and watches which struck the hour with tiny bells. Lecoultre, a Swiss watchmaker, replaced the bells with a cylinder inset with pins which struck against a parallel comb as the cylinder revolved. This enabled watchmakers to construct simple musical instruments, still using the coiled spring principle of the watch as the operating mechanism.

The first music boxes, as we know them, were usually set in elaborate snuff boxes, a popular article of the time. Eventually, however, almost any useful or ornamental object was made to accommodate these remarkable musical instruments.

Clever craftsmen utilized the coiled spring principle still further when they took the next step of setting the bird-like trills of the music box inside tiny mechanical birds which fluttered and turned to the accompaniment of their own sparkling songs.

The feathered singers were soon joined by a wonderful succession of other automatons, musicians, dancers, groups of villagers, all coming to life as though by magic at the first captivating strains of the music box by whose mechanism they were animated.

The 19th century was perhaps the Golden Age for the music box as far as its perfection as a musical instrument and the variety and popularity of its music were concerned. Disc-type machines replaced the older cylinder boxes because of the endless variety of tunes available on the easily interchangeable metal discs.

Nearly every parlor had a disc-type music box, perhaps American made, like i\,Ir. Gates' 1885 Regina, a table top model in a plain oak box manufactured in Rahway, New Jersey. Regina tune lists for the 15Y2 inch discs popular in homes included themes from operas by Rossini and Verdi. marches, folk songs like "The Blue Bells of Scotland", and Stephen Foster melodies, Strauss waltzes, and music hall songs like "Where is My Boy Tonight?"

Large, elaborate versions of the disc-type machines like Mr. Gates' almost six foot tall Regina which has a double comb and an automatic disc-changing mechanism furnished music for public establishments. Rudolph Wurlitzer, whose name is almost synonymous with today's juke boxes, added a coin slot to Mr. Gates' table top Regina and the large orchestral Regina, which plays 27 1/2 inch discs, could be ordered with or without a coin-slot device.

The phonograph, invented by Thomas Edison, must play the villain in bringing an end to the music box era. Recorded sound, the human voice and actual music, poor in quality as it was at the outset, charmed the audience away from the precise, sparkling melodies of the music box. Off by themselves in a corner, Mr. Gates has two of the wax cylinder culprits, one a 1906 model with the horn outside, the other a 1912 deluxe model with the horn built in.

The music box which casts the spell of deepest enchantment out at the Lazy Susan Inn, however, is Mr. Gates' Swiss cylinder box dating about 1865. This machine, ac cording to the elegant script label inside the lid, comes with flute, voice, and celeste orchestra.

The beautifully tnade box is of burl walnut with inlaid rosewood border. An inner glass lid protects the elaborate mechanism while permitting a view of the fairy orchestra in motion. There are four interchangeable cylinders with eight tunes pinned in each cylinder. A tune indicator enables one to pick out the selection being played on the tune list also written on the inside of the box lid.

An organ box in the middle enriches with its deeper, swelling notes the sparkling cylinder music struck from the double comb. At intervals tiny, metal-tipped prongs tap the drutn on the left like the thrumming of fairy fingertips. Jewel-like enamelled butterflies and bees descend to set the six flower-topped bells hung in two rows to chiming. Finally a cymbal on the right adds its delicate din to this bright waterfall of sound.

Even with the range, volume, and quality of whole orchestras available in our homes today through high fidelity and stereophonic recordings, the peculiar charm of the music box still wins an audience. Collectors like Mr. Gates find as good a description as any of this silvery music with the freshness and purity of a shower of raindrops in Shakespeare's The Tempest, when Shakespeare describes the music of Ariel and his fairy band as "Sounds and sweet airs that give delight and hurt not." The music box, too, for its devoted collector makes "Marvelous sweet music." form a box holding a lady's beauty patches, guns whose barrels wound watches, crosses and small house keys with the winders concealed in them, beautiful lockets containing pictures or locks of hair, a bust and a full length figure of George Washington, a Chinese figure carved in ivory, and the figure of a disciple of Buddha. There are animals of many kinds from the fox of the English huntsman, the door horse of a sportsman, to the monkey, bear, lion or elephant, for which there is no equally evident reason. There are precious and semi-precious stones of many kinds, exquisite enamels, seals either on the keys or on a decorative piece made to match the key and be worn with it. The insignia include Phi Beta Kappa Keys and other college badges, those of Masons and Oddfellows, the crest of the City of Berne, the badges of guilds, and various others. There is a monkey wrench that works perfectly, compasses, a "peephole" key that shows a girl, a section of the first Atlantic cable, busts of Voltaire and Rousseau carved in mother of pearl, cameos, and ones having a row of stones whose initials spell "regard."

Of particular interest is the key in massive gold decorated in enamel and surrounded by salamanders that played a tune everv time its owner used it to wind his watch.

Historically the collection is particularly rich for it not only shows artistic work of various periods but also includes keys that were owned by historical figures. The most inter esting and valuable of the historical pieces is the oldest one in the collection. It is made of iron but decorated with other metals. On one side is the bust of a man and on the other side "Anno D. MDLV", or "the year 1555", while inside, but able to be turned out for use is the seal of the Medici family with the crown of a duke over it. This identifies the key as having belonged to Cosimo I, Duke of Florence and Grand Duke of Tuscany. As the ruler most interested in the newly discovered watches, and the one who was having them made for him continuously, was Charles, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, and it is not known that watches were being made in Italy at this time, the natural conclusion is that this key and the watch to which it belonged was a gift from Charles to Cosimo who was his Italian ally.

A key having a gold serpent wound about two pearls, accompanied by a decorative piece in the form of a Moor, set with diamonds and a ruby, belonged to Napoleon Bonaparte. A heavy gold key with a carnelian on which is a seal, belonged to a King of England, believed to have been George III. The seal is a coach and four with the English coat of arms on the door of the coach and G. R. for George Rex on its side. Many others also have historical significance as well as beauty, and the collection as a whole constitutes a history of jewelry making for a specific purpose during the approximately three centuries of the "watch key period".