Människorna, musiken och de mekaniska instrumenten i Norge cirka 1480-1890

Abstract

An international history of mechanical musical instruments is well documented from a technological perspective (innovation, patents etc.), for instance musical clocks, barrel organs, musical box and organettes. The purpose of this study is to elucidate the specific region of Norway from a sociocultural narrative, by analyzing the emergence, distribution, and reception of these instruments. The hitherto unexplored Norwegian milieu is compared with the canonized European. The study is enabled by the rich sources of digitalized newspapers, domestic literature as well as well-registered extant mechanical instruments in museums. Four articles enlighten the mechanical instruments from various organological perspectives by: 1) examining musical clocks through a sound study analysis, 2) recanonizing the repertory in the Norwegian clocks, 3) analyzing changes of concepts, examining the slow establishment of barrel organs, and 4) exploring idiomatic adjustments of arrangements of disc music boxes and comparing them with the original score. The study shows how mechanical instruments in Norway were established with a delay in time in comparison to the international scene. Also, a distinctive hymnal repertory can be noted in musical clocks. Later, the initial import of music boxes by non-music specialists shifted during the 1800s to an effective distribution by direct import from the producers, retailers in general or by the specialized music trade, when also the term «mechanical instruments» was established. Central uses over the years include the imitation of nature (during the Enlightenment period), to show good taste, to use as a tool of power for rationality (time discipline) as well as stressing the magic perspective (look, no hands) and to give consolation. They also played an important part in the emerging entertainment and consumer market In the thesis I juxtapose technical and social perspectives on the music box discs & cylinders as on the phonograph. This opens for a new understanding of the distribution of tangible, portable, repeatable, and temporal musical objects, and in the long term, of the process of mediatization and musicalization of society. Finally, a discussion on the Ogden & Richards theory of symbol-thought-referent can serve as a tool for museum use in terminology and taxonomy matters.