Reuge Music Box

By BRENNE MEIROWITZ

The Reuge music company crafts some of the world’s finest music boxes, items of music automata such as singing birds, and pocket watches.  Their musical devices are world renowned for their impeccable quality and luxurious appeal. Founded by Charles Reuge, a watchmaker from the Val-de-Travers in 1865, the 26 year old began his company by making pocket watches with innovative musical movement devices.  For those only getting acquainted with music device history, you will find that its history is quite fascinating.  For instance, not only are musical pocket watches gorgeously designed, but they consist of 17 tiny notes musical movement.  They wind manually, and the sound volume can be adjusted.
It is believed that the first mechanical music devices began as hydraulically powered flutes or organs, with automata such as singing birds attached.  Details of these early music devices were recorded by Greek historians of mechanics, Philo of Byzantium (ca. 280 BCE – 220 BCE), also known as Philo Mechanicus and mathematician, Apollonius of Perga (ca. 262 BCE – 190 BCE).  Almost a thousand years later, the first musical program was developed by three brothers known as the Banū Mūsā of Baghdad to run hydraulically-blown flutes.  By the mid-800s CE, two automata consisting of artificial trees and singing birds were invented by Leo the Mathematician for the Emperor Theophilus of Byzantium.The application of rotating cylinders were first implemented with church-clock chimes in the early 14th-century, which eventually evolved into fully chromatic carillons in 16^th century Flanders.  Although the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) in Europe interrupted the development and demand of mechanical instruments, by 1720 the craft experienced a great revival, so much so that it is referred to ‘Golden Century’ of mechanical instruments, lasting approximately from 1720–1820.  Musical clocks, or Flötenuhr, became the rage of European nobility and the wealthy merchant class especially in Berlin, Vienna, and London.  Compositions for these musical time pieces were specifically written by some of the world’s most celebrated composers including Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, C.P.E. Bach, and Haydn.  Up until the early 1800s, these luxury novelty items were almost never heard by anyone other than the very wealthy and their immediate servant staff.  However, by the 1830s, they became an almost common feature in fashionable cafés and pleasure gardens.  According the 1834 edition of The Penny Magazine (published in Great Britain), approximately four-sevenths of most popular music was delivered to the masses through portable barrel organs and barrel pianos – usually played by itinerant musicians.

It was during this period, that Charles Reuge introduced the art of making pocket watches with musical movements, and Reuge music was established as a leader in uniquely crafted mechanical music instruments.  However, with the invention of the phonograph by Thomas Edison in 1877, mechanical musical instruments began to lose their massive appeal.  Today, as is obvious, music boxes are strictly novelty and collectors’ items.   Companies, such as Reuge, are amongst a handful of companies that still produce them, but as their slogan states, Reuge is indeed recognized as the leader in “the art of mechanical music”