Rebecca Wolf: Musik und Mechanik bei Johann Nepomuk Mälzel

The broad scope of Johann Nepomuk Mälzel’s inventions, alongside the metronome, spans out to include diverse automative, self-playing musical instruments, androids, cabinet-like automatons, mechanized dioramas, and prosthetic limbs. Demonstrations and exhibitions of his projects, which ranged from the appropriation of others’ discoveries to extensive original constructions, continue to spur the imagination to this day. Often dismissed as an unpleasant, machine-crazed charlatan, entirely different aspects of this organ builder and machinist are gleaned upon a closer examination of his instruments. Indeed, colleagues and scientists of the early nineteenth century admired him much more for his developments in the field of instrument-making and for his method of presentation, which often included detailed technical explanations. While considering his instruments and androids, this article is devoted to a side of Mälzel that extends far beyond the wizardry of a chess-playing automaton spectacle.

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