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Johann Nepomuk Mälzel
«Orchestrion»
The «orchestrion,» known shortly after 1800 as the «panharmonicon» and first introduced by a friend of Beethoven’s, Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, as a mechanical monstrosity made up of 259 individual instruments, influenced the subsequent development of automatic musical instruments. These were unconventional reproduction devices, largely vanity fair curiosities, whose greater influence on the artistic aesthetics of their time remained relatively slight.
GF
