African Music on a music box?  I'd love to have that!  I cherish my
collection of Edison cylinders with turn-of-the-century humor!

My question today, however, is about Chinese music on boxes.  I have
a cylinder box of unknown make, # 58915, that plays all Chinese music,
of which, to me, it all sounds similar! (Sorry, not 'Politically
Correct'!)  The anglicized spellings are conjectural as the script
is difficult to read.

The eight listed tunes are:

  Sinfa
  Pontzi
  Too chun lin
  Ehun chie lin
  Siang-keang-long
  She-uhz houa-ming
  She pah-mah
  Shang hai modu

Who made the box?  For what market?

Mr. Berley Antoine Firmin II
Bayou La Combe, Louisiana

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 [ Philippe Rouille provides the answer in 970305 MMDigest. ]

 Subject: Music Boxes with Chinese Tunes

As Miss Miho Matsuo wrote, music boxes playing Chinese tunes are not
rare at all.  A very large number was exported from Europe to China,
especially around the turn of the century, but also before.  I have
seen a good small keywound Lecoultre with 3 Chinese tunes, amidst them
the anthem Sin Fa which is very common in these boxes.

The French firm L'Epee seems to have made quite a lot of them.  They
were usually rather coarse, more for pleasure of the eyes than for the
ears, although some play well.  They ranged from the very cheap box
(3 or 4 tunes, about 10 inches long) to the biggest orchestral boxes,
sometimes on matching tables.

Very few snuff boxes seem to have been made, but a lot of very rich
musical watches or singing birds were made, especially during the first
half of the 19th century.  Many music boxes for China were equipped
with bells, drums, dancing dolls, and reeds.  Some were sold with
singing birds inside, usually a combination of reeds and real small
wooden pipes.

When I went to China in 1974, I saw scores of music boxes playing
Chinese music in the warehouses of the official export corporations.
The problem is that many were in bad condition, and it seems they are
very difficult to sell to Western ears ...

Actually, some boxes with Chinese tunes appear from time to time in
auction houses, but the auctioneer fears to announce what kind of music
they play.  It must be said that Chinese music (very diatonic scale)
may in fact be pleasant to our ears (some kind of joyful tunes),
whereas Indian or Arabian music is rather strange on music boxes, which
do not accommodate easily the endless repetition of ornaments and
quarter tones.

I would like to know if there is today a real market for such boxes
(in Japan, Formosa, or Hong Kong, perhaps), let aside the pleasure of
having an exotic box in one's collection.

Best regards,

Philippe Rouille