During the nineteenth century, automatic musical instruments began to make their presence felt outside the house as well as in the front parlour. Various sizes and shapes of automatic pianos and organs were either carried, or wheeled around the streets. Once the organ grinder found a nice quiet street corner, he would set up his instrument, start to turn the handle, and the street corner was quiet no longer!

All these early street instruments were operated by turning a cranked handle. The music was pinned on a large wooden cylinder (known as a 'barrel') in the same way as the miniature metal cylinder inside the musical box. Barrel Pianos could either be small, portable instruments like the Hicks piano which was carried by means of a leather strap, or could be much larger, like the Tomasso piano, which would have been slid into a low slung two wheeled cart so that it could be manoeuvred around the cobbled streets with comparative ease. In both cases the sounds were produced, just as they were in conventional pianos, by means of hammers which struck steel strings stretched across a stout frame. However, rather than being covered with soft felt, the hammers were often faced with leather, or were left wood so that a loud, penetrating sound was produced which would carry well in a noisy street.

Barrel organs were popular too. Once again, these could either be small instruments, containing reeds or tiny organ pipes, which the organ grinder would carry with a shoulder strap, or they would be much larger, again requiring the use of a wheeled cart.

Paper music rolls were never very popular for street instruments since they were too fragile, and too susceptible to damage by rain. The pinned wooden barrel remained in use until the end. The folded cardboard book music invented by Gavioli during the 1890's became popular with Fair Ground.
The street organs still to be seen today in the streets of Amsterdam use these cardboard books.

The street barrel organ finally evolved into the mammoth fairground organs which are still affectionately remembered and which can still be seen and heard at open air steam rallies during summer months.

For more information on the Street Instruments in the collection please select the appropriate link:

The Tomasso Street Barrel Piano