A Kikkerland Design best-seller. Make your own melody. Great gift for musicians. Includes hole puncher, instruction booklet, crank box, 3 blank music paper strips plus one paper stripped pre-punched with the tune, ""Happy Birthday"". Paper refills are available.
“the tone of a musical box is unlike that of any musical instrument” Alec Templeton, an avid collector of music boxes and a professional concert musician.
The earliest known mechanical musical instruments were invented in Bagdad by The Banu Musa brothers in the 9th century who also invented the valve, mechanical trick devices and the gas mask. Their revolving cylinder with raised pins is the same mechanism watchmakers in the 18th century used to make musical snuff boxes which has since evolved into the mechanical music box we have today.
Famous moments in Music Box lore:
Bjork in the album “Vespertine” and the song “Frosti”
Richard Barrett, and London based composer “trace” French musician
Colleen made an album using only music boxes “Colleen et les Boites a Musique”
In 1974-75, German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen composed Tierkreis, a set of twelve pieces on the signs of the zodiac, for twelve musical boxes
In Japanese anime and manga films, music boxes are used to convey romantic feelings
A music box that induces eternal sleep when played in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix
Panic! At the Disco’s cover This is Halloween in the Nightmare before Christmas uses a music box for the open and close of the song"