It is a work in CD with direction of Teresa Pais, director of the museum of Quinta das Cruzes and coordination of the musicologist Vítor Sardinha and includes a set of 27 musical themes of that musical musical instrument.
The orchestraphone serial number 3151, from the Limonaire Frères factory, demonstrates the close relationship between the history of science, art and entertainment. These were instruments that have always been used for public display in large spaces, such as cinemas, fairs, ballrooms and had a widespread manufacture in Europe from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Its mechanical complexity, as well as its sonorous power, covered by a huge wooden structure with a sumptuously carved and polychrome facade, justified its use as an instrument of commercial exploitation of music, animating dances and parties to the rhythm of polkas, waltzes, Among other songs, constituting in itself the main attraction.
Manufactured, among others, by Limonaire Frères, founded in Paris in 1840, orquestrophones allowed an unalterable musical performance, and it could advantageously replace musicians, a factor widely publicized by the construction companies at the time. The short popularity of Orquestrofones came to an end in the first quarter of the twentieth century, with a change in social habits and the appearance of the phonograph, which profoundly altered the way the public consumed music.
The mechanized instrument that integrates the collections of the Quinta das Cruzes Museum consists of a main body in wood, profusely decorated, and has on the rear face a mechanical system of reading perforated cards, operable by crank with adaptation to electric motor, that emits the Signal to the various instruments, allowing the music to play. This is a piece of great patrimonial interest, not only because it is a rarity in the world of mechanical musical instruments, but also because it documents an exuberant time, present in its neo-baroque decorations, in its mechanical dolls, automatons, and in its music From the halls and theaters.
This complex instrument, bought by the 1st Viscount of Cacongo, João José Rodrigues Leitão, at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1900, was in the Quinta de Nossa Senhora Mãe dos Homens, when it was acquired in 1978 by the Regional Government, at the initiative of the management of the museum, to the heir of the family, Mr. Ricardo Nascimento Jardim. With this acquisition were also delivered several music cards that include waltzes, polkas, rhapsodies, military marches, hymns, as well as other classic and popular songs, making a total of 167 copies, some outstanding for their unprecedented nature, such as the version Alfredo Keil's "The Portuguese" of 1904, several Hymnos dedicated to the kings D. Carlos and D. Amelia, as well as the Portuguese Hymnos (1900), National (1904) and Madeira Island (1905).
The orquestrofone, still today, fulfills its original function as instrument of entertainment and musical dissemination, exposed to the public in the gardens of the Quinta das Cruzes Museum.
