Watching reruns of Pawn Stars on the History Channel last night, I was delighted to learn about musical boxes made by Kalliope Musikwerke in the late nineteenth century. Searching today online for more information about Kalliope Musikwerke, I found instead lots of videos of Kalliope music boxes in action as well as, as often happens on the internet, the equally delightful discovery that many nineteenth-century music boxes have Latin tradenames, including Mira (amazing), Stella (star), and Regina (queen). You can hear how beautiful the sounds of a music box are here. Kalliope, we spell Calliope in English, is the German (and Greek) spelling of the name of the muse of epic poetry, one of the nine daughters of the Titan Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and Zeus. The name comes from two Greek words, kalos, beautiful, and ops, voice; if you were going to sing an epic poem like the Iliad or the Odyssey, you would need a beautiful voice. Other English words that contain the root kal- include calligraphy (beautiful writing), calisthenics (beautiful strength), and kaleidoscope (beautiful image seeing). In addition the word calliope, spelled with a lower-case c, is a festive musical instrument, a steam or pipe organ heard at merry-go-rounds or on riverboats. You can hear the Delta Queen's calliope here.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Beautiful Music
Watching reruns of Pawn Stars on the History Channel last night, I was delighted to learn about musical boxes made by Kalliope Musikwerke in the late nineteenth century. Searching today online for more information about Kalliope Musikwerke, I found instead lots of videos of Kalliope music boxes in action as well as, as often happens on the internet, the equally delightful discovery that many nineteenth-century music boxes have Latin tradenames, including Mira (amazing), Stella (star), and Regina (queen). You can hear how beautiful the sounds of a music box are here. Kalliope, we spell Calliope in English, is the German (and Greek) spelling of the name of the muse of epic poetry, one of the nine daughters of the Titan Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, and Zeus. The name comes from two Greek words, kalos, beautiful, and ops, voice; if you were going to sing an epic poem like the Iliad or the Odyssey, you would need a beautiful voice. Other English words that contain the root kal- include calligraphy (beautiful writing), calisthenics (beautiful strength), and kaleidoscope (beautiful image seeing). In addition the word calliope, spelled with a lower-case c, is a festive musical instrument, a steam or pipe organ heard at merry-go-rounds or on riverboats. You can hear the Delta Queen's calliope here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment