Museum für Musikautomaten

The last day of the 2nd Global Piano Meeting, 17-20 June 2022 was held at the Museum für Musikautomaton in the beautiful little village of Seewen. If you are ever in Switzerland I would highly recommend visiting this truly magnificent collection of mechanical instruments, music boxes, musical automatons and more. It was very moving to hear these works of art make music. So many of them have clearly had thousands of hours spent on making them, they display a breathtaking level of craftsmanship.

The conference is now concluded and we will shortly be saying goodbye to Switzerland and travelling on to Paris. It has been an extraordinary few days in Bern, learning about so many aspects related to piano rolls, reproducing pianos and pianolas. The conference has been thought-provoking in many ways, and has changed my outlook on this forgotten technology. It was also of course wonderful to re-connect with some wonderful friends and colleagues!