Norwegian Science and Technology Museum, Oslo

Phonographia's PhonoAvenue

 

Doug Boilesen 2023

The Norwegian Science and Technology Museum in Oslo, Norway has a music machine gallery and an exhibit titled Museum Machines. The following comes from the museum's website. At the time of creating this page the website was being redeveloped and this gallery was not accessible. The following are gallery photographs and a link to the website when it becomes available.

 

Music Machines Gallery

 

Gramophones (Courtesy of Negut Gabriel, 2023)

 

Variety of recording and sound playback machines (Courtesy of Lukás Struhal, 2023)

 

Variety of portable sound playback machines (Courtesy of Andrei Stefan, 2023)

 

Living Room displaying home entertainment - Phonograph, radio, tape recorder and television. (Courtesy Jonulf Sen, 2022)

 

The Museum's website included the following description for their exhibit "PEOPLE – MUSIC – MACHINES" which was on display in 2023.

About the exhibition by Frode Weium.

In the summer of 1989 a Norwegian newspaper, Verdens Gang, interviewed musician Marius Müller. A photo showed Müller sitting in the Scanax recording studio with a computer keyboard on his lap and his coffee cup resting on the keyboard of a Fairlight music computer, which cost over NOK 630,000 (at the current exchange rate about £6,300). The headline asked, “Computer music – better than the musicians?” According to Müller, computer-programmed recordings had a number of advantages; they saved both time and money. However, a computer could not entirely replace musicians. The machine in itself was utterly brainless. “It can’t do more than it’s told to do. It doesn’t make music, it only makes sounds.”

The issues relating to music machines were nothing new. Hans Christian Andersen’s 1844 fairytale The Nightingale tells the story of a Chinese emperor who had a nightingale which sang with marvellous beauty. One day the emperor was given a new, artificial nightingale. “Thirty-three times it sang the selfsame song without tiring.” The emperor and his court were so enthusiastic about the artificial nightingale that they completely forgot about the real one. But eventually the artificial nightingale’s machinery broke down, and it could no longer sing. Then the emperor became seriously ill. At the end of the story the real nightingale returned and brought the emperor back to life.