After posting my column this morning I went into the the kitchen. From the living room I suddenly heard the music box playing. It has been a long time since I have heard the physical tones of the Music Box one of the key symbols in my book Sarah and Alexander. These musical tones seem to have no place of origin in the physical. To me they represent the harmonics of creation that make themselves known to me from time to time. Friends and clients have heard the tones in my home. On this day, as I heard the tones, I walked into the living room and listened as I looked out over the Verrazano Bridge. The tones played for approximately 3 minutes, the cables of the bridge seeminlgy chords and the sides of the bridge giant tuning forks.
I felt the energies of the tones when I first heard them at Christmas 1989 after the spirit of a young boy named Alexander came to me psychically and I wrote the first draft of Sarah and Alexander. Now exactly 12 years later, Christmas 2001, the same tones were playing.
A musical box (or music box) is a 19th century automatic musical instrument that produces sounds by the use of a set of pins placed on a revolving cylinder or disc so as to strike the tuned teeth of a steel comb. They were developed from musical snuff boxes of the 18th century and called carillons à musique. Some of the more complex boxes also have a tiny drum and small bells, in addition to the metal comb. Alec Templeton, an avid collector of music boxes and a professional concert musician, once noted that the tone of a musical box is unlike that of any musical instrument (although it is best described as somewhere between the timbres of an mbira and a celesta).
The original snuff boxes were tiny containers which could fit into a gentleman's waistcoat pocket. The musical boxes could have any size from that of a hat box to a large piece of furniture. Most of them were tabletop specimens though. They were usually powered by clockwork and originally produced by artisan watchmakers. Image:C. 1877 nicole freres forte-piano music box.jpg For most of the 19th century, the bulk of musical box production was concentrated in Switzerland, building upon a strong watchmaking tradition. The first musical box factory was opened there in 1815 by Jérémie Recordon and Samuel Junod. There were also a few manufacturers in Bohemia and Germany. By the end of the 19th century, some of the European makers had opened factories in the united States.
he cylinders were normally made of metal and powered by a spring. In some of the costlier models, the cylinders could be removed to change melodies, thanks to an invention by Paillard in 1862, which was perfected by Metert of Geneva in 1879. In some exceptional models, there were four springs, to provide continuous play for up to three hours. The very first boxes at the end of the 18th century made use of metal disks. The switchover to cylinders seems to have been complete after the Napoleonic wars. In the last decades of the 19th century, however, mass-produced models such as the Polyphon and others all made use of interchangeable metal disks instead of cylinders. The cylinder-based machines rapidly became a minority.
The term "musical box" is also applied to clockwork devices where a removable metal disk or cylinder was used only in a "programming" function without producing the sounds directly by means of pins and a comb. Instead, the cylinder (or disk) worked by actuating bellows and levers which fed and opened pneumatic valves which activated a modified wind instrument or plucked the chords on a modified string instrument. Some devices could do both at the same time and were often combinations of player pianos and musical boxes, such as the Orchestrion.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, most musical boxes were gradually replaced by player pianos, which were louder and more versatile and melodious, when kept tuned, and by the smaller gramophones which had the advantage of playing back voices. Escalating labor costs increased the price and further reduced volume. Now modern automation is helping bring music box prices back down.
Collectors prize surviving musical boxes from the 19th century and the early 20th century as well as new music boxes being made today in several countries. The cheap, small windup music box movements (including the cylinder and comb and the spring) to add a bit of music to mass-produced jewelry boxes and novelty items are now produced in countries with low labor costs. Many kinds of music box movements are available to the home craft person, locally or through online retailers.
Music Boxes Continued Wikipedia
Still on a cosmic high, I set off for my day, spending time in the waterfront home of an old and dear friend, Leslie, who is an artist and pianist.
In 1989 when Alexander first came to me and the music box played, he showed me an old wooden footbridge that 7 year old Sarah crosses as a child to meet Alexander, a boy of the same age. As I arrived at Leslie's house, I noticed a footbridge off to one side, another Sarah and Alexander synchronicity! Leslie and I noticed that the lillies in the small pond below the bridge had buds ... in December!? Must be part of global warming.
During my visit I channeled several deceased souls for Leslie. She had unsuccessfully been trying to get an appointment with John Edward but was unsuccessful. She was amazed at the information I brought. Leslie mentioned the tragic and suspicious death of someone she was friends with, on December 2, 2000. She explained that exactly one year later, December 2, 2001, a dead bird was embedded in the front grill of her car. Spirit left a message for us and we channeled about it. She did not realize that birds mean ascension.
Leslie and I later went to her computer so I could show her the file on Rainbow Twins and the link with the fall of the Twin Towers. We sat in her studio, overlooking the glistening water and the two bridges in the background that looked like the backdrop of a canvas. They are the Throngs Neck and the Whitestone Bridges! They resembled Twin Bridges, one behind the other from our perspective.
The energies were very high and I could feel something brewing as I set out on my journey home. It was 4 pm as I drove along the Belt Parkway heading west to Brooklyn. The sky was clear with just a few clouds which I watched as Z likes to send me messages in the clouds. The traffic slowed as we passed the exit for Coney Island ... Coney 12 cones of creation Eyeland, the area where I lived the first 12 years of my life.
A rainbow riveted my attention as it formed over the west end of Coney Island from my perspective. This was unusal as it hadn't rained for days. About 5 minutes later, as I approached my exit, I noted a second rainbow next to the first one - twin rainbows. Now both appeared to have moved slightly west and arched over the Verrazano Bridge.
