Gavioli

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A book playing a large Gavioli fairground organ.

Gavioli & Cie were a Franco-Italian organ builder company that manufactured German fairground organs in both Italy and later France.^[1]

Gavioli was founded in 1806 in Modena, Italy, by Giacomo Gavioli (1786-1875). Giacamo's hobby was the development of automatic playing musical instruments, where his "Panharmonico" invention became the predecessor of the portable belly organ. In 1845, Giacomo and his son Ludovico Gavioli (1807-1875), moved the business to the trade capital of the organ trade, Paris, France. There Ludovco had three sons: Anselme, Henry and Claude.^[2]

Each contributed to the business, but it is Anselme the inventor who's name is remembered, when in 1892 he patented book music. Up until this point, pipe organs were played by a large wooden cylinder, using a system akin to the modern musical box. This limited the length of music which could be played to the size of the cylinder, and secondly the number of cylinders which could be stored limited the variation of music and where they could be played. Book music used a series of zig-zag folded sheets of carboard in a folded book, which allowed mechanical arms to feel the holes and hence open the valves to allow compressed air to play the pipes of the organ.^[3] The development marked a turning-point in the history of the mechanical organ, by allowing music to be almost infinitely long, and made Gavioli until the most famous and prolific fair organ builders.^[4] The Gavioli family had branches in cities such as Barcelona, Manchester, New York and Waldkirch.

After the business passed to Anselme's son Ludivico II, the business took a series of tragic circumstances, and ceased trading in 1910. Afterwards, a number of their engineers went on to build their own organ companies, including Carl Frei.