,
Portrait of Giacomo Gavioli Gavioli was founded in 1806 in
Cavezzo,
Italy, by Giacomo Gavioli (1786–1875). Giacomo's hobby was the development of automatic playing musical instruments like
bird organs and flute clocks. In 1818, he moved to
Modena, where he repaired carillons and tower clocks. His son
Lodovico Gavioli (1807–1875) was a very clever inventor; he built a large orchestrion organ, the Panharmonico, for the Duke of Modena, who refused to buy the instrument. Ludovico then took it to London and Paris. Additionally, he designed and build the Modena's Palazzo comunale, the city hall. In 1845 Ludovico moved the business to the trade capital of the organ trade,
Paris,
France. From 1858 on he started his own organ building company in the Rue d'Aligre. Ludovico had three sons: Anselme, Henry and Claude. Each contributed to the business, but it is Anselme Gavioli (1828-1902) whose name is remembered. In 1878 he invented the frein, a piece of metal that allowed pipes to produce a sound similar to a
cello or
violin. In 1892 he
patented the use of
book music to play organs. 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. Another inconvenience of cylinders was their size, which limited the number of tunes that could be played. Book music uses a series of zig-zag folded sheets of cardboard 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. The development marked a turning point in the history of the mechanical organ, by allowing music to be almost infinitely long, and allowed Gavioli to become the most famous and prolific of fair organ builders. The Gavioli family had branches in cities such as
London,
Manchester,
New York City and
Waldkirch. After Anselmo's death in 1902 the business passed to Anselme's son Ludivico II. Then the business took a series of tragic circumstances. Gavioli ceased making organs in 1912, and the remainder of the business was transferred to
Limonaire Frères of Paris. Afterwards, a number of their engineers went on to build their own organ companies, including
Carl Frei. The
Steam Carousel in the
Efteling theme park in the
Netherlands features one of the many surviving Gavioli organs. Many Gavioli organs still exist, mainly in the UK, but there are also organs in the U.S. and in Japan. The Gavioli organ from Euclid Beach Park in Cleveland, Ohio still survives and is being restored. ==Gallery==