Music boxes are nothing new to most people — someone in your family probably had one in the form of a jewelry box that played a few notes when opened, or a young girl's toy with a twirling ballerina on top. The music boxes with which most people are familiar aren't that remarkable, playing a tinny rendition of a four or eight note tune. But if you've never seen or heard a real music box, then a trip to the Musical Wonder House will show you just how amazing these antique instruments can be.

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The Musical Wonder House in Wiscasset is home to over 5,000 restored musical boxes, player pianos, musical birds, porcelains, furniture, clocks, steins, whistlers, and even a musical painting. The collection is displayed and demonstrated in opulent rooms furnished with antiques of the period.

The museum is located at 18 High Street in a massive 32-room house built in 1852. The museum's founder and Trustee of the entire collection, Danilo Konvalinka, lives in the house as well, although he has devoted most of the space to the museum. Konvalinka is Austrian for “Lily of the Valley,” and keen observers will notice the flower throughout the house in the designs of several music boxes, as well as on a collection of vases and porcelains that are part of the Victorian decoration. The flower also grows in front of the museum during the spring.

Danilo Konvalinka and Joseph M. Villani.

Konvalinka has been in the music box business for 60 years, learning to repair the complicated and delicate instruments from his father, who was an artistic metalsmith and clockmaker in his native Austria. As a boy, one of Konvalinka's jobs for his father after the war was to go to the homes of the American officers and sell some of his father's creations, some of which grace the entrance hall of the museum. One of his American officers befriended Konvalinka, and inquired if his father could repair an antique music box, as they did not trust anyone in the States to repair it. Konvalinka said he did not know, but that he would ask his father. His father replied that he could indeed repair the antique music box for them. The family contacted their relatives in America, and the music box was shipped to Saltzburg to his father's shop.

“After my dad fixed it, it was quite nice to listen to. I said to my father, ‘Some day I will own one of these.' He said, ‘How do you know?' and I said, ‘I will look until I find at least one.'” says Konvalinka. Glancing around at a room lined with music boxes, he continued with a bit of dry humor, “I guess I have probably accomplished that.”

That was where Konvalinka's passion for music boxes started. Ask him what keeps him going and the answer is simple — “Looking for one I don't have already.” Since he found his first music box, Konvalinka has traveled the world adding to his collection, buying pieces from other collectors, or at estate auctions, through national trade magazines, or even on ebay. He remained friends with the American family he met in Austria, and moved to Washington, D.C. in 1956 to open a shop where he sold and repaired music boxes. Konvalinka has also had shops in Maryland, Virginia, DC, Massachusetts, Texas, and multiple shops in Maine. He moved to his current location in 1963, having previously vacationed in the Boothbay area. Konvalinka reasoned that, “The place where you enjoy vacation, you should live there because then you're on vacation all year long.”

The Musical Wonder House is open to the public from Memorial Day to Halloween. The Museum draws around 5,000 visitors each season from local areas as well as across the country. The one-of-a-kind collection even draws many visitors from overseas.

The Green and Gold Room.

Visitors can take a guided presentation — more than a tour, because the guide will stop to play several music boxes along the way and explain the history and significance of different pieces. Konvalinka loves to talk about his collection, and knows the details of each piece by heart. “They're like his children,” says Joseph M. Villani, a longtime friend of Konvalinka and Trustee of the museum. Last year Villani helped Konvalinka establish a trust for the Musical Wonder House to ensure it will be enjoyed for many generations.

The standard presentation takes about an hour and a half, and progresses through three main rooms — first the “Green and Gold Room,” then the “Red Room,” and finally the “Great Music Room.” The Green and Gold Room covers some of the earliest history of music boxes, and showcases some novel ways in which music boxes were added to other items like furniture, paintings, and teapots.

The Red Room shows the evolution of the music box from cylinder to disc, and visitors will hear examples of some later cylinder boxes and many disc boxes, along with three player grand pianos, two of which are rare expression pianos, playing compositions exactly as the composer or arranger played them on specially punched paper rolls.

The Great Room holds an impressive assortment of about 75 large music boxes and an Austrian Musical Clock Painting capable of playing 39,000 different songs. One box in this room literally defines what it means to be a music box — the Emerald Polyphon is listed as such in the Encyclopedia Britannica. Only 12 of these boxes are known to exist, and the Musical Wonder House is the only place in the world you can hear one play. All the music boxes in this collection are valuable, but this one alone is worth around $65,000.

Collection of music boxes in The Great Room.

If visitors want to see more than the rooms downstairs, for an added cost they can take the “Grand House Tour.” This continues upstairs to see four additional rooms of Konvalinka's collection containing music boxes as well as crank organs and even a French antique singing birdcage. One of the prize pieces on the extended tour, which takes an additional two hours, is the bed of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, whose assassination triggered World War I. Konvalinka's grandfather was a friend of the royal family, and was given the bed after Ferdinand was killed.

Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand's bed.

Visitors are also welcome to browse the gift shop, where smaller and newer music boxes are available at costs from less than one hundred to a few thousand dollars. For serious collectors, a small number of antique music boxes are available for purchase as well.

Aside from the museum and gift shop, the Musical Wonder House repairs damaged music boxes. Although this may seem to be a niche operation, Villani says they stay extremely busy. It is very exacting and delicate work, and some music boxes can take years to repair. “There are only a handful of people who can do the type of repairs that are needed,” Villani says, and so they receive music boxes shipped from all over the country and from Europe for repair.

Music boxes reached the height of their popularity in the late 1800s. The finest music boxes came first from Austria, Switzerland, France and Germany, and after 1889, America, when the Regina company was formed in New Jersey. But by 1910, almost all of the great music box companies had shut down when the advent of the phonograph made them more or less obsolete. Today some of the highest quality music boxes are made in Japan.

Tiny pins on a cylinder pick at the teeth of a tuned comb.

There are two main types of music boxes — cylinder and disc. Both have a tuned metal comb which produces sound, but cylinder music boxes have a cylinder with tiny pins on it that pluck the teeth on the comb as the cylinder rotates. All but one brand of disc music boxes have a metal disc for each tune. The disc has projections coming out of the bottom of it, which when the disc turns on the machine to play, are caught by the star wheel, a gear shaped like a star. As the projections rotate across the star wheel, the star wheel simultaneously plucks a note on the comb and makes that note sound.

Toy music boxes may have combs with around ten teeth, whereas the music boxes in Konvalinka's collection usually have at least 72 teeth, and some have up to 120. This obviously translates into a wider range of notes the music box can play. Songs generally last around 90 seconds, although can vary depending on the size of the disc or cylinder. Cylinders can contain multiple songs, although discs are easier to switch out and typically contain one song per disc.

Today, CDs and mp3s are how most people listen to music. The technology used to produce music boxes gave way to phonographs, record players, cassettes, CDs, and digital music. But if you stop in to the Musical Wonder House and listen to these 100+ year old instruments play, you will be convinced there will always be a place for these antique works of art. You can listen to recordings of a few instruments, but it doesn't compare to hearing them in person. As Konvalinka and Villani agree, “There isn't another museum like this in the world.”

Links:
Launch music box gallery
Musical Wonder House website