Paris May 1st 1997 -- First use of the expression Musique mecanique

Bonjour every mechanical music lover !  From the middle ages, we may read
about mechanical organs (I know Robbie find that strange), or Orgues
mecaniques, mechanical concerts or Concerts mecaniques, etc.

But it seems to me that the expression Musique mecanique, or Mechanical
music, or Mechanische Musik is rather recent.

The oldest occurrence I found till today of Musique mecanique is in an
article from the French Journal "La Nature", dated June 25th 1887, about
the melographe and the melotrope by Carpentier.

The 5 pages article is about "la reproduction mecanique de la musique"
and ends with: "Grace au melographe, il est facile de ... constituer ...
un repertoire de morceaux joues par des artistes et denues ... du
caractere de secheresse qu'imprimaient a la musique mecanique les anciens
procedes de piquage".

("Thanks to the melograph, it is easy to build a repertoire of pieces
played by artists and without this character of dryness that the previous
processes of pinning gave to mechanical music.")

I would be very interested to know if this expression "Musique mecanique",
or its equivalents in German or in English, appear in earlier texts.

Thank you for your contributions !

Best regards,

Philippe Rouille (Paris, France)
rouille@cnam.fr   http://www.cnam.fr/museum/musica_mecanica/

 [ Editor's note: From "A Dictionary of Musical Terms" (1895)
 [
 ["Melograph -- Name of various mechanical devices for recording the music
 [ played upon a  pianoforte.  One of the latest and most successful is
 [ the "electric hand", or Phonautograph (invented by Fenby, in England),
 [ in which the pressure on the digitals [the keys] closes an electric
 [ circuit, effecting a record on paper as in the Morse system of
 [ telegraphy.  A cardboard stencil forming an exact copy of the record
 [ can be made to reproduce the music when placed in the Melotrope, a
 [ mechanical attachment to a pianoforte by means of which the digitals
 [ are depressed as if by the player's fingers."
 [
 [ I've not seen "mechanical music" in this old book.
 [
 [ Robbie