* * *  G S M  * * *

The abbrevation GSM stands for
"Gesellschaft fuer selbstspielende Musikinstrumente"
which may be translated as
"Society for selfplaying musical instruments".
It was founded in 1975 under another name and bears the
mentioned name since 1984.

Today GSM has more than 700 members, that have joined in order to
"investigate, preserve and take care of the cultural good of
mechanical music in the scientific-technical and the musical
field". This covers the instruments with all their challenging
aspects as well as the music that is dedicated to these devices.
Nearly every European museum, that has specialized on musical
automata, and a lot of important libraries are among the
members of the society.

GSM is associated with important societies in Europe and the US
such as AMICA and MBSI.
During last years annual meeting Frank Metzger (New York) gave a
very interesting talk about the subtle things in small music boxes,
that are only revealed to a sharp eye.

GSM is publishing a journal DMM
"Das mechanische Musikinstrument (The mechanical musical instrument)",
that is printed about three times a year.

The annual meeting of this year is held in Markneukirchen (Thuringia)
on September 16-17.

The actual president is Dr. Juergen Hocker, who is living near Cologne.
The vice president is Siegfried Wendel who runs a prime museum of
mechanical music in the ancient village of Ruedesheim on the romantic
part of the Rhine. Some of you may have heard the name of
Hans-W. Schmitz from Stuttgart who is an expert for Welte pianos and
serves as a secretary in our society.

                Walter

W.Tenten@kfa-juelich.de